totally addicted to caffeine and energy drinks. Packaging, buzz and nutrition reviews

Alert Energy Gum

2013-05-15T06:22:00.001-07:00

Whenever a big company decides they are finally jump on the caffeinated gum bandwagon everyone seems to make a big deal. Caffeinated gum is nothing new - Many big-name energy drink companies have had their hand in making a gum, from Rockstar to Amp to Go Fast. Many candy companies have also tried their hand at coming up with caffeinated concoctions, like Hershey's Mints and caffeinated Tootsie Pops.

For some reason, however, when Wrigleys announced they were coming out with Alert Energy Gum, their first caffeinated gum, it caused quite a media stir - enough so that they pulled the gum from the market completely - fortunately not before I could get my hands on a number of packs. According to the officals at Mars, a spokesman replied that "After discussions with the FDA, we have a greater appreciation for its concern about the proliferation of caffeine in the nation's food supply". basically, rather than fight for a mediocre product, it is easier from a PR perspective to just pull the product line.

The thing is, in terms of caffeine gum, it is really not the best out there. It is not even one of the good ones. It is not bad, but barely passable as an energy boost. To get the same boost as a standard energy drink such as monster or rockstar you would need to eat at least four pieces of gum in a row - which would have you chewing for a good long time.

Packaging:7
I like that Alert tried something new with their design, slipping their little blister packs into a plastic sleeve, but it just does not work in theory. One small squeeze and the plastic tube pops their foil strand of gum packets right out, and getting them back in and keeping their shape is a tall order. It is easier to just take off the sleeve, throw it away, then stick the foil pack some place where it will not get crushed.

The foil pack is about what you would get from any caffeinated gum blister pack - a little chicklet in a little foil pouch. The shape is a little different and the design is cool and spacey, but the concept is still the same. I like the packaging, and they went a little overboard to be sure people GOT IT that it has caffeine - listing the caffeine content in three places. They even managed to put on there a big "not for kids" warning and a little litter dude. For being a small play on a standard package the design really has some merit.

Taste:5
Both their flavors are about the same - a little minty chicklet that is bitter on first chew but then mellows out once you chew all the caffeine out of it. The flavor lasts about 30 seconds before fading, leaing you with a slightly minty slightly sweet flavor in your mouth for the next 2 or 3 minutes. Either way, this is no Go Fast gum - with a flavor that lasts for a long while. It would be easy chewing 2 or 3 of them within 10 minutes. If you ever had a caffeinated gum - this tastes just like all the rest; sweet shell, bitter caffeine, sweet gum that burns itself out in no time. I was hoping that because this came from a gum manufacturer they might know more about what they were doing, but its about as plain as you can get.

Buzz: 4
The buzz was about what you would expect from a quick shot of 40 mg of caffeine- in other words not much. Like most gum, it absorbed both in the saliva like anything you would drink, as well as a little bit directly from your bloodstream and under your tongue. The thing to remember is this - 40mg is just a little more than you would find in a can of Diet Coke - not really a whole lot to get concerned about. They cited kids and caffeine as the reason they pulled this from the market - but how many kids drink Super Big Gulps of Mountain Dew, which is loaded with way more caffeine than you could hope to find in some boring mint flavored gum.

In terms of health, forget about it. I don't think there is one ingredient in here which did not get made in a lab or processed to the point where it might as well have been. The ingredients list is almost all completely unpronounceable, including a bunch of different fake sugars and chemicals and preservatives to help keep it all jelled together.

I am bummed that a product got pulled from the shelves because of ignorance on the part of the consumer, but as for seeing this Alert Energy Gum go away, there really is no reason to mourn this ones sunset.

Runa Clean Energy

2013-05-13T21:43:00.001-07:00

Runa energy drink has done something I have not heard of in my near thousand energy drink sampling hobby - a brand new caffeinated substance - made from a completely different plant than Yerba Mate, Tea, Coffee or Guarana. Yes - an entirely new caffeinated plant - and one that can make a damn fine energy drink when mixed with the right combination of berries and sugars!

