Because drinking shouldn't be confined to the weekends...

I had my first blueberry beer last year, from Sam Adams, and it was quite good. I thought the blueberry would be too sweet and overpowering, but it was actually a nice complement to the beer taste, and I'll have it again this summer. Having said that, I've never had blueberry mixed with vodka (I'm not a big vodka guy ever since an incident when I was a teen involving a pizza place and my pants, which I won't get into here), and blueberry syrup and vodka are the main ingredients in this drink, the Superhero.

Del Monte's brand new Fruit Chillers line is sure to be a hit with both kids (and adults) this summer, even though it is a little on the cold side right now in most parts of the country. The Chillers are individual sorbet cups, but there are a couple of things that set them apart from the average individually portioned kids dessert. The first, and most important, thing is that they are made with real fruit purees, rather than concentrated juices that have artificial colorings and flavors added to them. In fact, there are no artificial flavors in them at all and they contain 100% of the recommended daily value of vitamin C (150% in the mango flavor) and 3/4 serving of fruit, based on the nutrition pyramid. The other interesting thing about these is that they are not found in the frozen foods section of the grocery store. They are packed sealed and unfrozen, so you can simply pop them in the freezer before you are ready to eat them. The Chillers are fat free and contain about 190 calories per 4.5-ounce serving.

The Jones Soda Company has been tempting soda lovers for ten years with flavors from Root Beer and Strawberry to Fufu Berry and Blue Bubblegum. Their unusual - and unusually realistic - flavors have taken them from a small niche company, to a national brand, with lines of organic drinks, energy drinks, popsicles and candy in addition to their famous sodas.

To celebrate a decade of drinks, Jones has put together a new limited edition soda pack. Unlike the somewhat disturbing holiday pack, this one is a winner with all its flavors. It includes Blue Bubblegum and Green Apple sodas, as well as two of the original hits, Raspberry and Pineapple Upside Down sodas. The drinks come with a numbered, special-edition Hot Wheels "replica of the original black and silver-flamed Jones vans," which the company used for distribution in its early days.

There will probably be collectors out there who will not open the box to preserve it for posterity, but if you do get one, you really should taste the Pineapple Upside Down soda. It's light, tangy and delicious, so it's no wonder that fans have been asking for it to be reinstated for so long.

This pack won't be sold in stores, but is available for purchase online.

I know that it's been a while since our original post about its release, but I finally got to try a can of Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream. Actually, I have to admit that it was the diet version, and not the regular. No matter. The soda really exceeded my expectations. I thought that it would be overly sweet, perhaps a bit cough-syrupy, but the soda was perfectly sweetened and the berry flavor wasn't overwhelming. You can definitely tell that the flavor is raspberry, though, which was a nice change from all the vanilla/cherry vanilla/ black cherry vanilla sodas going around.

Overall? I thought it was great and I'm glad I opted for the 12-pack instead of a single bottle. It means that I don't have to go back out to the store so I can have another one.

The concept of "drinkable fruit" is one that I do not quite understand. I understand fruit juice, but Tropicana's new Fruitwise Drinkable Fruit beverages are just confusing. Tropicana makes good-quality products, so I don't doubt that these drinks taste good, but the marketing concept is weird.

The drinkable fruit line is neither a juice nor a smoothie, but somewhere in between. The products claim to deliver two full servings of fruit in their 8-ounce, 170-calorie containers, but the fruit inside isn't necessarily the flavor printed on the packaging. Take the Strawberry Kiwi flavor, for example. It lists it ingredients as "filtered water, apple puree concentrate, strawberry puree concentrate, white grape juice concentrate, apple juice concentrate, raspberry puree concentrate, kiwi juice concentrate and natural flavors." The ingredients are all natural and to increase the thickness it is not surprising that everything was from "concentrate" - but there are more flavors in the bottle than promised, and the kiwi flavor seems as though it was thrown in as an afterthought.

A serving of fruit juice is ordinarily 6-ounces and you could drink 12-ounces of fruit juice for the same number of calories contained n one of these drinks - so why bother with them? Have plain juice if you are looking to get more fruit into your diet or make a smoothie on your own instead of reaching for one of these.