We’ll confess to a certain nostalgia, now that the general volume of topics of national or life-and-death importance has reached the level of “actual clusterfuck cacophony,” for the days of truly meaningless pop culture screaming. You know the stuff: A lot of it was centered on things like Adult Swim’s Rick And Morty, and more than a handful of it was about a man transforming himself into a brined cucumber with big ideas.
Which is probably why we find ourselves ruefully happy today to report on the existence of a drinkable Pickle Rick, or at least a Pickle Rick-branded pickle juice seltzer that you could, if so moved, drink. It’s just the latest promotional team-up for the beloved sci-fi comedy cartoon, which has previously attached itself to Kanye West, the McDonald’s corporation’s uber-shady and mysterious Sauce Labs, Pringles, Wendy’s, and, honestly, anything else the show can get some money out of with some quick animation and a burp-heavy Justin Roiland dialogue. Now they’ve teamed up—ahead of the upcoming virtual Adult Swim Festival—with seltzer company Miracle Seltzer, who’s already getting enough free advertising from this dumb idea, so we’re going to just skip over all the ways its unpleasant-sounding fizz-water purportedly performs miracles.
Because you’re not buying this shit for the flavor, are you? No, you’re buying it because it’s been, like, a year since anyone was able to yell “I’m Pickle Rick!” out into the ether, without worrying that said ether was full of tiny viruses that want to come right back and murder them. Brine-y seltzer can’t make you feel like a super-genius who manages to survive turning himself into a pickle, but it might turn you back, briefly, into someone who has the mental and spiritual energy to care about that shit for like half a minute. Hooray!