Runa is brewed with Amazonian guayusa tea ("gwhy-you-sa"). It turns out that guayusa has just about as much as caffeine as a cup of coffee. It has just a few ingredients, and a whole lot of natural happiness. Of course, there is a downside to the discovery of a new caffeinated product - just look at what happened to all those indigenous people who started producing guarana. In a short time it got so bad that the local population could not even afford to purchase any of what they were harvesting and exporting. Now, Guayusa is grown almost exclusively in the upper Amazonian region of Ecuador - and sustaining and growing the economy for the local folk there is one of their big selling points.

For me the biggest selling point is that it looks cool, tastes great, and is pretty powerful too.

Packaging:6
For a drink with so much originality, it is a real shame they did not really do something unique with the package. Instead, this is a bare aluminum, and not a terribly well printed one either. The original is on a bare aluminum can, with a little leaf pattern. Same is true with the berry, except there is a little dot matrixed gradient coming off the leaf pattern. Maybe this would be impressive if the printing quality was a bit higher, but the fuzziness of the text on the berry version and the and the plainness of the original can really fails to impress.

They did cover the basics well enough, listing the caffeine content in big bold letters, as well as the rest of the minimal ingredients list. They double faced the can and have the contact info, but the lid of the can was not really put on so it faces the consumer, the pull tab is colored, but not particularly cool or collectable, and the small can size is just not as popular as the larger sized drinks out there. Even other organic, natural and health based energy drinks like Steaz, Guayaki and Guru are going for the larger size cans. The market for natural energy drinks is definitely a big one - and coming out with a very plain small size can is not helping them any.

Taste: Original:2 Berry:9

Runa Original got a bunch of mixed feelings from the crowd at my house. My daughter's trumpet tutor thought it tasted JUST like the smell of old garbage bags packed with mildewed leaves. I thought it had the distinct flavor of that wet grass juice that comes dribbling off your lawnmower or weed whacker. Either way, We were not big fans - AT ALL. My wife liked it however - and said it reminded her of the tea she was told to drink lots of by the midwife when she was pregnant. It has that earthy chalky plant flavor that I only find delicious when served to me lightly flavored in big glasses with lemon and sugar - like green tea. But this is no green tea - it was something that tastes really not good - unless you happen to have fond memories of natural childbirth I guess.

Now that was not the case with their berry flavor - which it quite the bomb. For as bad as the original flavor was, I thought his would go from tasting like ass to berry flavored ass, but that was not even the case. Instead, Berry Runa tastes arrestingly good - something that is full flavored and earthy, but the sweet berry notes really calmed down that horrid chalky flavor to the point that this was a real pleasure to drink - and was dissapointed only in that it does not come ina bigger size so I could enjoy it more. While a regular Runa is about as appealing as a chewing on my yard shavings, the I would suck down two or three berry Runa in a sitting if I could.

Buzz:8
Runa is very cool for listing their full 120mg of caffeine right on the can, and you will feel it too. This just goes to prove that you don't need all that taurine, inositol, Vitamin B silliness to feel the energy - Runa is just 4 or 5 ingredients, and does the job quite nicely without adding all that stuff.

Runa is just carbonated water, guayusa, natural flavors, and citric acid. The original is sweetened with a natural sweeteners - and tastes a whole lot like fresh ground stevia - giving it a chalky plant flavor. The berry one has sugar in it - but just enough to make the drink super-tasty and not over-sweet. I love the fact that they left out all that craziness and just went for a simple blend in a simple drink. But besides all that it works like a charm too.

The caffeine in here is only 120mg, a little more than a small cup of coffee. No matter though, because you can consume all 120mg in about 10 seconds, and then the rush comes on it one nice powerful wave. The best way to drink Runa is to daisy chain two of them - slam one, and then in about 2 hours drink the other, and you can get a good 5-6 hour buzz of energy pumping through you, while not adding on the calories and preservatives.

I like Runa a whole lot - and the berry flavor gets very high marks for flavor too. I hope this will help people catch onto guayusa, and maybe make a nice little cottage industry, like how Guayaki has done with their Yerba Mate drinks.

Just stay away from the original flavor, unless you have font birthing memories that is...

Mountain Dew Kickstart Orange Citrus

2013-05-12T21:40:00.002-07:00

I like orange soda. I also like orange juice. But something is offensive when they try to mix together in an energy soda the juice and the soda - and it seems even worse that it is Mountain Dew who put this whole thing together. Mountain Dew knows better. Not only do they know how to make a super-caffeinated soda, but they are also the ones behind the also delicious Amp Energy Juice - a great combination of healthy and energetic. Kickstart can't make up its mind if it wants to be a juicy morning drink or a flat out soda, and ends up with basically an interesting marketing pitch around a slightly-higher-than-a-Mountain-Dew-caffeinated orange soda.

