Beverage of the Week: Sunny D Vodka Seltzer is way better than ‘purple stuff’

Nostalgia meets booze trends to make a glorious, orange-y seltzer you can drink all day.

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. Especially for millennials currently caught up in any generational malaise.

That’s why we’ve seen a lot of the 1990s come back into focus lately. We brought back Dunkaroos. We adapted Legends of the Hidden Temple for adults (it went poorly). Now we’re doing the same for Sunny Delight.

“Sunny D,” as its known to friends, was and remains the nebulous sweet, slightly goopy orange drink that arrived in our childhood refrigerators in bottles shaped like whac-a-mole mallets. It was orange juice without pulp or bitterness and, somehow, less sugar than the actual thing. It was great and kinda awful and despite those fond(ish) memories I hadn’t had it in any form in roughly two decades.

Until this week, because Sunny D now comes in a boozed-up version. Behold, Sunny D Vodka Seltzer.