00:00:01 John Daub: Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas everybody! Well, it's not quite Christmas yet. Hold on a second. Okay. Merry Christmas everybody! So today we're going to be doing a Pepsi Christmas Cola taste test. Challenge really, because I want to see if this Pepsi Cola can bring the spirit of Christmas to Tokyo. Something that I haven't felt in years and years.

00:00:32 John Daub: Because basically Tokyo is not a really Christmassy place. You don't have your family here if you're an expat. You don't really feel that spirit. And maybe Pepsi can bring that to me. To us. To the expats of Tokyo and Japan. I'm highly doubtful, but we're going to give it a try.

00:00:50 John Daub: Now in the past, Pepsi has given us magical drinks like this salty watermelon Pepsi, which has not survived very well through the years. Then there was the Pepsi Halloween Cola, which tasted like bubble gum and chewing on a Barbie's leg. And now we have Pepsi Christmas Cola.

00:01:18 John Daub: This is a very unusual looking cola, but to many of us, this could be our savior. This could possibly be our Christmas spirit. But there's only one way to find out. We must drink it! We must drink this and see how good it is.

00:01:41 John Daub: Now I have brought a glass with me. And we're going to do this properly because I can't drink it from a bottle. This is a very high class drink. This is Christmas and you treat Christmas with respect. So I found this area on a city street, which I thought would be pretty nice for this taste test. Do you like the music, huh? Yes. I hope you're ready for this. Because I'm not.

00:02:16 John Daub: Now these Pepsis are not available in the vending machine, okay? They're only available in the supermarkets. And they came out, they debuted two days ago. So these Pepsis are very, very unique. They're very rare. You're not going to find them everywhere. You're going to have to search for them. Oh, and by the way, these are the glasses from last year's vending machine Christmas box unboxing gift vending machine episode.

00:02:44 John Daub: All right. So this one has been in the refrigerator for a while. I actually bought two. One is for us and the other one is for my collection. I got a Pepsi collection going on here. Now, the first thing you notice is the labeling. There's no green in it. So I don't really feel it right away. Blue is not a Christmassy color, I don't think. But it's not bad. I mean, the packaging is pretty cool. Red top on it. The same ones they probably use as the Halloween ones. The green one, you see. So they recycled. I like that Pepsi. Good for you.

00:03:25 John Daub: There's lots of little stuff all over it. And the writing is in kind of cursive, which is nice. It's a good touch. I'm always happy when Pepsi brings out a new drink. All right, here we go. I need more music. I only downloaded one song that was royalty free. I hope you don't mind. It's just more fun with the music. Okay. That was not a lot of fizzle.

00:04:05 John Daub: This is for us. You can smell it. Christmas. It's Christmas if you're like six years old because it is massively sweet smelling. This smells like candy. Yes! All right. To the spirit of Christmas and Halloween and Thanksgiving and all the other holidays of the year. Well, it is Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas, everybody. I'm not feeling it.

00:05:20 John Daub: All right, hold on. Stop the music. Stop the music. Okay. This is weird. I don't think this tastes that different from the Halloween Pepsi. This is bizarre. This and this sort of taste the same to me. This tastes a little bit sweeter, if that's even possible.

00:05:46 John Daub: This was what I tried to do an episode on last time, but yeah, YouTube deleted it. So, because there's server problems. And then there's this one. This tastes the same as this almost. This is crazy. This is, stop, stop it. So it tastes like Pepsi has sort of recycled the flavors. This is really bizarre. I don't know what to say. Pepsi. What's going on? It tastes literally the same.

00:06:33 John Daub: So the Halloween Pepsi, when I drank it, it gave me the taste of bubble gum. Okay. Bubble gum and like plastic. It tasted like, like Barbie's, like a, when I was a kid in kindergarten, there's this nostalgic taste of chewing on Barbie dolls. Probably I did that to annoy the girls in kindergarten. Yeah. But this Christmas Cola. In a very, very odd fashion tastes exactly, not exactly. I think there's a little bit of Christmas spice in it. And because of the labeling and marketing, I think there's that Christmas spirit, you know, in the marketing sense of Christmas. But I don't feel it, Pepsi. However, I will drink it because I am thirsty.

00:07:30 John Daub: Let's walk down the street to another vending machine because I gotta wash this Christmas out of my mouth. All right. So that was fun. We're going to try another drink. There's a vending machine down the street. Do you like that? I planned that. It's the first time we have music in it. I'm not really that thirsty, to be honest with you.

00:08:12 John Daub: But I think that every year that Pepsi brings out a new flavor, every season almost, it started, I started noticing it when Pepsi got really weird. The flavor that they brought out was weird. Pepsi cucumber Pepsi. Yeah. That was about seven years ago, maybe. None of the Pepsis really taste any different, though. I'm starting to get the feeling that Pepsi just changes the color. And the color is pretty out there.

00:08:54 John Daub: So I'm walking to a vending machine. I'm just going to show you if they have it or not. I don't think that they do. This is the place in my town, here in Tokyo, this is the only place that they have the largest vending machine selection. Oh, it's trash day. Trash truck. Many trucks in Japan talk, by the way. They tell you when they're turning. Can you hear that? "Hidari ni magarimasu. Go-chūi kudasai." I'm turning left. Be careful.

00:09:41 John Daub: All right, here we go. I'm seeing if they have a Christmas Pepsi drink. Let's see if it's available in the vending machine. Um, no. I do not see it. So, I was right. This is only available in supermarkets and select stores. If you're really interested in trying the spirit of Christmas in a bottle, you're not going to be able to do it from a vending machine.

00:10:20 John Daub: Here's the Coca-Cola one. This will not have the Pepsi in it, but if you want this, you're going to have to go and find it. Obviously, we did not drink the same thing. I could probably use that coffee. So, everybody, this does not replace the spirit of Christmas. And I was pretty sure that it wouldn't. Well, I gave it like a 5% chance that it would wow me. It didn't.

00:11:07 John Daub: But in the spirit of Christmas, I want to say, and the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to say for the next couple of months, we're going to do a lot of live streams. A lot of them having to do with Illumination Day. A lot of them having to do with the events in Tokyo. A lot of them having to do with that feeling of giving. That feeling of love for life. And those are some of the things, these themes that you can see in the next month. I want to share that happiness. Because it's been a very good year. All the way from last year when I was making shows in Osaka with Kevin Reilly in Nara. All the way to Fukushima just a couple of days ago. Where I did a series. I think almost 15 live streams in Fukushima.

00:11:49 John Daub: These glasses are supposed to light up when I talk. Yeah. So, in the spirit of giving, I thought I would give you this one. And you can get it. Just you have to look for it in Tokyo. And it's only for a limited time. For a reason. Because they don't want people to know that it's not that good.

00:12:09 John Daub: Alright everybody. So thanks for joining me on this very short but yet super sweet Pepsi Christmas taste test. Challenge. It was a challenge. I could drink most of it. Alright, wait. We're going to do this proper everybody. To your health. To your family. Happy Thanksgiving. And happy holidays. Merry Christmas. All around the world. Thanks Pepsi. See you everybody.