Thing is, there are plenty of orange energy sodas out there - and for that matter there are a bunch of energy juices out there too. In such a saturated market of both categories, I don't get why Mountain Dew thought adding one more is such a fantastic idea - and not even bring anything new to the table. Maybe they thought that by sticking their name on it people would be more tempted to buy it out of sheer brand loyalty. Sorry Pepsi - I LOVE my Diet Mountain Dew, but this one is bound for the dollar store shelves very soon.

Packaging:6
I am guessing they were trying to mix the extreme-ness of Mountain Dew with the clean qualities of a morning drink. I guess. Either way, it ends up being a very flat and uninspired design - just their name in a very cheese futuristic font that looks like they stole it off the internet. There is a good way to sell energy morning drink - look at what has been done with other great energy drink packages like Rumba.

They at least list the caffeine content - something that Pepsi products have gotten on the bandwagon doing and I certainly appreciate. Functionally the can works OK, listing website and all energy ingredients clearly. The can is double faced and easy to read, but the overall style leaves me unimpressed.

Taste:4
Most specialty Mountain Dew products like their Game Fuel and other unique flavors all have this little citrus special Mountain Dew favor which unites their drinks. I opened this with the hope that it would be an orange-y version of a regular Mountain Dew, or something more unique and special that just an orange soda. But no, it is just a plain regular orange soda. There is supposed to be 3% juice, but you would not know or care - it tastes about as juicy and orangey as an Orange Crush, only slightly more caffeinated.

What bums me out is that this really could have been special - something which would really bring something other than coffee to the breakfast table. Pepsi has the budget and the marketing to pull of something interesting, but all it takes is one taste to see why that is not going to happen with Kickstart. It is sweeter than your mouth can drink easily, overpoweringly fake and full of enough chemicals and preservatives to pre-embalm your living carcass.

Buzz:4
Breakfast now means for me something like fruit and protein, although in the past I would not have batted an eye at the idea of munching a couple cans of beer and a handful of jellybeans, so I guess this is just as bad. But, them calling this a breakfast drink is weird. Being an energy drink is weird too - it should be packed with sweet sweet caffeine, but that is even held way back in their formula, bringing a sub-par mix of extra sugar and not-enough caffeine to really give a good boost of energy. Truthfully, I am not sure how they could possibly call this anything but an orange soda, unless you are in the same crazy camp that thinks eating Nutella for breakfast is a good idea too.

In terms of healthy,forget it. There is a little bit of grape or orange juice - 5% along with all that high fructose corn syrup. Also lots of chemicals that are unpronouncable, such as sodium hexametaphosphate, gum arabic, potassium sorbate, asorbic acid, sodium citrate, acesulfame potassium, sucrose acetate isobutyrate, sucralose, glycerol ester of rosin, sodium benzoate, pyridoxine hydrochloride and tons of fake food dye - it's the breakfast of champions!

Team Realtree Orange Blaze energy drink

2013-04-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

I don't understand a whole lot of things about hunting. I don't mean I have a problem with it - although I do have a hard time thinking that hanging around i the mountains with your buddies getting plastered in a blind, occasionally popping over the edge to pop off some little furry thing is much of a sport. Really, anything that you can get drunk while performing is not a sport - like bowling or golf, no matter if ESPN carries it or not.

Now things are different if you take hunting seriously, like people who hunt with knives or bows or hunt dangerous animals. There is a real difference between those who go out on their fall weekends and bug their neighbors, drive their shiny truck into them thar' hills, take out all their expensive new gear, line up a critter in their crosshairs and celebrate and those who go out to the woods, track and hunt down an animal, kill it and then take it home to butcher. I don't see those kinds of people as the ones who would ever bother with buying Team Realtree's Orange Blaze energy drink.

Regardless of images, there are some good points to this drink. They are in cool resealable bottles, and this really does not taste bad - if you can get into carbonated sugary Tang. The buzz is decent, and they certainly do have appeal for Team Realtree's brand following.

