I’d love to lie to you and say that I picked up Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops Partyin’ Punch strictly for review purposes, but honestly, the exact opposite is true. As you might be able to tell from the picture, the pouch has already been opened. Sometimes JFB contributor Bob picked these up on a whim. The truth is, we are both people inching perilously close to the age of 30, and we still make Kool-Aid. No, there are no children in this household. Just two semi-responsible adults who make Kool-Aid.

I should have seen the potential for a review right off the bat, but it wasn’t until Bob tried these Drink Drops that I realized they would be perfect for a review. It’s a fucking Alka-Seltzer that makes Kool-Aid! What’s not to love? Or mock?

The tablets come individually wrapped in their own little packets, which I wasn’t expecting, but makes sense for those who want their Kool-Aid on-the-go.  As you can see, on the back of the packet, the tablet has a little smiley face on it, much resembling the Kool-Aid Man’s perpetual grin.  Wouldn’t it be great if that was what the tablets actually looked like?

OH MY GOD I GET TO DROWN THE KOOL-AID MAN!  …Which is kind of weird, since he’s already filled with nothing but liquid, but…whatever.  Give me my right to pretend I’m drowning a beloved mascot and I’m down.

When he made his cup of Fun Fizz, Bob just dropped one of the tablets into a random amount of water. He then complained that it was too…well, watery. I advised him that maybe he should follow the directions on the back of the pouch, which read, “Put 1 drink drop into 8 fl oz glass of water and watch it fizz. OR Put 2 drink drops into 16 fl oz bottle of water.” However, don’t ever, ever drop 2 drink drops into a 16 oz glass of water, or else you threaten to open a wormhole that leads to a bizarro world, where chicken replaces bread on all sandwiches.

This time I made sure I had exactly eight ounces of water, as the back of the package demands. I dropped in our little Kool-Aid Man tablet and watched the excitement unfold!

I wasn’t timing it, but it took about three or four minutes for the Drink Drop to dissolve completely. It was kind of fun watching all the bubbles come up as it dissolved. My favorite part was when the tab went from sitting at the bottom of the glass to slowly floating up to the surface, where it turned into a frothy blob before dissolving completely. I likened it to watching a dead body writhe free of the chains that had been holding it to the bottom of a lake, slowly and ominously drifting up to the surface, ready to traumatize a group of carefree prepubescents for life when they discover it. Except this time, the body dissolves completely in under five minutes. The perfect crime.

The taste of it was distinctly fruit punch, but it had an interesting fizzy texture that went with it, unlike regular Kool-Aid. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it carbonated; it was more like a brief pop on the tongue before I swallowed the liquid. Almost like when you have a mouthful of Pop Rocks and you get that one last, faint pop out of one of the little guys before they completely dissolve. I am probably the only person under the age of 16 who actually remembers that feeling, because I’m the only person nearing the age of 30 who has had Pop Rocks within in the last decade. I’m also drinking fizzy Kool-Aid. What do you want.

While the drink does have a nice, distinct tropical punch flavor, the sweetness of it is absolutely cloying. The nice thing about making your own Kool-Aid is that you can add as much sugar as you want to it. I tend to lean towards the less sugary side, to the point where the Kool-Aid is almost tart. Looking at the ingredient list is like looking at the chemicals needed to produce…I don’t know, something really sciency, and aspartame is included in that list, which explains the mouth-coating, long-lasting, not very pleasant oversweetness.

Kool-Aid Fun Fizz Drink Drops is an interesting concept that’s fun to watch and I’m sure will make kids clap their hands together like a bus full of autistic children heading off to “special” summer camp. And I’m sure that was the point, so Kool-Aid has succeeded nicely on that front. Kids might also like the overwhelming sweetness, but I’m not sure how they’ll feel about the aspartame aftertaste. Then again, children are forgiving, so watching the Kool-Aid man slowly dissolve to his doom might make them forget about all that. I suppose the portability makes it useful, but Kool-Aid already makes a product called Singles that fills that niche well enough.  For me, I’ll just stick to making Kool-Aid the old-fashioned way, like a normal, responsible adult.

• Score: 2.5 out of 5 bloated corpses and traumatized children
• Price: $1.99
• Size: 1 bag of 8 Drink Drops (0.53 oz.)
• Purchased at: Safeway #1717
• Nutritional Quirks: Citric acid, sorbitol, potassium and sodium bicarbonate, aspartame.  Contains less than 2% of natural and artificial flavor, ascorbic acid, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, potassium and sodium carbonate, magnesium oxide, soy lecithin, red 40, blue 1, sodium benzoate and BHA.  Oh, sorry, that’s actually just the entire ingredient list.