Spykes

The New York Times: This past January, Anheuser-Busch rolled out a new product called Spykes. It comes in two-ounce bottles, in flavors like Spicy Lime and Hot Melons. The label says it’s a “premium malt beverage,” containing caffeine and ginseng; it’s meant to be drunk straight, or used as a mixer with beer, or as an ingredient in some new cocktail of your invention. It’s “whatever you want it to be,” the new brand’s Web site says. Spkyes, in other words, is a hodgepodge of every recent trend or fad that has caught the attention of alcohol consumers in the past five years.
Like all big beverage companies (alcohol or otherwise), Anheuser-Busch has been on a novelty binge lately, trying to come up with new products to break through to fickle consumers or to capture tiny niches. It has marketed wheat beers, a gluten-free beer for people suffering from Celiac Disease and another specifically for Coloradoans. “The days of only drinking one beverage throughout your whole drinking life — it’s not there like it used to be,” explains Pat McGauley, the company’s vice president of innovations.
Spykes [The New York Times]