Packaging:7
Maybe I am just offended that they called me a City Boy. I mean, I am a city boy, and the bottle clearly states "this is not for city boys", but I have spent enough time in the rural outposts of America to get offended by it too. I have had many family members hunt - and my favorite kind of meat is a fresh elk. That being said, orange and Camo DO NOT GO TOGETHER (unless you are trying to hide in a burning fire. This color is so bright and shiny I'll bet it glows at night. Its fine if you want to be sure everyone can see you drinking your energy drink, but then - why cover it is camo?

Other than that annoyance, the only other issue I have is that they don't list the caffeine content on the bottle. Is is a cool 16 oz. metal resealable bottle, and the overall effect could be nice - but it would be much better if it lost the tree camo and listed their contents.

Taste:8
Making an orange energy drink is about the easiest thing you can do. Fake orange flavor could be achieved by dumping just a little citrus flavor with a whole bunch of sugar and Voila! That is pretty much what is going on here - no nuance or subtlety, just a strong citrusy orange flavor like an Orange Crush or Sunkist. I know on their packaging they state that their "crisp orange flavor is paired with the perfect drinkability without being too surgary." I wonder what they mean by Not Too Sugary - when compared to a pixie stick maybe? Don't get me wrong - liked their orange flavor a whole lot, but it could take the place of syrup in a pinch too.

Buzz:6
I downed this all pretty quickly, mainly because the rink was cold and fizzy and sweet - and the largemouth bottle top made it very easy to guzzle. I have a nice little energy rush going on, but nothing too over the top. There was no listing of the caffeine, but I would be surprised if there was more than 180mg on the whole affair. TO help boost the energy, they add the usual Vitamin B overload and an undisclosed amount of taurine too.

Health-wise, this is about what you would expect from any soda - noting but calories and preservatives.It is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which is why is has that strong syrupy mouthfeel. There are all the preservatives and artiicial flavors and colors to give your insides that nice healthy orange glow too. There is enough Yellow #5 in here to dye your insides for a good long time. Overall, I am not sure I would take this thing in the mountains. If you are the kind of person who gets into Team Realtree's patterns and get into their camo bedsheets and towels and curtains, then maybe this is for you. This drink might not be for city boy, but I doubt it is for hunters either.

Xyience Melon Mayhem energy drink

2013-04-14T09:55:00.001-07:00

There was a time I was trying to drink and write about every Monster energy drink available. Unfortunately, it is sorta like reading every Stephen King book - som of them were just not so good and pretty rehashed. Sure, there are some winners now and then, but it is not like every book is going to be a winner - and the same was true with trying out every new Monster that hit the shelf.

Well I can say that this is not true for all the Xyience drinks - as every one seems to be a unique and delicious burst of energy that differs from the last - even with their ever-increasing product line. The latest I got to try is their Melon Mayhem - a mix between a watermelon and a cantaloupe honeydew flavor that is not only delicious, but has the no calorie no carb thing going for it that all Xyience drinks do.

Packaging:9

The Xyience cans have certainly gone a long way from their original incarnation with weird Japanese kanji all over them. I was able to tell from their color scheme that this was a much lighter and less caffeinated than their black cans. Their bare aluminum cans are much less potent than their other black labeled versions.
It also lists the caffeine content - which is a first for them. After all these years they developed a can which I think is a real winner - even with the bare aluminum. I am not sure how melons and the UFC work together, but like usual they have their big endorsement of the Ultimate Fighting logo embalzoned on the front too - which I guess helps make sure that just because you are drinking something fruity is is in no way a statement of your manliness.

Taste:9
One of the things that amaze me the most with all the unique flavors of Xyience is that they are all made with 0 calories. Melon Madness is definitely one of the more unique flavors, as the only other melon energy drink I have tried is a Tangerine Melon made by Give energy. While this flavor was melon-y, I am not sure if I could tell you the particular melon. There was a definite watermelon flavor, but it was a lot more than that. I tasted honeydews and limes and citrus and something very crisp - like a cucumber in here too. Either way, it was very delicious.

Buzz:8
The one thing about going for the bare aluminum cans is that they have less of a caffeine jolt than their black counterparts do. While the 164mg of caffeine in here is a nice boost, it is not terribly spectacular. I like my energy drinks to be turbo charged to the point where I can feel the jitters - and this flavor of Xyience is the standard energy drink buzz - equal to about a cup and a half of coffee.

