Juice Box Memories And Ina Makes It To Primetime

THE GOOD NEWS is that Tetra Pak is having a contest to celebrate the 30th birthday of their juice boxes. THE BAD NEWS is that I can actually remember when I saw Tetra Paks for the first time in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 1980's.

They had Tetra Pak milk, which never appealed to me, because it had a kind of preserved taste. But they also had the most amazing and delicious fruit juices in boxes. My favorite was plum, which was so sweet (yet tart) and brilliantly colored that I instantly fell in love with it.

I’ve never seen it since I left South Africa. It was nothing like prune juice, believe me. And that other stuff that we have here in glass bottles doesn’t compare to those liter-sized and individual packs of different fruit juices, sweetened only with apple and grape juices. Plus the packaging was beautiful. It was beauty shots of whatever fruit was inside the box. Simply stunning. For some reason, Looza doesn’t make plum juice and their “nectars" have sugar in them.

Sorry, one more great beverage memory – We also had Appletiser in South Africa, an amazingly refreshing carbonated apple drink, made only with apples, water and carbon dioxide. Of course, you could make your own by adding seltzer to apple juice, but it was NEVER as good. Using apple CIDER and seltzer improved the mix, but Appletiser was perfect just the way it was.

But I digress…To enter the Tetra Pak video contest, ALL ;-) you have to do is to make a video of you (or someone else) lip syncing the Juice Box Birthday Song, which you can find here with more details.

The grand prize is $2,500 and a year’s supply of juice boxes! (Sadly, South African Plum Juice juice boxes are probably not part of the prize.) You have until October 31st. I'm guessing if you have any adorable youngsters in your life, that might be a great way to go…or maybe a singing dog would make the cut.

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I can’t believe for the first time EVER I didn't tape 30 Rock last week. I have so many unwatched episodes on my Tivo that I thought I’d give it a rest. Thank goodness for Hulu and the Huffington Report, which first drew my attention to INA on the season opener!!!

Ina and Jeffrey together ARE iconic.