There was an interesting article in Business 2.0 about "alcopops," the sweet beer alternatives that have been all the rage the last couple of years, but failed to deliver. The summary is that everyone and their brother released one of these things, they didn't differentiate from each other, and frankly, few were any good.

That made me think about Zima, which came out a full ten years before most of them, and sold pretty well at the time. Heck, I remember in 1994 they had a Web URL on the back of the label, one of the first commercial Web sites. Clearly at the time, they knew how to get to their audience. Zima was good for me my junior year of college because I could cart it around in the dorm, as an RA, because I could pass it off as Sprite.

"Girl beer," as I like to call it, is generally pretty lame, and as the B2 article explained, none of it was very good. Interestingly enough though, Zima has re-branded itself with a couple of variations. Zima XXX is stronger (5.9% alcohol) and comes in lemon-like, black cherry and orange.

Even though most other alcopops I tried sucked, I thought I'd give it a try, the black cherry. Well fuck me, it's pretty good, and you can't taste the alcohol. I'm generally anti-girl beer, but this shit's pretty good. Who knew?

It remains to be seen if they can stand out and send a clear marketing message, but the product ain't bad.