In terms of health, Melon Mayhem does not do too badly either. They have this powered with a little ginseng and glucurolactone in it, not to mention the ever preset Vitamin B overload.

While I like my energy drinks to be more turbo changed than this, if I had to choose one for the flavor I would not hesitate to pick one of these bad boys up.

Clif Bar - Peanut Toffee Crunch

2013-04-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

I like the idea of a Clif bar with a little bite in it - something that can give you that real boost of energy while you are running around on your daily grind. Clif bars have been around for about as long as there have been energy bars - although very few energy bars have an y caffeine in them. There are a few, like Pit Pull energy bars, but it is a relatively small sample of the energy bar market, which I don't get. It seems to me that this is a match made in heaven, something to give you a bit of a perk along with fruits an fibers and all that other junk.

Not that Clif bars are full of junk, and are quite the opposite - especially when compared to the other energy and protein bars out there. Compared to Powerbar - which uses High Fructose Corn Syrup and preservatives, and another which is even made my a candy bar company. I don't let me kids eat a whole lot of junk food, but I do get them Clif Bars for snacks a lot. When I got this awesome sample from Brandon via Caffeine, the energy blog, I was most excited to give it a try.

Packaging:7

This was packaged like just every other energy bar they have, wrapped in a plain looking brown wrapper - having that very earthy artisan-esque feel. I particularly like the Clif bar packaging - it feel like the kind of thing a serious mountain climber would carry around with them.

In terms of functionality, it did what it was supposed to do. My only issue was the lack of callout about the caffeine - its their only bar with actual energy in their energy bar; they should celebrate the fact! Instead, there was not even a listing of how much caffeine they had in the package, although they let you know online. Still, it would be nice if they had more than a little "contains caffeine" lettering on the bottom of their whole package.

Taste:8

This is definitely the tastiest of all the Clif bars I have tasted - and I have had quite a few. I did go through my energy bar period, thinking it was cool to get most of my nutrition in bar form until I realized that also leaves you hungry and broke.

Clif bars are usually like all other energy bars, a mix of rabbit food, Horse feed and enough sugar or candy coating to pretty much negate any nutrition you thought you were going to have. Either that, or it tasted like you munched your way through a particularly unpleasant multigrain seed bread at a natural foods store. This Peanut Toffee Crunch bar was happily neither of the two - tasting like there is some nutrition to be had without overkilling it on the sugar coating. Edibility in food bars is a whole lot like talking about which cough syrup tastes the best. It is never anything you would choose to eat because of the taste, but this tastes better than all the other ones they have.

Buzz:4

For being the only Clif with caffeine, you think they would enjoy it a bit more. Unfortunately, there is no buzz to be found - no matter how you chomp it. Clif's crunch has a whopping 50mg of caffeine in there, and because you eat it, the effects are even milder.

Basically, there is no reason for caffeine in this bar - it is like it is not even there. I mean, if you are the kind of person who can wolf down these by the handful then maybe I can see the reason, but just adding 50mg of caffeine - about as much as a cup of coffee or a Mountain Dew is not even enough to count.

While there is a nice healthy dose of good stuff in here to keep you moving long term (its full of complex carbs and such), I would hope for being one of the only caffeinated energy bars out there this would pac more of a punch. I might go back to this for the flavor if I HAVE to eat one of these bars, but for a good energy boost I would pick up something else.

Eco Lips caffeinated Energy Lip Balm

2013-04-01T19:59:00.002-07:00

I am coming to the conclusion that lip balm gives you dry lips. I know it is backwards thinking, but I have never had a problem with dry lips up until I started using Eco Lips energy infused lip balm. I have never been a user of any lip balms - preferring to tough out my cracked lips in dry weather without much care, even though I live in one of the driest states in the US. Lip balms just seemed to be too much of a pain - as they need to be carted around, but not in your pocket where they will melt. Not to mention, unless my lips are actually giving me pain, they are just not a body part I gave a whole lot of attention to. They are left alone to waste away along with all the other body parts that I never pay attention to, like the top part of my ears. However, hen I saw there was a new caffeinated version - I had to try it out.

Eco Lips energy is not the first time I have tried caffeinated lip balm either. Energy-X made a kind that was even supposed to help you lose weight. Eco Lips looks cooler though - coming in a black tube with a lightning bolt on it. If I were the kind of guy who had dry lips - which I never thought I was until I started sampling this stuff - then this is definitely the kind I would be carting around. maybe there is a caffeinated product for all those other parts now, like a caffeinated elbow skin lotion.

