Orbitz Drink: A Lava Lamp You Could Drink, and It Tasted Exactly As Good As That Sounds
A fruit beverage with mysterious floating gel balls suspended inside it, because someone looked at a lava lamp and thought 'I want that in my mouth'
In 1997, a Canadian beverage company called Clearly Canadian decided that drinks were boring. Specifically, they decided that drinks lacked sufficient visual chaos. Water was clear. Juice was opaque. Soda was carbonated. All of these beverages committed the sin of being beverages — liquids that you drink, that contain flavor, and that do not have mysterious spheres floating inside them.
Orbitz fixed this by adding mysterious spheres.
Orbitz was a fruit-flavored, non-carbonated drink with small, colored gel balls suspended throughout the liquid. The balls floated — motionless, evenly distributed, staring at you through the bottle like the eyes of a beverage that had achieved sentience and regretted it. You'd pick up the bottle, the balls wouldn't move, you'd shake the bottle, the balls still wouldn't move, because the liquid was formulated to match the density of the gel balls, creating a suspension that was technically impressive and visually haunting.
The drink looked like a specimen jar from a biology class. It looked like what would happen if a mad scientist tried to create a potion and gave up halfway through. It looked like the ocean if the ocean had measles. It looked like anything except something you'd voluntarily put in your mouth.
But you did put it in your mouth, because it was 1997 and you were in a gas station and the bottle was captivating in a deeply uncomfortable way, the same way people slow down to look at car accidents. You bought it. You twisted the cap. You took a sip. A gel ball entered your mouth. The gel ball had no flavor. It had the texture of a small, sad gummy bear that had lost its will. You chewed it. It dissolved into nothing. The liquid tasted like fruit-flavored water that someone had left on a counter for too long. The experience was: nothing. Visual spectacle, textural confusion, and the flavor of disappointment.
Orbitz was discontinued within a year. Unopened bottles are now collector's items, selling for $30-100 on eBay, which means Orbitz is worth more as a sealed artifact than it ever was as a beverage. The drink that nobody wanted to drink is now the drink that nobody wants to open. Its value is its virginity. The moment you open it, it's worthless — which was also true when it was a current product.
The Vision: What If Your Drink Had Things in It?
The Orbitz concept existed at the intersection of two 1990s trends: novelty beverages and visual marketing. The '90s were the decade that produced Squeezits (drinks in plastic tubes you squeezed), Kool-Aid Bursts (drinks in plastic barrels), and Surge (Mountain Dew but louder). Orbitz was the decade's most visually ambitious entry — a drink that didn't just taste different but LOOKED different, like nothing you'd ever seen on a shelf.
The gel balls were made from gellan gum — a food-grade gelling agent that could be formed into small spheres and suspended in a liquid of matching density. The technology was real. The execution was competent. The science of keeping balls floating in a bottle without sinking or rising was genuinely clever.
The problem was that nobody asked for balls in their drink. The visual innovation answered a question that no consumer had ever posed: "What if my beverage contained orbs?" Humans have been drinking liquids for the entire duration of human existence, and at no point has a significant portion of the population expressed a desire for their drink to contain floating spheres. Water is flat. Juice is smooth. Tea is serene. The introduction of balls to this ecosystem was unwelcome.
Boba tea, to be fair, would later prove that balls in drinks CAN work — but boba is chewy, flavorful, and fun to eat through a wide straw. Orbitz balls were flavorless, textureless, and delivered without a straw wide enough to accommodate them. Boba is dessert. Orbitz was an accident you drank.
The Glorious User Experience
Ryan from New Jersey, 1997 — ★☆☆☆☆
"I bought Orbitz because the bottle was the most visually disturbing thing I'd ever seen in a gas station that wasn't in the bathroom. The balls floated. They didn't move. I shook the bottle. They still didn't move. They maintained their positions with the calm defiance of objects that had decided where they wanted to be and were not negotiating. I drank it. A ball entered my mouth. The ball tasted like the color beige. The liquid tasted like a rumor of fruit. One star."
Kaitlyn from Toronto, 1997 — ★☆☆☆☆
“All of these beverages committed the sin of being beverages — liquids that you drink, that contain flavor, and that do not have mysterious spheres floating inside them”
Click to Tweet"The texture of the gel ball is the texture of an apology. Soft. Yielding. Vaguely uncomfortable. You bite into it and it offers no resistance, just a quiet dissolution that makes you question why you're chewing something that doesn't want to be chewed. The ball doesn't fight. The ball surrenders. The ball dies in your mouth with the dignity of something that never wanted to exist. One star."
Marcus from Chicago, 1997 — ★☆☆☆☆
"My friend and I bought three flavors of Orbitz. We lined them up on a table. They looked like potions from a Harry Potter book that hadn't been written yet. We photographed them. We did not photograph ourselves drinking them, because the act of drinking Orbitz — tilting a bottle while gel balls slide toward your mouth like colorful tadpoles swimming upstream — is not a flattering visual. One star for the drink. Five stars for the photo op."
eBay Seller, 2024 — ★★★★★
"Sealed Orbitz bottles go for $50-100. I have twelve. I am sitting on a retirement fund of beverages nobody wanted to drink in 1997 and nobody wants to open in 2024. The product's value proposition has fully inverted: it was worthless as a drink and it's valuable as a sealed artifact. Orbitz is the only consumer product whose ideal state is 'never consumed.' Five stars for the investment. Zero stars for the beverage."
The Truth: Visual Innovation, Flavor Desolation
Orbitz's failure illustrates a principle that the food industry periodically forgets: food and drink are experienced primarily through taste, not sight. A beverage can be visually stunning and still fail if the taste doesn't justify the visual promise. Orbitz promised a spectacular experience — the floating balls suggested something magical, futuristic, and exciting. The actual experience was: mild fruit water with flavorless gel lumps.
The suspension technology that kept the balls floating was gellan gum manipulation — a genuine food science achievement. The formulation maintained a stable suspension without refrigeration, without settling, and without the balls dissolving into the liquid. This is impressive. It is also the most overengineered solution to a non-problem since the Juicero.
Orbitz failed because the visual gimmick was the entire product. Once you'd seen the balls, shaken the bottle, and confirmed they don't move, the spectacle was over. What remained was a mediocre fruit drink with lumps in it. The novelty lasted one purchase. The taste didn't justify a second.
The Verdict
Orbitz is a drink that looked like a science experiment, tasted like fruit water's less ambitious cousin, and contained floating gel balls that contributed nothing to the experience except the sensation of chewing something that didn't want to be chewed.
It is now a collector's item — more valuable sealed than open, more cherished unsipped than consumed. A beverage whose highest purpose is to never be drunk. The ultimate indictment: the drink is worth more as a decoration than as a drink.
If you want balls in your drink, get boba. If you want fruit-flavored water, get fruit-flavored water. If you want a lava lamp, buy a lava lamp. Don't combine them. The combination didn't work. The gel balls said so by tasting like nothing.
We rate it 1 out of 5 normal beverages.
If you want a drink without existential orbs, see our alternatives below.
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✅What to Buy Instead
Boba Tea
If you want balls in your drink, bubble tea is a billion-dollar global industry that figured out the formula: make the balls chewy, flavorful, and worth chewing. Orbitz couldn't. Boba did.
Poppi Prebiotic Soda
Modern fun soda with health benefits and no floating spheres. Visually appealing without being visually alarming.
Any Normal Beverage
Drinks without floating objects have a significantly better historical track record than drinks with floating objects. This is established science.
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