Actually, the balls were not suspended because of their equal density with the liquid, although the densities were close. Raspberry Cherry Peach Blackberry Chia Orbitz. In 1997, Clearly Canadian Beverage Corp. introduced a non carbonated fruity drink called Obitz. What exactly happened here? 125. Think about it. Check back every Tuesday for another column. The bottles were very eye-catching and some even thought that they resembled lava lamps. Remember when I mentioned Clearly Canadian a couple paragraphs ago? Clear Pepsi, green ketchup, Pop Tarts Crunch Cereal, and, perhaps the front-runner in toeing the creative versus unable to be consumed line, the … Also Orbitz is liquid with those little jello-like balls floating in it. Figure 3 shows a picture of the Orbitz drink. Close. Now, I'm no marketing expert, but somehow it seems a bad idea to use the word "bowels" at a web site dedicated to a drink this hideous. Clearly Canadian has returned after charging my credit card two years ago. Try it." Rich, I say.". Make It a Betty Crocker Week joe@joelavin.com, May 3, 2005 Check out the recipe below to learn about our mystery balls. Trying out a few fun things for an upcoming Pop Rewind article, stay tuned! Update: Orbitz was discontinued long ago. This soda was designed to … And later on there was another ringing endorsement: "The orbitz in the drink were cool at first! But it gave me and my dad a slight stomach discomfort! Orbitz is the product name of a discontinued noncarbonated fruit-flavored beverage, made by The Clearly Food & Beverage Company of Canada, makers of Clearly Canadian.It was introduced 1997 and quickly disappeared due to poor sales. Here's their review of Raspberry Citrus Orbitz: But despite all the negative reviews, Clearly Canadian is surging forward and opening a new Orbitz factory in California. When your colored chia seeds are ready, add a couple spoonfuls to the glass or bottle you’ll be drinking from. It's a nice present, and there are many useful recipes in here. If you’ve ever had a cup of bubble tea, you understand the textural consistency of Orbitz, the non-carbonated fruit drink filled with tiny edible balls. I caught one with my teeth and bit into it. Orbitz 1997's non-carbonated fruit-flavored beverage with edible floating balls suspended in equal density to the surrounding liquid with an ingredient called gellan gum. The Orbitz drink is a type of clear soda pop that contains colored gel beads floating in it. Back in 1996, before anyone used Orbitz.com to book flights and hotels, the website hawked a brand-new soft drink called Orbitz, which looked like a lava lamp in a 300ml bottle. Nothing like tapioca balls in your drink! No big loss there lol. Would You Like Your Coronary Super-Sized? Maybe they are specifically targeting the "Here, this tastes horrible. High praise indeed. The textually enhanced lava lamp of sodas. "It's about time you owned a cookbook," my mother told me, and so she recently gave me a reprint of "Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book," originally published in 1950. So, how does it taste? I mean, here's this disgusting drink. Here are some words from Wikipedia explaining it better than I can: “The small balls floated due to their nearly equal density to the surrounding liquid, and remained suspended with assistance from an ingredient known as gellan gum. Made with small floating edible balls, the drink was marketed as a "texturally enhanced alternative beverage" but some consumers compared it to a portable lava lamp. Enough glamour shots… let’s see this thing in action: Orbitz?! Not only did they have pages for their "good" and "arcane" mail, but they also had a page dedicated to "bad" mail. I mean, I just threw together four flavors of Clearly Canadian that don’t go together, so not great. When I finally had the balls (er, sorry) to try it, it tasted like the sort of thing thirteen year old boys dare each other to drink in a school cafeteria. It sort of looked like a lava lamp. #orbitz #90s #beverages #clearlycanadian, A post shared by Pop Rewind (@poprewind) on Jul 3, 2017 at 11:41am PDT, 9 Discontinued Fast Food Items We Want Back in our Lives, 8 Chocolate Bars We Wish Were Still Around, A Haunted Hamburger in Japan Featuring the Ghost Whopper, Weird Paul: World Premiere of Will Work for Views, Pop Rewind Podcast: Game Boys, Virtual Boys, Nomads, and More, RetroDaze Sixth Annual Article Writing Contest, Pop Rewind Podcast: Meeting Weird Al Yankovic. But it’s not like anyone fondly remembers Orbitz for its taste. We’re in it for the mouthfeel. (Like the small floating balls still float and are intact!) Orbitz has a web site. In reality, according to an ACS article ( http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay.html?DOC=vc2%5C1rp%5Crp1_orbitz.html ), the manufacturer used gellan gum to create an invisible 'spider web' that held the balls up in the drink. ", Chairman of the Board: "Round Floaty Chunks! Orbitz - the drink of the future! Other recipes, however, are a little more interesting than useful. The gellan gum provided a support matrix—something like a microscopic spider web—and had a visual clarity approaching that of water, which increased with the addition of sugar.”