Packaging:8

This is a pretty cool looking tube of wax, although there is only so much that you can do with a tube of wax. It is designed very prettily, with cool fonts under their very cool logo too. it is a great printing job and is very easy to read, even the warning to people that this product should not be used by children or pregnant women.

My pockets are not safe places for just about anything that is not hard and metal. I go through wallets every year or two, I have gone through a couple pocket watches, and countless pants had to be tossed when end exploded in them. But, for some reason this did not melt in my pocket and go all over the place as those little tubes of Chapstick seem to. I carried this around with me for a good three weeks and did not see any issue with the stick at all - or even a loss of firmness.

My only issue here is that you have no idea how much caffeine there is in here, though there is a call out to the caffeine, green tea and vitamin B12 in here. Even though it is just coming through on the lips, it would be nice to know just how much caffeine you are adding to your bloodstream.

Taste:8

My wife gets Burt's Bees all the time, so occasionally I would try it out and see what it was like - and I could say it is a pretty similar experience, except for the light tingling I feel on my lips soon after applying a coat.

My first thought was that it was cool that adding this to my lips made them bit tingly - and that it might be the caffeine doing its thing. Of course caffeine does not really work like that - and it is the spearmint and peppermint oils in here which were causing the tingle. While I am no purveyor of the lip balms, I would say that it left my mouth with a generally pleasant experience. While I am not sure it was good enough to turn me into a Lip Balmer, if I were to become a habitual user of the beeswax I could see latching onto this flavor.

Buzz:3

When you are applying caffeine directly onto your skin to be absorbed subdermally, the buzz you get is different that when you ingest it. Yes - caffeine can definitely affect you through the skin - as I found out baking with pure caffeine a couple times. It can get absorbed right through the skin and into your bloodstream. That is why other products like caffeinated soap and Caffeinated pantyhose give you energy too. In this case it is even more powerful, as lips are like a sponge for that stuff and just suck the chemicals right in.

The problem here is that I have absolutely no way to know just how much caffeine there is in here. When trying to figure out a good dose to take,t he only help I get is on the tube stating "Use in moderation". Not being a regular user, I don't even know how much is a moderate dose… Can you use it every 15 minutes? a couple times a day? I don't know. It does not help that the energy in here gets absorbed try gradually, so there really is no rush or crash to speak of. Instead, using Ecolips left me feeling a bit more energetic and boosted throughout my day, and felt like I could go longer between my regular coffee and energy product doses. Along with that, I felt my lips being more alive and tingly than I fit before,and quite a lot more moisturized too.

No, Ecolips did not turn me into.

In terms of other ingredients - I am way impressed. It was only after going online that I aw that Ecolips were organic as well - Which makes sense, and makes me like it all that much more. Yeah, the caffeine in here seems to be more about the schtick than the actual buzz, but for a caffeine fiend it is one of the more fun products to have around in your arsenal.

Roaring Lion Au Natural

2013-03-16T10:40:00.002-07:00

Roaring Lion is a Red Bull clone, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, Roaring lion goes out of their way to be a great clone, going places that Red Bull refuses to go and filling that niche whiel giving the consumer the taste and kick of the real thing. The biggest place to find Roaring Lion drinks are on the gun of your local bar, as they provide bars and restaurants a very attractive option - not having to stock all those damn cans of Red Bull.

The thing is, Red Bull by the case load is an annoying thing to deal with. You need to have them around, as energy drink cocktails are popular. But, they take up room, are expensive, and become extra pricey when your staff drinks them. Red Bull does not come on the gun, the same way Coke or ginger ale do - allowing the bartender to just squirt it in the drink and be done with it. Roaring Lion does just that, and virtually eliminates the cost or having to keep cans of Red Bull around, while still giving the drinker the exact same buzz and exact same flavor.

Only now that is not so exact - while roaring Lion is still the same flavor, now it comes in an all-natural variety as well. Roaring Lion's natural flavor and buzz are almost exactly the same as a Red Bull, only now give the impression of a more healthy option.

