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Bric-a-Brac: S is for...

Soda Stream

That is, as the old lady said in an amusingly inappropriate American shriek, 'fizzy'.’Wow! You’ve got a Soda Stream?!’ Surely there was nothing quite like the do-it-yourself fizzy drink-maker (or ‘dispenser’ as they called it) to secure instant kudos with all your mates, and make school lunch-breaks round your house a dead cert.
Everything about the device screamed fun, from the distinctive whirly bottles, those cylinders of gas which were handled by dad with almost undue reverence, as he’d heard down the pub someone once dropped one and blew the roof of his house away, via the extraordinarily gloopy syrup (mmmm, Tizer!), to the fart sounds that emitted from the device when your drink was maxed-out with fizz – who would have thought carbonated water could be such fun? First launched in 1903, the shaker-maker hit critical mass in the 1970s when that ‘get busy’ advertising campaign did the rounds, cajoling people – big or small – to ‘create a fizzy flavour with water from the tap’. Soon own-brand coke, fizzy lime and non-copyright-baiting ‘iron brew’ flowed in abundance, demanding to be supped through one of those hilarious curly drinking-straws. Still in production today, for some reason Soda Stream no longer seems to be quite the party-starter. Who’s to say a later Tony Slattery-helmed advertising campaign wasn’t wholly responsible?

15 Comments

15 Comments

  1. Matthew Rudd

    January 20, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    “Don’t deny it on a diet; try with One Caloreeee!”

  2. johnnyboy

    January 20, 2010 at 11:54 pm

    My mother buys non-copyright baiting ‘Iron Brew’ fizzy drink for us when we visit; I think it costs 40p a litre, and they’re off to Melbourne in a weeks time for holidays!

    Cheapskates.

    I did have Soda Stream, it came with 3 differing sized bottles, a 1/4L, a 1/2L and a 1L but I never found the fizziness of it much above a teaspoon of Creamola Foam to be honest. Ah, Creamola! Where are thee now…sigh.

  3. Adrian

    January 21, 2010 at 8:50 am

    You’re right it’s still sold, I’ve just looked it up on the Argos website! I can’t believe it still sells, when supermarket own brand fizzy drinks sell for about 50p for 1.5 litres..

  4. Glam_racket

    January 22, 2010 at 8:07 am

    I wonder what carbonated milk tastes like?

  5. Paul Gatenby

    January 22, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    Carbonated milk was the death of our sodastream – there was excessive blowback and a generally rank smell of cheese in that corner of the kitchen for a few weeks. It didn’t taste great either.

  6. televisualcabbage

    January 22, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    Mmm, the fresh taste of fizzy water with some sort of sugary flavouring in it. I can remember the syrups for the stream, being sold in my local Iceland store upto about ten years ago.

    How to make a party go with a swing? Just fill the thing upto the top and pump as hard as you can… When it explodes with cola goodness, then you’ve gone too far!

    Took about three hours to clear the mess up!

  7. stellarossa

    January 27, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    The caps always wore out first.

    My dad never allowed us to get anything other than the cola, lemonade or iron brew.

  8. Lee James Turnock

    July 20, 2010 at 3:42 pm

    The Cola was just about passable whereas the shandy was the Devil’s own work.

  9. Richard Davies

    August 10, 2010 at 8:27 pm

    Ours might still be somewhere in my parent’s garage, uness it was chucked out sometime.

    We used to get a wide range of flavourings, my favourite was ginger ale.

    I once tried mixing all the ones together, it didn’t taste that nice.

    Adam & Joe tried fizzing up milk in The 1980’s House skit.

    My parents eventually decided that buying bottled fizzy drink were less hastle.

  10. johnnyboy

    July 3, 2011 at 10:38 pm

    To my surprise, ‘Sodastream’ (all one word) is back! I saw an advertisment for it last night on Dave and then some web surfing turned up my local supplier (won’t mention the name as they’re too well known). After some money changing (not a lot) I now have one which is SO much better than the one I remember from the mid-eighties. It really does fizz!! Fizzy water is all I need it for so am glad it had made a comeback. Bloke at the store said they’d been selliing very well: I had the second-last one in shop.
    Now, all we need is a Wimpy to open up and I’m sorted.

  11. Chris Jones

    July 4, 2011 at 6:27 pm

    *Sigh*….The ‘Kenwood Cascade’ was as close as we got.

    Thanks dad.

  12. Dave Nightingale

    July 4, 2011 at 8:52 pm

    Remember the add with Ringo from “Never The Twain” in them?

    “THAT’S FIZZZZZYYYYYYY!!!”

    Speaking of which.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFeV0CbvHG8

  13. Richard16378

    July 4, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    I remember the Kenwood Cascade ads with a cartoon dinosaur/dragon dancing round in a cloud of bubbles.

  14. Sue

    August 7, 2014 at 7:03 pm

    I remember a brand of syrups for the sodastream that was sold in Asda, and called something like Brewmaster or Brewmaker. They did a bright blue one called Intergalactic Space Juice, and it tasted like Vimto.

    I remember the Kenwood Cascade bubble dragon adverts too: the dragon sang a mad song that went “I’m a little dragon and I make bubbles!”

  15. Richard Davies

    August 8, 2014 at 6:31 pm

    I remember my Dad used to pick up Brewmaster Ginger Beer on his way home as he worked near a shop that sold it when most other places had stopped selling it.

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