Coca-Cola Freestyle

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Allow me to introduce you to the greatest invention of the 21st century, the final solution for soft beverage delivery, mankind's first serious step toward the STAR TREK REPLICATOR, and my new favorite thing ever.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the COCA-COLA FREESTYLE MACHINE:



"But Pinback, that looks dumb! It looks like a regular soft drink dispenser, except you just press which drink you want on a touchscreen instead of pressing different levers for different sodas!"

Ha. Haahaha. HAAA HAHA HAHAHAA! You poor dear, you naive thing, you child.

Go ahead. Fill your cup with ice from the handy dispenser. Then press the Coca-Cola icon of your choice.

Then watch as your life changes forever.

Because the Freestyle isn't done with you. Behind each of those icons is a sub-menu. NOW you fucked up. Now ya fucked up. Because now you get to choose from flavors incomprehensible and limitless!

Raspberry Diet Coke??!
Mello Yello Zero with GRAPE?!!?
PEACH FLAVORED SPRITE?!?!!?

Nothing makes sense anymore, and everything is wonderful. Wonderful, ice-cold bubbly waves of refreshment UNBEKNOWNST TO MAN!!!!!!!!!!

All from that one little tap. Just waiting for you.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE.

[Tdarcos]

The Five Guys hamburger joint at 8th & New York Ave in DC has one; they're absolutely amazing because you can essentially order a total of more than 200 combinations of drinks, essentially every major brand that Coke sells, plus additional flavors of vanilla, cherry and lime. So you can get Coke, Fanta, Pibb, Mello Yello, sprite, etc., regular or diet.

How do they pack that much flavors? The same way your inkjet printer provides so many colors: flavor cartridges, that are hit with carbonated water. Because it's dry cartridge flavors, the machine can hold a lot more flavoring than when they had to supply tanks of syrup concentrate.

Plus the machine phones home every night to the company, so they know exactly how much flavoring has been used and when to send someone by to reload.

They also have a low reach control for persons such as myself who are handicapped, although from my power wheelchair I can reach the regular controls. I suspect that it's really helpful for the thirsty six-year-old who can reach the handicapped control but can't reach the regular one. You can see the handicapped control on the picture above, it's the faint circle in the bottom right corner.

Modern Marvels on The History Channel did a whole segment about them. Some of the machine's functionality came out of medical devices, if you can believe it.