The blizzard that dropped a few feet of snow in the Northeast of the US in February was a welcome opportunity to catch up on weeks of emails. Making my way through the doom and gloom of industry newsletters, which has been a running theme of this column (tariffs! Whisky gluts! Distillery shutdowns! The quickening clip of non-alc’s takeover!), a headline in Beverage Industry caught my attention: “Bubly celebrates ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ upcoming release: Sparkling water brand releases limited-edition flavours, packs.”
I had one thought: why? As anyone who’s been riding the so-hip-it-hurts LaCroix soda-water train knows, bubly (their lowercase, presumably to imply it’s demure and polite), is a calorie-free carbonated water in electric-coloured cans that look like they were yanked out of a suburban New Jersey mall.
The core line of bubly is extensive and the Super Mario movie brings new flavours: Meteor Melon, “an other-worldly watermelon lime”, per the press release; Cosmic Swirl, “a galactic mix of vanilla and berry”; and Dragonfruit Stardust, “an enchanted mix of pineapple dragonfruit”. Cans are adorned with Mario characters and change colours with temperature.
Certainly, as any collector knows, limited releases and collector’s editions of familiar products are interesting enough. Where the spirits industry is concerned, it’s hard not to be at least a little intrigued by a rarefied, one-superlative-or-another expression of a beloved whisky, especially one with a historic and/or romanticised backstory. And especially when it’s in a never-before-seen bottle or designer vessel. “I’ll save it for a special occasion,” people will tell you, or “I’ll squirrel it away and sell it at a profit in a few years” they’ll think to themselves. But I’m talking about career collectors. Will flavours purportedly linked to an animated movie dreamed up by beverage execs and sensory-lab scientists really stir excitement? And is a movie about video game characters, iconic as they may be, enough to warrant this sort of thing? (It’s worth noting that bubly was bought by PepsiCo in 2018.) What does Super Mario have to do with flavoured soda, anyway?
Well, what does any pop culture character or person or piece of intellectual property (if you can forgive my reducing a beloved cartoon to something so crass and clinical) have to do with anything except providing executives a chance to spew superlative soundbites? At least The Super Mario Galaxy Movie fizzy waters offers some actual opportunity for engagement, so it’s not just a ploy to make your recycling bin more colourful: collect cans and scan them for points, which can get you a ticket for a screening at a movie theatre. And there you have it, folks: incentivised consumption targeted at kids and teens. It’s the oldest cheap trick in the capitalist’s handbook. It’s also brilliant and pretty failproof.
Pop-culture-led merchandising is, of course, nothing new. The major-brand tie-ins to the 2023 Barbie movie and, more recently, the Wicked film adaptation in 2024, not to mention every movie in the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises, were legion. (To clarify: this isn’t about apparel and toys and thematic sweets sold at a Disney store. I’m referring to, for instance, Donald Duck-shaped Cheetos, which someone had to have dreamed up at some point, only to have it vetoed by a superior, mercifully.) And yet, there’s something about the Glinda Pink Potion at Starbucks, made with Mango Dragonfruit Starbucks Refreshers and “hand-shaken” with coconut milk, ice and a scoop of real, freeze-dried dragonfruit. It’s topped with silken nondairy strawberry cold foam and finished with candy sprinkles. Whew.
I could continue this grousing with a kvetch or two about movie or event-themed cocktail lists, but I tend to see those more as puzzles that bartenders play to transform to give ideas, themes, and characters liquid form, which is fun. And come to think of it, if you play a lot of Super Mario video games, a can — or five — of Meteor Melon sparkling water must be pretty fun, too. So why not stock up, and you can get yourself a ticket to the film!
