“A new soda promising to sexually arouse the person drinking it will soon be available in stores nationwide, according to a Local 6 News report. The drink, called Turn On, is made with guarana, ginseng and caffeine. The soda was banned in France and Denmark, but makers insist it is safe and works as an aphrodisiac. People who have tested the soda said it tastes like cherry soda. ‘We watched a film and then afterwards I felt like my senses were more like turned on, like I could feel more, I felt more on my skin,’ a tester said. Doctors have already warned that the drink is not for everyone. Children, pregnant women and people with high blood pressure and diabetes should avoid the drink, according to the report. A warning label on the can claims, ‘This beverage will arouse you.’ Turn On is sold online for $3.50 a can and will soon be available in stores, the report said.” — Local6.com (US)

Here is a picture of a can of Turn On. It’s made of ginseng, caffeine, and a third substance likely to be less familiar to readers — guarana, a fruit commonly used in Brazilian sodas. Evidently guarana is an exotic but tasty treat in its own right. According to an entire site devoted to the fruit, it also contains guaranine, a chemical substance similar to caffeine. According to Wikipedia, guaranine is caffeine.

So basically this soda is fruit (ie sugar) and lots of caffeine — that will give you a rush of some sort, and frankly any rush can be mistaken for an aphrodisiac boost. Whether the soda is genuinely aphrodiac is doubtful but certainly it makes for a good selling point in a market already crowded by a thousand different varieties of soda. (Hell, here in New York you practically get paralyzed by the insane variety of soda and soda-like beverages to be found at any corner deli. More often than not you end up walking out with a bottle of water — not just to quench your thirst but to ameliorate the cognitive overload that comes with trying to parse the microscopic differences between competing brands of soft drink.)

Anyway, regardless of whether or not Turn On really turns you on, the underlying issue concerns the feasibility of selling an aphrodisiac in the soda department. Good idea? Bad? Neither? Why not? Who cares? If the number of lusted-up creeps featured on PervScan is any indication, about the last thing the market needs is any soda enhancing desire. Probably they should sell the opposite, some sort of libidinal downer, Saltpeter Coke.

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