Scary Blackberry Ghoul-Aid:
When I hold the packet of Ghoul-Aid in my hands, I might as well be Jack Skellington. Nothing on the planet can empower a person with the Halloween spirit faster than "Ghoul-Aid," a special edition Kool-Aid meant to light up our taste-buds with the flames of Satan's tail. The seasonal sweet came and went in the late `90s, and so inspired was I by its innate Octoberness that I spent a good part of a weekend back in 2003 trying to recreate the majesty using current Kool-Aid flavors. Now that I've had the real thing, I know that no homemade replacements can deliver the same spooky ass punch.
Perfect in every which way. I love it. Ghoul-Aid makes me appreciate thing like dangling plastic skull earrings and Halloween costume reflectors that much more. Most food products that push forward with special "Halloween editions" rarely to go the lengths seen here. First off, it's an all new flavor: "Scary Blackberry." Lest you think they cheated, I remind you that there's no regular "Blackberry" flavor. This was it, and it really
was black.
The stuff was primarily advertised as the making of the
premiere punch for kids' Halloween parties. And it certainly was, but since I never went to many of those, I envision more as the background noise for the annual "candy recap" after my friends and I returned from trick-or-treating. We'd be tallying up the Snickers, trading away our Mary Janes and sipping Ghoul-Aid through lipstick and plastic fangs. And we'd never forget it. A less obvious but perhaps even more glorious joy would've been found in receiving Ghoul-Aid from one of the houses we trick-or-treated
at, because in a sea of chocolate and shapely sugars, these packets would've truly stood out. Anytime an open house gave you something "different" as Halloween loot was memorable, but I think Ghoul-Aid would've had a bunch of pint-sized vampires and wolfmen offering to wash the family's car.
The packets, striking with their black scheme, each featured a vamped-up version of the Kool-Aid Man, though I've gotta subtract a few Kool-Aid Points since he traded the cross in for a bow-tie and refused to don the canines. Then again, I guess it's risky to frighten the very same people you're trying to sell drinks to. The fact that they even renamed "Kool-Aid" itself for this occasion only hammers home how much faith was put into the concept. Ghoul-Aid is sadly no longer produced, and I'm really, really mad at all of you. You gave Kraft no choice. You should've been buying it when it was available, so I wouldn't have to drive to Grandma Edie's Delicate-tessen in Alablammy to find the last remaining packet in the country. Grandma Edie was
not pleasant.
Though Kraft didn't go out of their way to advertise it, it's obvious that a great deal of effort went into making even the powder as black and spooky as possible. Neither "Black Cherry" nor flat out "Grape" come close to this level of muted emptiness, and if muted emptiness is good for anything, it's Halloween parties. X-Entertainment is personified by Ghoul-Aid. For years we've celebrated the small pleasures that've guided our years to slightly better places. We've waxed and remembered and paid tribute to the many, many things that made good days great and shitty days a little less shitty. Ghoul-Aid is everything I just said, in short-form. People don't just "make" Ghoul-Aid. From their first encounters with it in grocery store aisles to the big, gather 'round family moment when the stuff was finally mixed with water, everything about Ghoul-Aid was more than a mere thirst quencher. Doesn't make a difference whether you got beat up at school that day or became championed for your mad kickball skillz, a glass of the Ghoul in the dark evening cool was going to make you write a diary entry.
As close to black as a Kool-Aid can get, "Scary Blackberry" Ghoul-Aid smells...wait, let me set this up. Picture it. You're at the ice cream truck, and you go with the old faithful standby -- a snowcone. You make your way through the treat, alternating between the red and blue before moving onto whatever crappy color they threw in the middle. As you move to the lower levels, you find that the three colors have begun swarming together into one very Scary Blackberry-esque mess of unholy fun. Then you get to the bottom chunk, swimming in juices and waiting to be sucked to death. Think back, think really, really hard. Remember that smell? That's the bottom of a snowcone, and that's exactly what Ghoul-Aid smells like. Few scents have ever made me check my back for float-bringing angel wings, but this one did it. I swear, I think I got a hard-on.
It tastes about the same too, and that's good in a way that makes Merriam-Wesbster consider putting a picture of Ghoul-Aid next to the word "good" in the next thrilling edition of "Dictionary." Though with an unmistakable tart vampire bite hiding in there somewhere, it seems to be a mixture of all the sweeter dark reds. Can't really say that it tastes like blackberries, and I'm guessing Kraft knew this. I don't blame 'em, though. If you've got the chance to preface "berries" with "black" on a packet of shit meant for the Halloween season, how can ya not?
Even the way the
powder hits the damp pitcher reminds me of a Halloween scene, in this case, a horde of black locusts staging their attack in the midnight hour. Writing things like that as I drink Ghoul-Aid makes me wonder what they put in the stuff. Am I drinking the ashes of evil warlord Hu'tarr Bezbub? Time will tell, I guess.
--
Matt
