I’m not sure about you, but I was a total sugar-holic as a child. Sure candy was great, but what better and faster way to get your sweets-fix than through delicious beverages that we’d formed deep cravings, nay addictions, for? Nothing. What was your favorite sugar-laden liquid treat when you were a kid?
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10 Yoo-hoo
Yoo-hoo was like chocolate milk your parents would give you if they wanted to stunt your growth. The ingredients label starts with water, high-fructose corn syrup, whey sugar, corn syrup solids, then quickly devolves into words that have no less than nine syllables (read: crazy-ass chemicals), making up this wonderful concoction. Okay fine, it does have non-fat dry milk in it. But enough about the health concerns, Yoo-hoo was and is the most delicious thing on the planet.
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9 Mountain Dew
Mountain Dew is the moonshine of soda, and that’s no surprise considering the name “Mountain Dew” is old Southern slang for just that. But seriously, just like moonshine is so strong it’s illegal, Mountain Dew should be illegal due to its caffeine and sugar content. But if you’re going to do the Dew, don’t bother buying the diet stuff. That’s like renting a Lamborghini and not destroying it in a hellish 115 m.p.h blaze.
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8 Hawaiian Punch
This was so sweet that your teeth would actually call your dentist to schedule an appointment after drinking it. Hawaiian Punch’s bright red hue, mysterious fruit flavor and so-much-sugar-that-you’re-almost-eating-it-instead-of-drinking-it made this stuff a prime choice for the sugar-junkie in all of us.
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7 Arizona Iced Tea
What could be better than pretending you were an adult and drinking tea? Nothing, especially since this was loaded with sugar and additives to make it completely palatable for a youngster such as yourself. It’s marketed as healthy, but even their Green Tea has 13 full packets of sugar in it. Childhood onset diabetes never felt so right.
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6 Nesquik
The benefits of calcium with the drawbacks of an early death. The Nestle Quik bunny wanted us to drink his brew, and so we obliged and loved every moment of it. Nesquik could be consumed by making it with powder or syrup or straight out of ready-to-drink bottles.
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5 Wendy’s Frosty
What could be better to a kid than drinking ice cream while eating your junior-sized cheeseburger? It was already nice and soft, it had a convenient straw to suck it through and hey, do you know the real reason why the Frosty was so, so good? Because it was made with vanilla and chocolate mixed together. Goddammit Dave Thomas, you were a genius.
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4 Kool-Aid
If the Kool-Aid guy ever had his own live-action movie, he’d be played by Guy Fieri. I’m not sure what else there is to say about Kool-Aid except for the fact that it should never be served in anything but a bulbous pitcher wearing a tropical shirt.
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3 7-Eleven Slurpee
A couple of interesting facts about Slurpees –
1) Good Jews everyone, they’re Kosher!
2) Despite being a cold-ass city in a cold-ass country, Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada is continually crowned the Slurpee capitol of the world for some reason.
3) There was a Slurpee flavor called “Black Ice” which sounds a lot like it had dangerous hallucinogens in it.
4) The Australians have a flavor called “Ginger Beer.” Really? They passed on “Root” and went with “Ginger” instead? Unconscionable.
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