This is part 2 of a two-part series. Read The Chainsaw Buffet Live-Action Jones-Fest 2007 Part 1 here.

Well, it's fully three weeks after the first half of this article was posted, despite the entire tasting taking place over one night. As usual, I blame porn for the delay. That, or the holidays, a bout of heavy drinking, and my still being pissed at getting stuck for eight hours in Detroit. One of those. I'm not sure which. Anyway, we continue our dive into the realm of holiday-flavored soda terror.

As we rounded the halfway point in our marathon of holiday Jones tasting, we were already beginning to feel sick to our stomachs. Of course, spending a couple of hours tasting things like carbonated eggnog and liquefied Christmas trees does that to you.

Chocolate Coins

Next on deck was the Chocolate Coins flavor. Even I know why this is in the Chaunnukah Pack. This was also one of the better-sounding flavors - after all, Jones used to make a mass-release chocolate soda.

In color, Chocolate Coins really resembled cola. However, when we opened the bottle, it became obvious that this wasn't anything near cola. The unmistakable smell of Tootsie Rolls wafted from the neck of the bottle. Not a bad smell, even if it's not normally associated with carbonated beverages (but then again, none of these flavors were normally associated with carbonated beverages).

As for the taste, the smell said it all. There was only one thought across the board: Tootsie Rolls, liquefied and carbonated by some malevolent process and poured into bottles to be sold as a dubiously ethnic holiday novelty. The flavor was very strong, perhaps not the most pleasant drink in the world, but nowhere near the level of horror from previous Holiday Packs.

In my mind, the Chocolate Coins and Christmas Cocoa were indistinguishable. There was no difference that I could tell. However, the Maitre d' claimed that his more refined palate could detect subtle variations between the two. The real question is, was it all in Dylan's mind, or is it really there?

Cherry Pie

We moved on to the second of the holiday pie flavors, namely the alleged cherry kind. Usually, when you encounter cherry flavor in sodas, it's the nasty, overly sweet artificial kind. You know, like in Code Red, which is the nastiest variant every conceived by the Gods of Mountain Dew (and don't tell me there aren't such gods - you would be mocking my religion and destroying my faith). The bright, artificial red color did nothing to break that impression. I fully expected this to be the kind of nasty sickly-sweet thing that everyone else loves but I hate.

Needless to say, it was. The smell from the bottle was exactly like cherry cough drops. The taste, however, wasn't quite what I expected. Yes, it was nasty-sweet and strong, but it lacked the usual cloyingness that tells you the so-called "natural" cherry flavoring is only naturally found inside a chemistry lab. In its place was the exceedingly true-to-life flavor of cherries packed in syrup for too long. This wasn't just cherry pie...it was school food service cherry pie filling, somehow miraculously liquefied and carbonated.

But the cherry itself wasn't truly the worst part. Remember back in the first part of this when I mentioned that the blueberry pie flavor included the crust? It's ba-ack. When they say "cherry pie", they mean the entire pie. While not as horrible as the burned-crust aftertaste from the 2005 pumpkin pie flavor, it was unpleasant.

Geoffrey: "I hate the pie crust taste."

Dylan: "Smells like cherry dip for ice cream cones. Tastes strong. You can taste the crust, which ruins it."

Jen: "Smells good! Nasty crust again."

Gingerbread Man

Next on our hit list was Gingerbread Man. This was one of the mass-released holiday flavors, sold in normal four-packs alongside the regular Jones line-up. We had hopes that it would turn out to actually be good, since it wasn't released as part of one of the normal novelty four-packs. However, considering that even flavors that sounded good had turned out horrible, those weren't exactly high hopes.

By now, our taste-testers were getting downright sick of the experiment, but we pressed onward. The color of the stuff wasn't that disconcerting...if you didn't look at the label, it could easily pass for cream soda or ginger ale, a pleasing golden shade. When we opened the bottle, there wasn't a doubt it couldn't be any of those.

The smell from the bottle was actually pleasant, a gingery, cheery, baked-goods sort of scent. On smell alone, it wasn't shaping up to be too horrific.

As for the taste, it was actually rather pleasant. Something like a cross between ginger ale and cream soda, with a hint of baked goods that wasn't anywhere near as awful as the usual crust taste from Jones pastry flavors. While not on the level of the red licorice or mojito flavors Jones puts out for Halloween (which are bloody awesome, by the way), it was at least drinkable. In fact, it might be a good mixer for Southern Comfort.

The other yard apes' responses weren't as enthusiastic:

Nathan: "Smells like wassail."

Dylan: "If spiced tea were made into a soda, it would taste like this. Not bad, but not really good."

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