Just last month, the Internet decided we’d hit “peak LaCroix."
The alleged watershed moment had to do with a cake decorated like a 12-pack of lime-flavored LaCroix, spotted at the newly opened Whole Foods in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The cake even came with little LaCroix sidekick cupcakes. It seemed LaCroix memes could go no further.
Turns out they can, and this LaCroix flavor-generator is proof. It's from Nelson Cash, the same creative studio that recently released the Stranger Things type-generator. The online fanfare over Make It Stranger gave the Chicago designers and lovers of LaCroix the idea to build another interactive web toy. The result is MyLaCroix.com, a meme-generator that looks like somebody built it with GeoCities. “I think a lot of people—and millennials my age—like LaCroix because it has that ‘90s jazz vibe," says Mike McMillan, the designer at Nelson Cage who led the LaCroix project. "We thought, okay, we should design it like Windows 95. It's an homage to the past."
To create your bespoke LaCroix flavor, you first need to name it. You can play it safe with something mildly exotic yet cheeky, like "cilantro," or "imitation crab," or you can show everyone how topical you are, with "Uber"-flavored LaCroix. Or you can go really meta.
The most convincing cans feature a considered color scheme, but finding one that works is no small task. LaCroix's cans bear splashy combinations of six hues, and the flavor-generator web toy gives you two gradients for selecting each one, which adds up to a lot of potential combinations. Getting them right is important—like McMillan says, the frothy scrawls on the outside of the can are integral to the LaCroix experience. That's where the fizz hits you first.