Strawberry-Falls Punch Kool-Aid:
When my Kool-Aid madness began about a year ago, I was more fixated on finding only the character-based flavors. They were the most memorable, for sure. But after researching and researching the stupid topic called "Kool-Aid" and revisiting virtually every flavor ever made, others jumped out at me with just as much giddy asshole starpower -- and perhaps with even more, because unlike the character-based flavors that a good amount of folks held onto, these lesser-knowns were as rare as the steaks that got 45 seconds on your grill before the damn thing exploded, the implication being that your dog rigged it in a fit of jealously over all the attention being delivered to your new daughter. So, it's time to choose: dog or daughter.
Two flavors in particular provided excessive joy: Rainbow Punch, which I have not found, and Strawberry-Falls Punch, my latest acquisition. It was a tough journey between Point A, where I didn't have any Strawberry-Falls Punch, and Point Q-8, where I finally found Strawberry-Falls Punch. Essentially only a more tart version of "regular" Strawberry, the flavor came and died in 1986, forever black-marked with one of those spooky tombstones that have the same year between the dash. The flavor is so largely forgotten that I've yet to find a single site mentioning Strawberry-Falls Punch with the correct hyphen in place. This poor bastard flavor -- such a waste! It had the packaging, the taste, the color, the style...where, how, why didn't it take off? I refuse to believe that children -- even idiot children -- would've resisted a package that so filled their minds with images of beautiful natural water parks where all of the water was red and berryish. I refuse to believe it, but evidently, I was one of those idiot children. They should've killed me when they had the chance.
Believe it or not, I found this rare Kool-Aid specimen at a yard sale. My eyes locked on that packet like the Imps on Dak. Now, with everyone being so eBay savvy, or at least
believing they know all there is to know about the value of old things, it's important to never show your hand at yard sales. Nobody's marking their damn prices with little white stickers at the things, and if they are, it's always crap stuff. They're considering your interest and making up prices as they go.
But this was Kool-Aid, so the older lady running the show was in trouble. I knew she'd have to go low. Nobody else was gonna buy this thing. I couldn't stop from softly cackling in her direction, our minds wrapped in a telekinetic embrace, having little love quarrels like this...
Psychic Me: Haha, you know I want that thing BAD and you STILL can't charge me a lot for it!
Psychic Her: Who says I can't? I'm officially tripling the price of that Kool-Aid! You are going down!
Psychic Me: The only thing going down here is the price of the Kool-Aid. I may want it, but not enough to risk losing the chance to humiliate you -- and if that's going to happen, you might as well make a
little money off it.
Psychic Her: NO! The only thing that's going down here is YO MOMMA.
A quarter was all it took, and Strawberry-Falls Punch was mine. This was obviously a special Kool-Aid. The sight of strawberries floating down a river of pink was rather ambiguous; kids just made up what it meant in their heads, always overestimating it by fifty-six miles. "Oh! It must be like a strawberry cream soda flavor!" Or better yet, "Strawberry cotton candy flavored Kool-Aid?! I have to, I must!" I still don't really know what it means. It's sourer than regular Strawberry Kool-Aid, so whatever the pink fluid is, something pissed in it. Plus, the color of regular Strawberry's packaging was more the "next best thing" than a color that truly resembled the fruit. Here, I was giving serious thought to eating the package itself. Had I done that, I might've died.
No, really, I could've died. See, this wasn't
just a packet of Kool-Aid. I mean...it
was, but it wasn't anymore. The lady running the yard sale, or perhaps her child, or perhaps a total stranger even to them, had laminated the packet of Strawberry-Falls Punch and converted it into a magnet. To the faithful out there, this was to me what stage blood and crudely-phrased word balloons attached to the Baby Jesus statue in a nativity scene would be to you. But just as miraculously as the Jesus statue's sudden cleansing just in the nick of time, whoever committed this atrocity never bothered emptying the packet first. The holy ashes still lied inside -- perhaps contaminated, but this was definitely a risk worth taking.
If you're going to have an obituary, it may as well have to tastefully mention that you died from drinking laminate-contaminated, twenty-year-old Kool-Aid. I'd want it on my tombstone, especially if I came and died in the same year and had one of those neat, aforementioned same-year-dashy-dash things going. By now you're probably hoping I get poisoned.
After
snipping the packet open and
pouring the powder into a pitcher, I couldn't help noticing how similar Strawberry-Falls Punch was to
Incrediberry Kool-Aid. Even the color was mostly the same, though Strawberry-Falls Punch lacked the rim of off-putting yellow. As far as taste goes -- and granted, I only drank a little considering the chances of contamination -- it's only slightly more mind boggling than regular Strawberry.
As mentioned in other articles, most Kool-Aid flavors go extinct because there's only so much shelf space supermarkets will give to them. It was hard for Kraft to justify putting Strawberry
and Strawberry-Falls Punch on the market, so they remained loyal to the flavor with tenure and kicked our new pal to the curb.
The bigger question is: Why the Hell did someone turn this thing into a magnet?
WAIT, UPDATE!
The gods smiled upon me with an old VHS tape containing the original (and only) commercial for Strawberry-Falls Punch. And deep within its frames, you'll find out exactly why I can continue making an ass of myself / making such a big deal out of each and every old Kool-Aid flavor. They
were a big deal. Aside from the original, "natural" flavors that needed no introduction, nearly every newly introduced flavor received its own kickoff campaign, and the beauty was in Kraft's ability to make every flavor feel special and unique in more ways than just names and tastes. The Strawberry-Falls Punch ad was one of the lower-rent commercials of the Kool-Aid world, but it's still so unberryvably awesome that I've no choice but to pen the world's finest country song in tribute.
Playing off the flavor's name, we get a shot of the Kool-Aid Man tempting fate by rafting in a delicious river oh so close to a delicious waterfall. The scene is full of giant strawberries and bananas, which introduces a sad fact I wasn't privy to when I reviewed the flavor: Strawberry-Falls Punch is -- according to the Kool-Aid Man himself --
part banana. This adds a psychosomatically sucky edge to a flavor I was sure I wanted to marry, but hey, I didn't taste any yucky banana when
I drank it.
As the Kool-Aid Man clings to a vine to keep from falling to certain death, he accidentally spills some Strawberry-Falls Punch out of his miniature pitcher, which must be strange for him to hold. I can't imagine pouring drinks out of something that looked like a tiny me. Instead of calling for help or setting up a bunch of bamboo shoots to break his fall, the children below just hold out their glasses to catch the runaway Kool-Aid. More proof that kids are pricks and users first, friends second.
Click here to download the Strawberry-Falls Punch Kool-Aid commercial!
--
Matt