. From the Clearly Canadian Beverage Corporation, it’s a non-carbonated fruit-flavored beverage. })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); Bio “The small balls floated due to their nearly equal density to the surrounding liquid, and remained suspended with assistance from an ingredient known as gellan gum. -Wild Cherry Clearly Canadian Whatever you guys are on, I want some.". Orbitz Picture by Ye Olde Web Designer Cat. It was like biting into radioactive mucous Tang. And I'm not the only one who hates it. google_cpa_choice = "CAAQjeWZzgEaCGUPemYRwK8bKPG193M"; google_ad_client = "pub-2272530224845696"; Figure3: Orbitz Drink (BevNET, 1998) The clear liquid in the drink is made up of water, sugar, and xanthan gum, while the gel beads are made of gellan gum (Rochefort, 2002). After all, I had to know who actually likes the drink. The drink I am thinking about is all gel. I went to the Beverage Network in an attempt to learn more about Orbitz and because, frankly, I have too much free time on my hands. Eight hours before you want to chew your refreshing beverage, mix the chia seeds, water, and food coloring in a bowl. A video about the discontinued 1997 Clearly Canadian drink Orbitz. It was a clear soda with little yellow balls floating in it. I think Orbitz should go down in history as the most awkward phase of the '90s , like, ever. For being over 20 years old, the bottle of Orbitz looks very much like it did back in the '90s!!!! Hell, he or she probably got a promotion, and that's what's really confusing. This Week's Column But we here at Pop Rewind aren’t the science-y kind, so I had to think of something a little less intimidating to act as floating balls. What this company needs are more ingenious people like you. ga('send', 'pageview'); Chances are you have a memory of Orbitz, whether it was gleefully chugging chunky sugar water or side-eyeing someone as they chugged chunky sugar water while you, smartly, abstained because wtf are those balls and why are they floating? Marketers called Orbitz a "texturally enhanced alternative beverage," but most consumers just called it gross. I bought one with the intent of keeping it, to see how long it would last unopened. First, they create Orbitz, and then they use their web site to display the opinions of people who hate the drink. We all have an inherent curiosity to taste disgusting things, because we think "they couldn't possibly be that bad." In short, it looks very much like a lava lamp, plus you can drink it. That you could drink. im not sure you could make it at home, the little balls were made of xantham gum, but you can probably find the ingredients online, not sure about a recipe. google_ad_height = 240; I almost think they want people to know the drink is bad. It was the newest product by Clearly Canadian Beverage Corporation, the company that came on the scene in 1988 with Clearly Canadian flavored sparkling water. i've even contacted the company( clear canadian beverage)it's weird that all these people like it because there are so many bad reviews These balls were suspended in an advanced formula of gelling ingredients that created an invisible, microscopic spider web. After the chia seeds have absorbed some of the water and have become weirdly gel-like, dump them into a fine mesh strainer. (Surprising, that is, if you leave aside the actual quality of the drink.) Before we get too far, chia seeds can be dangerous so make sure you soak them and don’t eat them dry and choke on them. The balls were able to "defy gravity" like this because they were the same density as the liquid and had some help from the gellan gum ingredient. Refrigerate until you’re ready to use. It was marketed as a “texturally enhanced alternative beverage”. While the balls are not as gelatinous as the original, they’re still an easy way to make any beverage gross. What? Orbitz came out later in the 90s than the drink I am talking about it. We'll be rich. //-->. google_ad_width = 120; Orbitz is not your