The Freestyle® is just a fancy, shiny fountain pop machine with a touch screen, albeit one that produces enough flavors to cause Michelle Obama to weep. The PR people remind you at every opportunity that the Freestyle® was designed by "the people behind Ferrari." It looks much like a regular Coke vending machine, but with a glowing cyclopean eye and a toothless mouth frozen in the middle of a horrible, silent scream...A PR person tells me that the kids are already posting "viral Freestyle® recipes on Facebook" and that a favorite is the "Gummi Bear," which is all six flavors of Sprite (original, cherry, grape, peach, raspberry, and strawberry) mixed together. For my first drink, I opt for what the alleged Facebook kids are allegedly calling a Creamsicle—a half-and-half mixture of orange and vanilla Diet Coke. It does, in fact, taste like a Diet Coke with orange and vanilla syrup added in equal parts, sweet and vaguely citrusy, but mostly sweet.
Go make yourself sick, Capitol Hill! And be sure to record videos of it, and then post those videos on Facebook, so they'll go viral. Freestyle!
* Or, as I imagine Seattle Metropolitan would put it: "Trés Adorbs!"
