"It's like the iPod of drink machines"

i don’t even drink soda but i am actually excited about this soda fountain 2.0. It’s tentatively called Coca-Cola Freestyle and has a touch screen display that will theoretically allow more than 100 different varieties of soda in an effort to BLOW KIDS’ MINDS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

one 16 oz. rootbeer-sunkist-sprite-minutemaid, coming right up!

i remember when fast food chains started putting their soda machines in the customer’s domain which then inspired kids (myself included) to become soda alchemists, combining a sickening variety of sodas in one 20 oz. cup and then not only drinking it but going back for another liquid hodge podge even more formidable than the last. we did it because the 6 options were there, just begging to be experimented with and because no one was watching us. now, with coca-cola freestyle in every fast food chain, not only will the entrancing lure of a touch-screen display captivate children for hours, but the sheer number of options, all of which can be combined in ever-crazier permutations, will most likely have kids and adults nonplussed by the variety. if coca cola freestyle is the “ipod of drink machines,” why wouldn’t anyone put it on shuffle?

on top of all of this, the soda machine is also an inventory supercomputer which sends data back to coca-cola, reporting which flavors sell the most and when. i imagine coca-cola will probably find it a shock to discover that a variety of lime minute maid-root beer-coke-dr. pepper-sunkist has been cropping up, but i wonder how much data they’ll have to throw away when they realize that a lot of it is just kids geeking out on the buttons while trying to create the sickest combination of soda ever known to man, and then drinking it.

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