This Is Your Brain on a Lime ‘Rita Chiller — How BuzzBallz Won the Hearts, Minds, and Wallets of Americans, $3.50 at a Time — Good Beer Hunting

Unrated August 29, 2023 I was sitting in the back third of a Spirit Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, listening to the percussive opening and closing of a lavatory door. Instead of a seatback display, I leered into the pallid sheen of the plastic seat in front of me. I tapped my blank phone screen, begging the uncharged device to respond with something to distract. I felt the wrinkles on my brain beginning to dissipate, and that’s when I first laid eyes on the neon carapace of a BuzzBallz Lime ‘Rita Chiller.It was three rows in front of me, fixed in the spindly fingers of a passenger whose face I never saw. I had to wonder if she was smiling. Spirit, in a bid to make their flights feel less like traveling in the luggage compartment of a Peter Pan bus, had just begun selling BuzzBallz as their in-flight beverage option. For $8, you could get one of the Carrollton, Texas, company’s ornament-shaped, vacuum-sealed, 15% ABV premixed cocktails delivered right to your seat. They...