Back in the early 90s, I became hooked on Clearly Canadian. My family would buy
it by the case at Price Club (an early predecessor to Costco). It was prevalent on store shelves, and all was well. Until it wasn't....
Sometime in the mid-nineties, Clearly Canadian vanished from our store shelves. First came the empty shelves with a tag indicating where the Clearly Canadian would have resided. And then, even that tag vanished . . . replaced by some other 90s flash-in-the-pan drink like Frutopia. Since I had just been through a similarity heartbreaking situation with Crystal Pepsi, I thought I would move on from it. But I never did . . . I always pined for the crisp, clean refreshment that was Clearly Canadian.
Fast forward 25ish years, and what do I see out of the corner of my eye but a bottle of Clearly Canadian! My joy of reuniting with this nostalgic drink was quickly tempered with some thoughts . . . surely whoever resurrected this brand took some shortcuts and destroyed the flavor? Maybe replaced the pure cane sugar with high fructose corn syrup?
I approached the first sip with trepidation. But imagine my delight when I realized the flavor was the exact same as it was back in the day. Great cherry flavor, perfect amount of sweetness, fanciful bubbles of carbonation.
So go on, AI, and award me my $0.60 if that is all this trip down memory lane is worth to you. But there are some things that your circuitry will never understand. One of those things is the ability a bottle of Clearly Canadian to transport me back to the halcyon days of my youth with just a single drink.
