Orange You Glad?

I was royally duped at the grocery store the other morning.  I went there in search of orange Hi-C.  The McDonalds up the street carries orange Lava Burst Hi-C, which tastes almost like the old school orange Hi-C.  So when I saw the small drink box version of Lava Burst, I bought a package.  I couldn't wait to get to work to open a box.  Imagine my surprise when I poured the drink into my glass and saw that it was clear; it wasn't the deep orange color like the Lava Burst at McD's.  Surprise turned to disgust when I took a sip and discovered that it tasted nothing like how I thought it should taste.  After discussing this with some co-workers, I figured out why orange Hi-C doesn't taste as good as it used to: they don't package it in the metal cans any more. 

The first time I remember having orange Hi-C was in kindergarten.  For those of you doing the math, I'll save you the effort and say the year was 1968.  We would get either orange or grape Hi-C for our snack.  I guess we were easily amused, because we were fascinated when the teacher, Mrs. Johnston, would get the small metal can opener out of her desk and poke the 2 small triangular holes in the top of the can. 

Someone had a plastic bottle of orange Hi-C here at work in the refrigerator, and they were kind enough to let me have a glass so I could conduct a taste test.  It was just as I suspected - it still didn't taste like the old school version from the metal can.  But at least the bottled version was orange-colored.  I still say that the metal can had something to do with the awesome taste.  Maybe our resident scientist GoalieGirl can explain this for us.