Throwback or throw up?

Pepsi got groovy early this year when it announced its retro product, Pepsi Throwback.
It’s a concoction that reels back the years on Pepsi’s current soda formula and substitutes the much-maligned high fructose corn syrup for natural sugar.
There are probably some sort of nutritional benefits to one or the other, but if you’re drinking soda of any kind, nutrition probably isn’t high on your list of priorities. We just want something that’s good tasting, right?

And with a slick commercial like that, how could we resist? Who cares if it tastes good, as long as it makes me feel disco funky!

A sale on the product at a Big Box retailer provided just that disco-funky opportunity, so I coughed up my 99-cents for a 20-ounce sample.
I found that Throwback tastes just like modern-day Coca-Cola.
That isn’t necessarily bad, because that means at the very least, it’s drinkable.
My other observation: It didn’t seem to taste “as cold” as a regular Pepsi. Maybe all that sugar doesn’t retain a chill as long as high fructose corn syrup or maybe it was just a lingering afterthought from my reading on the Cola Wars.

Would I drink it again? Sure. Would I buy it again? Probably not.
I’ll stick with my regular Diet Pepsi. Sure, it’s got Aspartame, but it’s the taste I’m used to.

I also picked up Mountain Dew Throwback to give it a try. In truth, Mountain Dew is my favorite soda of all.
Gobs of caffeine, super sweetness and that wonderful algae-green color come together for perfect drink.
Unfortunately, it’s also packed with empty calories, so I regrettably only drink it on occasion.

My hopes where that the Throwback version would at least let me assuage some of the guilt I feel for indulging in my Day-Glo liquid of choice.

But that was not the case.
Instead of that familiar old (or is that new?) taste was a syrupy liquified-gelatin glop that made me wince at every slurp.
That’s a 1-1 score on the Throwback/natural sugar experiment. What should I try next?