Better Know Your Arnie: Regular Arnie

BKYA is a feature on this dumb blog wherein Jeff writes too much about a variety of his favorite beverage, Arnold Palmer Iced Tea Lemonade.


I really should have done this review first, as the other BKYA reviews don't make sense without this one. Also, Regular Arnie, or just Arnie, is the original so it should have gone first. Let's start by taking a look at it in it's most common variety, the Can:

I looked for the oldest photo in my phone of an Arnie, that photo above I took over 3 years ago. That's how long I've been taking photos of beverages for no reason. The best thing about the Can is it says it's price, $0.99, on the can. So places that sell it can't mark it up. The Can is 24 ounces, so only $0.99 is a great deal, especially compared to a Snapple which is usually around $1.80.

The other size varieties you should know about are what I call Giant Arnie and Re-closable Arnie. Here they are:

Giant Arnie is one gallon, and it usually costs around $3. Now that's cheap. Re-closable Arnie is twenty ounces and it again has the price on it, this time $1. Yeah, Re-closable Arnie is four ounces less than the Can, but costs one cent more. The added cost and loss of four ounces gets you a re-closable cap. So once opened you can transport the delicious beverage easier. 

I could go on for a long time about Arnies, but I'll just list a few reasons why it is the best beverage, then I'll answer some imaginary questions at the end. Anyway, why Arnie is the best beverage in the world:

• Taste. I think it is delicious. Of course, this is subjective. But I've never seen anyone taste it and not say it is at least good. Even Heather grudgingly admits it tastes good. 
• Cost. We already went over this. It's really cheap.
• Availability. AriZona is sold just about anywhere that sells beverages, Arnie is now their flagship beverage. So if I feel like an Arnie, within five minutes I can usually get one anywhere.
• Health. Listen, I'm not trying to pretend this is good for you at all, though it is 5% juice. But because half of the beverage is unsweetened iced tea, it has less than half the calories of most non-diet beverages. Other companies besides AriZona are (now) selling their version of Arnie, usually called a half and half. Even those drinks have more calories than an Arnie. 
• The Man. The Man is Arnold Palmer. If you're going to name a beverage after someone, you could do a lot worse than Arnold Palmer. Some quick facts about the Man: He is one of the five best golfers of all time. He has been an avid pilot for over 50 years. He is basically responsible for Rolling Rock being a popular beer (he was born in Latrobe). His nickname is the King (he is 55 years older than Lebron James). But this last fact I need to put in all caps, sorry. HE INVENTED COMBINING ICED TEA AND LEMONADE!

• Variety. I guess the whole point of why I write these stupid blogs about Arnies is because I am amazed at the number of different varieties of Arnie that AriZona makes. I've reviewed a bunch and I'm nowhere close to having done all of them. Here's the list ordered by my score:

Pommie Arnie - 93

Regular Arnie - 90

Asian Arnie - 81

Mango Non-Arnie - 77

Tropical Non-Arnie - 76

Peach Arnie - 74

Green Pow Arnie - 58

Redneck Arnie - 20

Skinny Arnie - 8

The Jack - N/A

OK, that's my review of Regular Arnie. I score it a 90 just so that there's room for a better tasting beverage.

Jeff's Score*: 90

Varieties: All
Availability: High
Stores: Basically anywhere that sells AriZona products, which is any store


*Jeff's Score is a weighted score where Regular Arnie is a 90, Redneck Arnie is a 20, the one Skinny Arnie I had that tasted like metal is a 0

Time for the imaginary questions:

Hey, Jeff, this sounds delicious, but what made you blog about this stuff?

Hi, thanks for the question, imaginary person. When I first tried Arnie, it was pretty rare. So I started looking for it at different beverage retailers and whenever I would find it I would remember said beverage retailer. Then a weird thing started to happen. I started to notice lots of people, mostly teenagers, walking around with Arnies. Then it started to appear in more stores. Then I began to think, "Hey Jeff, you should start a website showing where you can buy an Arnie and the different varieties and stuff." But that seemed like a lot of work. Then it started to appear everywhere, so that website would have been useless. Then I created this dumb blog and decided to review Arnies even though no one is interested, and here we are.

If you don't answer this next question correctly, I will kill your dog. Within 24 hours, when did you have your first Arnie?

Whoa, you got pretty hostile quickly. Luckily, Suzy is safe because I know it was April 8th, 2005 around 11am. I don't forget such memorable events. Actually I remember because I fittingly had my first Arnie in the state of Arizona. Heather went to Arizona for work, and I decided to tag along. On April 8th, 2005 she was busy working, so I decided to go golfing. I got paired up with two nice guys, we were having a good time golfing when the beverage cart pulled up. They both said "I'll have an Arnie". Not really knowing what that meant, I said "I'll have an Arnie too". Four holes later I bought another, and the rest is delicious beverage history. But the reason I remember the exact date is because two days later we were staying at a hotel on a fancy golf course. I was watching the Masters waiting for Heather to get ready so we could go play tennis. Then Tiger got in a bit of trouble. When Heather was ready we started walking to the tennis courts, when all of a sudden almost every bungalow nearby erupted in yelling and cheering. Because this just happened (skip to 1:25 for the actual shot):

So in order to save my dog, I looked up the date of that Masters. 

You said Arnie is one of the five best golfers of all time, can you name your top five for me, pretty please?

You just threatened my dog, now you say "pretty please?" That's weird. But here's my list:

1. Jack Nicklaus
2. Tiger Woods 
3. Arnold Palmer
4. Ben Hogan
5. Bobby Jones

I probably have Arnie a little bit higher than most, but HE INVENTED COMBINING ICED TEA AND LEMONADE! Also, I should point out so you don't get the wrong impression, but I really hope Tiger doesn't win more majors than Jack and stays in the number two position. Because of the whole crashing-his-car-because-his-wife-attacked-him-with-a-golf-club-because-he-was-having-sex-with-anything-that-moves thing.

How can you possibly justify writing this much about a beverage?

There's no good answer to this question, but just trust me, the beverage is quite tasty.