Packaging:4

Most of the time, you will never see the bottle of Roaring Lion drinks. Except for one time is a small gas station many years ago in a small mountain town, I have never seen a can of this on the shelves. However, a huge amount of bars and pubs serve Roaring Lion - coming in the typical syrup bag-in-a-box from the soda gun at the bar. So, packaging is not all that important to the brand, but my sample did come in a 16 ounce plastic bottle, nicely wrapped and ready to hit the shelves.

Well, almost ready. Roaring Lion chose for their package to basically do what they have done before with their drink cans, only use a much lighter background. That would not be bad, except the text is white to - so you end up with white on white - and a barely readable ingredients list. along with that, there is no listing of caffeine content anywhere, which is annoying. I like the overall idea, but printing so light on the package means that someone was not paying enough attention to make something readable. For most people who drink this they will never tell what the package is, but for the few who are going to get this in the bottle i is pretty annoying.

Taste:5

Since Red Bull is the standard for taste, and this tastes just like a Red Bull, scoring 5 is just what you would want from this drink. It in no way tastes better or worse than a red bull - and is so close to the flavor of an actual Red Bull you would never know that it was made from different ingredients. I have drank hundreds of Red Bull clones - literally. Most have a slightly different edge to them - more vanilla, less sweetness, something. This really tastes just like a Red Bull - even though the ingredients are much better.

Buzz:7

And in this case they are much better. This is Roaring Lion' s natural version of their energy drink, so the ingredients list is much nicer than the usual preservative filled energy drinks you are used to. The problem is that Natural really does not mean anything - anyone can put the word Natural on their drinks - there is no governing body defining natural, unlike having something be Organic - which you are only allowed to use if you get it certified.

Natural also does not mean healthy. Organic fair trade cage free pig lard is still pig lard. In this case - the natural sugar is still sugar, and the calories are still just as empty. Still, I do like it that they switched to more natural ingredients - except for the preservatives and artificial flavors. They used natural taurine - which I did not think was even possible (taurine is a synthetic ingredient).

In terms of energy, it is a Red Bull's dose. Although they don't list it, that would be around 160mg for the 16 ounce container, and gives a moderate boost that lasts a good couple hours. I like seeing that a company who started off as just a clone manufacturer saw a market niche and filled it - coming out with something that you don't see coming from standard energy drink manufacturers. It will be interesting to see if other manufacturers like Coca Cola or Rockstar come out with their own versions now.

8 Hr Buzz energy shot

2013-03-15T07:20:00.003-07:00

I am highly suspect of any energy product listing their hours of energy they are gonig to give you. At least with ones listing 4 or 5 hours of energy I can sorta buy it, but it is a bit of a stretch, and only a few pills have I ever seen last more than a couple hours. I figure that by the time a drink takes to work its way from my mouth to the urinal all of the other ingredients have pretty much metabolized. Eight full hours in a single two ounce is near impossible, as that means not only a good caffeine boost, but way to sustain that for hours and hours. Heck, even a pint of Jack Daniels can barely keep an 8 hour buzz.

8Hr Buzz energy shot is the first shot I have seen out of hundreds to really experiment with the standard 2 ounce energy shot and come up with something worthwhile. 8hr Buzz comes in a paper sleeve, reminding me of push pops or those sour cream containers you can sometimes get at fast food places. The whole pack is paper, lined on the inside with enough plastic to keep everything from leaking. The rest of the shot is pretty uneventful, but the pouch is enough to at least have me plunk down the three bucks to try it out.

Packaging:8
According to the bottom of the pouch, this is called a Xela Pack. My first thought was that this would be great for people who like shots but hate all that little plastic bottle. Being a paper product, I thought this would be an excellent candidate for one of the more green companies. However, it is plastic lined, and there is not one recycle image on the whole pouch, so maybe not. The top of the pouch has a very hard top that you crack off - and it was fun snapping it right off and sucking the liquid from the hole in top - like a Cari Sun without needing the straw

Other than the cool box, the package is pretty standard. The slogan and overall layout is nice enough, though nothing surprising. Rather than list caffeine, they put the whole "as much as a cup of coffee" statement to confuse the drinker as to how much caffeine they just consumed. I mean, for the name of 8 hour energy, I know I am going to need more than a cup of coffee. In 8 hours I have been known to drink a vat of coffee - especially to have a buzz for tose full eight hours - which means I might need to suck down 4 or 5 of these to get that effect.

