Japan Food: Spiral Grape (life needs spice)

The new soft drink from Asahi is a grape/cola beverage with a touch of spice called "Spiral Grape". 

It's slogan is "LIFE needs SPICE" as it states on the bottle... and I have no idea how a grape drink would ever be the spice I need in life. And as a matter of fact, I don't want a bottle giving me a life lesson unless a genie came out of it granting me three wishes...

I only decided to buy one after watching the crazy commercial on TV which featured a cartoon Gothic bear screaming to be proactive (no joke). I also found out when researching that the voice of the bear was actually voiced by actor Yo Oizumi (who also voices Professor Layton in the Japanese version).

The look... It's not a very interesting bottle. I guess it's going for an "adult" look... or trying to tap into the Japanese gothic/emo crowd. A little ironic that the dull bottle has the slogan "Life needs Spice" written on it. And it doesn't even have the purple bear from the commercial.
The drink itself doesn't look that much better. It's a very dark purple.

The taste... take the worst parts of Dr. Pepper, licorice, grapes, coke and you'll get this drink. Despite advertised as a grape drink, I felt like I was drinking a soda version of cough syrup... And not the really sweet strawberry kind. That awful tasting one that would make you cry as your mum scoffed it down your throat.

So overall for 100 yen you have a large variety of drinks in Japan that don't taste like medicine. Just stick with a coke.