traditional soft drink. Liquid Portion: Orbitz comes in such actual flavors as Orange-Vanilla, Raspberry-Citrus, Blueberry-Melon-Strawberry, … I planted that seed for a reason. Introduced by the Clearly Canadian Beverage Company, Orbitz promised to deliver a "texturally enhanced alternative beverage" while looking like … That's brilliant! Bonus points for being edible. After all, Orbitz is such a unique drink, from its unique crumbiness to its unique interspersing-capital-letters-in-the-names-of-its-flavors. As I indeed delved further into their bowels, I discovered a page of e-mail from people who had tried Orbitz. ... Group consensus is that most of them tasted like cough syrup and were also oddly thick to allow the illusion of floating for the bead things. What year is this?! -Mountain Blackberry Clearly Canadian, Balls: If you've ever wondered how to make a soft drink go from yummy to yucky, Orbitz's creators had the answer: add disgusting little gelatinous balls to it. -Country Raspberry Clearly Canadian -The balls of gelatin floating in your Orbitz drink. that yellowish one like banana coconut cherry or whatever i think was the best if anyone ever finds this product find me!! Children of the 90s: Awesome Lunch Box Beverages of the 90s. Since Clearly Canadian was behind Orbitz, and Clearly Canadian has returned after charging my credit card two years ago, I figured their product would be the best bet for the drink portion of our Homemade Orbitz. It makes me feel rather inadequate to realize that while I'm still a temp the person who had the presence of mind to invent a drink featuring round floaty chunks of something or another is no doubt still employed. Just a little something to hold you over until Clearly Canadian cranks out the real thing! those little gelatin balls were so good! Archived. Orbitz came in several flavors: Raspberry Citrus; Blueberry Melon Strawberry ( More... ), December 14, 2004 But, a long time ago, there was a drink with the same name. That would be the small edible balls floating in it. google_ad_format = "120x240_as_rimg"; I'm not one to think much about nutrition, but even I'm taken aback by the new Hardee's Monster Thickburger. Even though we had picked Orbitz as a sure-fire extinct beverage two years ago, it's kind of surprising it went under so quickly. If for some reason you ever wanted to drink a lava lamp. -dab of pink food coloring gel (or any color). Orbitz: Orbitz was made by Clearly Canadian, who if you’ll recall were neck-and-neck with Mistic for jurisdiction over the realm of sodas that posed as fruit-flavored waters. They’re not the same as the Orbitz balls, but it’s edible and hey– actually healthy? There were new flavors coming out all the time, and one of the more interesting products that launched was the Orbitz soft drink. Orbitz, however is. Posted by 10 months ago. You have to wonder about these people. m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) Archives/Links geez, i saw orbits on clueless the other day and now the craving has sit in. -1 cup of water -Orchard Peach Clearly Canadian And sorry, I have no idea where you can buy some. -75 mL each: (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), But the drink was really good!" And those balls only made it worse. The unique thing about Orbitz is that they have tiny little balls floating inside. The odd looking bottle of Orbitz sat in my refrigerator for days, terrifying my roommates. After one or two less-than-inspiring experiences with Orbitz myself, I did what many of my friends had done: I put the unopened bottle up on my shelf and admired its pretty colors and its eternal snowglobe suspension. Orbitz: The Drink With Balls It was just so weird and out there, and since it went to the defunct beverage graveyard back in 1997, nothing has compared. ive seen people talk about bubble tea being similar, its a southeast asian drink. Introduced in the late ‘90s, Orbitz was widely seen as a marketing disaster. It costs $5.49, though if you spend $7.09 to add fries and a soda they'll throw in a small defibrillator for free. Would You Like Your Coronary Super-Sized. Wouldn't you know it? I started with the good mail. I even paid money for it. You'll thank me later. While the Orbitz drink itself wasn't as bad as some people made it out to be, it … The flavor combinations were also unusual, … Orbitz Drink (from 1997) A short-lived product made by Clearly Canadian, it was referred to as "The drink with balls" - and before the travel site, orbitz.com belonged to these guys. To be fair, there are apparently some big Orbitz fans out there. ( More... ),
