With the Wicked movie adaptation coming out, a lot of new merchandising has been coming out. Starbucks decided to hop on the trend and created two new drinks: Elphaba’s Cold Brew and Glinda’s Pink Potion.
Glinda’s pink potion is supposed to be a mango and strawberry flavored with chunks of freeze-dried dragon fruit. I couldn’t taste the mango at all, in fact all of it tasted of strawberry. The drink had a faint taste of strawberry. However, the foam tasted like a mouthful of strawberries, but it did have a slight bitterness to it which I thought was strange. The worst part about the drink by far was the freeze-dried dragon fruit chunks. Each one varied in crunchiness, some were crunchy through and through. However, most had a thin hard shell and were mushy on the inside. I personally did not enjoy wondering if what I just put in my mouth was an ice cube or soft piece of dragon fruit in disguise. I was hopeful for this drink, I got really excited for the mango-strawberry mixture, but I was completely disappointed. I had high hopes for dragon fruit too, but then my disappointment just reached new levels.
Just looking at Elphaba’s cold brew I already felt let down. The picture that was taken on the Starbucks website didn’t match what I got. I was excited to see the colors of coffee and mocha mixing, but I just got a completely green drink. The green color look extremely unappetizing, it reminded me of sewage water a little. Despite that, the flavor was good. The coffee part of it was definitely bitter, and I was expecting it to be overly sweet, so that was a nice surprise. The peppermint was okay, I liked it at first, I thought it complimented the taste of the drink, but then it created this freshly brushed teeth aftertaste. About halfway through the drink, it made me feel like toothpaste had gone down my throat. I don’t like peppermint flavored foods because the scent of peppermint tends to linger and with this drink it definitely did.
Overall, I would never get either of these ever again, I don’t think that they were for me. The drinks tasted like they had to be put out as fast as possible so there wasn’t much time to make each unique and delicious.
If more time was put into them, I think it would have been a great product but unfortunately it wasn’t. The drinks are only on the Starbucks website, it’s not on their physical menu, which I feel like that says that even Starbucks isn’t proud of their concoction. It’s not worth buying and Starbucks probably knows that.
