Point/Counterpoint: Are Flavored Vodkas American?

“It’s delicious!  *slap*  It’s disgusting!  *slap*  IT’S DELICIOUS AND DISGUSTING *sobs*”

~Faye Dunaway

The Americanness of most items is usually pretty straightforward and easy to discern.  Shotguns?  American.  Environmentalists?  Not American.  Hot Dogs?  American.  Tofu?  What the fuck do you think you’re even doing here?  Really, when it comes to American qualities, the AFFotD staff usually can agree on what works, and what doesn’t.

“We will run you the hell out of this town, you hear?”

This isn’t always the case, however.  Every so often, a topic will come up that will lead to intense debate among our staffers.  Is the proper term “pop” or “soda”?  What is the better movie series, Die Hard or Rocky?  How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?  All of these have been subject to virulent debate in the AFFotD offices.

We mention this because we ran across this article which described the creation of a brand of vodka that is flavored like cupcakes.  With that, two camps in the offices rapidly formed, one group who felt, “Holy shit that’s the best thing we’ve ever heard,” and another who believed, “You don’t fuck with liquor by adding weird flavors to it.  You just don’t.”

That is why we at AFFotD are pleased to bring you the first ever AFFotD American Point-Counterpoint, so each side can make an argument about the benefits, or evils, of flavored spirits.  We won’t name a winner, that’s for you, the reader, to decide.

POINT:  Alcohol Is Always Awesome, Making It Ridiculous Can Only Make It MORE Awesome.

Come on guys, when you hear “Cupcake flavored vodka” your first thought it, “That’s insane enough to be delicious” right?  Did you know that it comes in multiple cupcake flavors?  That’s right, there are four different types of cupcake flavored vodka you use in your war against your stomach lining.  Goddamn how is that not American?  Someone at this company actually sat down and said, “I like this product we’re making, but what if someone doesn’t just want cupcakes?  What if they want their vodka to be, say, Devil’s Food, or motherfucking FROSTING?  Who are we to deny the consumer that option?”  This is the best kind of American logic.  That would be like someone making a pizza flavored hamburger, but then deciding that they needed to have pepperoni, sausage, and supreme flavored pizza flavored hamburgers.

…Actually a pizza flavored hamburger also sounds amazing.

As a general rule, if you can add a dimension to something already unhealthy that, when described, will make you go, “haha, Jesus Christ,” that is something to embrace.  Bacon flavored vodka?  That sounds so delicious we’d brush our teeth with it.  Root Beer flavored vodka?  We don’t care if it doesn’t taste particularly good, we’re drinking that for every meal.  Cotton candy flavored vodka?  If your response was, “There’s no way something so terrifyingly delicious sounding exists” then feast your eye circles on this dose of knowledge.

“It tastes like the circus, only I’m being force-fed liquor, so actually it tastes more like that time when my dad was training to join the circus.”

Listen, you can’t spell “ingenuity” without “Gin” and we can’t spell “America” without three shots of whiskey and a spellchecker.  Adding ridiculous flavors to liquor just shows the world what we’re made of, and it’s hilariously awesome ideas.  This is America, dammit.  This is a nation that found a way to make a whipped cream that’s 15% alcohol.  And even THAT has different flavors available.

If America sees it fit to make watermelons alcoholic, why should we stop our entrepreneurs from finding other insane ways to combine alcohol with other awesome things?  There’s a reason why, statistically, America has the highest percentage of children in the world who, when confronted with a soda fountain, choose to make themselves Suicides by mixing all the flavors together.  We’re not going to let things like “taste buds” or “common sense”  get in the way of making questionable culinary decisions.  Just look at the Double Down.  Look at it.  LOOK AT IT.

OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!

Goddamn it, there’s even alcohol flavored foods.  So, we say, embrace absurd flavored vodkas.  It’s a true sign of American expressionism, and can lead to some creative ways to get smashed.  And if that isn’t American, pray tell, what is?

COUNTER-POINT:  Alcohol Is Awesome As It Is, Don’t Ruin Perfection

Now, picture this.  You have, on a plate in front of you, a beautiful, rare Filet Mignon.  You’ve managed to overlook the fact that the name is all French and shit, because this hunk of cow looks so tender you’re pretty sure you could cut it with your index finger.  You know that an animal much larger than you died so you can eat this delicious 10 ounce reminder of mankind’s supremacy, and you can’t wait to send this sucker hurtling through your digestive track.  And, right as you life the fork to your mouth to take that first, juicy bite…some asshole dowses the whole thing in lime juice and screams, “FILET MIGNON WITH LIME!  NOW THAT STEAK IS REFRESHING!  HERE WE GO!”  You’d be fucking livid, right?

“What, you mean like RUIN MY FUCKING STEAK?”

So if it’s not okay to mix flavors with certain deliciously American things, why on Earth is it alright to do the same with alcohol?  You say “cupcake flavored vodka sounds interesting” we say “cupcake flavored ANYTHING OTHER THAN CUPCAKES tastes awful, why would vodka be an exception to that?”

We can understand the benefit of novelty, but when has novelty ever improved the original product?  Jar Jar Binks was a novelty addition to the Star Wars saga, and all he did was prove to us how much we liked the original films (compared to the shitty new ones).  Tara Reid’s breast implants were novelty, and they reminded us that her brief window of sexual desirability had come and gone when they turned her into a freakish stretch mark monster.  Us making pop culture references that were very relevant in the early Aughties was very novel, until we ran the joke into the ground with the meta-fourth-wall-breaking-mess that is this sentence.  Seriously, would you rather have cotton candy flavored vodka, or would you rather take a shot, and then maybe eat some cotton candy later?

Or would you prefer to eat cotton candy while tripping on acid?

We hate being the voice of reason as much as anyone else.  But as much as we want to blindly get enthusiastic about something crazy being done with alcohol, we still have to pause and consider, how much do we like alcohol normally?  We have friends who blinded themselves by chugging rubbing alcohol, that’s how much we love booze.  We know people who have sacrificed for their love of alcohol, so we know alcohol is not something to take lightly.

Really, the argument comes down to, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Alcohol is the least broke thing we can think of, why must it be tinkered with in such absurd fashions.  So put away your root beer vodkas and pour yourself a stiff whiskey.  Like a goddamn American.