Orbitz (Drink)

Orbitz was introduced in 1996 by the Clearly Food and Beverage Company — the Canadian outfit behind Clearly Canadian — and it was unlike anything else in the cooler. Tiny colored gel spheres floated motionless in a transparent, lightly fruit-flavored liquid, held perfectly in place by a suspension of gellan gum. People called it a 'potable lava lamp,' and it came in wild flavor combinations like Pineapple Banana Cherry Coconut and Blueberry Melon Strawberry.

The look was the whole appeal — and also the problem. The taste was widely considered underwhelming, and a drink you bought to stare at rather than to enjoy had a short shelf life as a novelty. Orbitz was gone by early 1999, only two or three years after launch. The company's stated reason was that the specialized equipment needed to make it broke down and the trademark was no longer held, though most people remember it simply as the weird drink nobody actually finished.

That brief, strange life is exactly why it's remembered. Unopened bottles now change hands for $30 to $50 among collectors, and Orbitz reliably tops every list of the weirdest discontinued sodas — a perfect little monument to the 'extreme,' experiment-happy beverage aisle of the late '90s.