Tizer

Tizer (possibly short for "the appetiser") is a British carbonated soft drink. It's a sort of reddy-orange colour and has a sharp (not particularly fruity or sour) taste. In the 1980s it had an iconic packaging design - a red-tinted plastic bottle with a white label emblazoned with a red and orange version of the Pepsi 'yin-yang' mark, and the word 'Tizer' in navy text. Over the next twenty years it underwent increasingly edgy rebrandings, the most successful of which introduced the sublime Tizer Ice variety. More recently (as of 2007), Tizer has returned to a livery almost identical to it's traditional style, and has been reformulated to use fruit juice and no artificial ingredients (much to it's benefit).

In the 1980s there was a TV ad campaign for the drink starring (if I recall correctly) the Oblivion Boys (of Carling Black Label fame), in which they spoke a special Tizer language. This campaign spawned a humourous promotional flexidisc that was pressed on floppy orange seethru vinyl.

Also a rather hefty cocktail, the name of which may or may not have nothing to do with the soft drink, although the names are pronounced the same (t-eye-zer). I learnt the ingredients off of a friend who had one at a bar in England, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was invented there... Quite tasty, I wholeheartedly recommend it.


Right, in a pint glass take:

two shots (60ml) vodka

two shots bacardi

two shots tequila

two shots blackcurrant cordial

Add ice depending on taste and how long you think you'll take to drink it, and fill to the full pint with soda water.

In the bar this drink was two pounds thirty, which seems rather cheap - about the same as a pint of Guinness here.