Taste:5
8Hr makes an OK grape flavor, although it is certainly nothing to get excited about. For the most part, it is a sour splash of liquid for five seconds on the tongue, but it is not like it actually tastes good. They definitely did not spend their money on the flavor house, working more with adding chemicals that making something palatable. It would have been cool if this tasted like the Capri Sun it reminded me of, but it was far too medicinal for that.

Buzz:5
Not even close to the promised 8 hours. Try about an hour and a half of feeling very caffeinated, a couple hours of a decent amount of energy, and then back to the coffee three hours later. I don't really mind the caffeine, but it is offensive that they just stuck a big number of how much energy you get and not be able to back that up.

I did like the energy shot all around - it was a nice blast of caffeine, and the taste was OK enough to make it worthwhile. I would definitely pocket a couple of these the next time I was hitting the road. While they are not the most powerful shots around, they are pretty handy to just drop in your pocket and go.

Crystal Light Wild Strawberry energy mix

2013-02-27T22:33:00.001-08:00

I hate to say it, but I am in love with a very old and very sexy feminine drink. I know that the Macho Xtreme energy drinker dude in me is cringing, but I absolutely adore Crystal Light - down to it's sexy supermodel spokesperson to the awful 80's saccharin message of ""I believe in Crystal Light, because I believe in me." Crystal Light has even come out to say that they are just targeting women in their ads. According to the Kraft brand figures, they estimate that 40 percent of Crystal Light drinkers are men. but the purchasing is all up to the woman. According to Kraft's director of marketing for powdered beverages " everything that we do on the Crystal Light brand begins with the understanding that our consumers are women, so the benefits that we bring to light and the formulas that we provide are very much with women in mind.”

And now that Crystal light has jumped into the Mio-like squirt-able packaging, they are going to be unstoppable. Thing is, Crystal Light energy is really really good - not only in taste, but give just the right buzz for just about any activity you are up to. I use it for the gym, and find it gives me exactly the right boost to get me to the gym and have a great workout. I find myself mixing up a stick of their powder in the afternoon just for a little pickup. Maybe having these in my energy drink pantry will help me get in better touch with my feminine side.

Packaging:8
A pack of 10 comes in a cardboard box that resembles any other Kraft product, in terms of basic layout and design. Being very feminine, there is a big lack of XTREMEness on the package, which I really like. It is very clean and, dare I say it, pretty. What I do like is that it is not overwhelmingly girly - going for clean graphics and lighter colors, rather than the juvenile Pink And Flowers combo that most drinks do when they want to appeal to the female consumer. On top of the design, they do a decent job of the mechanics. Their explanation of how to mix with water is a little insulting, but they list the full ingredients clearly and wrote caffeine content pretty clearly on it as well.

The sticks inside the pack are decent too, but of course they have much less info on it. the stick of powder is easy to open up with your fingers, or teeth if you don't have the patience to deal. The one thing I noticed is that if the package comes into any contact with water, the whole thing gums up and becomes unusable. So if it is early and you accidentally drop it in your water, there is no hope for recovery - just toss it in the trash and do it again.

Taste:9
One powder stick makes 16 ounces of liquid, and how you divvy that up is up to you. FOr the gym, I usually add one pack to a 24 ounce water bottle and it works great for a whole workout. The mix is not too sweet for regular gym consumption, although emptying one in a smaller 8-10 ounce container makes for a strong punch.

The flavor really works too - it is quite delicious. No, it does not taste anything like real wild strawberries, as much as any Kool Aid flavor would taste like the package. It really is of no matter here, as the flavor is yummy and sweet enough to sway anyone who does not mind the taste of artificial sweetener. The strawberry flavor is like that of a strawberry lollipop, although the sugar is just the right amount of sour to really work.

Buzz:8
There are supposedly 60 calories in a serving, but they list one stick as having two servings. The two serving size works like a can of soda is two servings - there is absolutely no way to only mix half a packet. They should forgo the silliness and just say it has 120mg of caffeine in the whole thing and be done with it. It is not like they need to worry about the calorie content, as one of the big selling points of Crystal Light has always been their very low calorie count.

Of course as you would expect from any energy drink powder, it is not full of much natural. The drink packet has a good amount of preservatives, as well as sweetened with aspartame, along with some Ace-K to help it lose some of aspartame's bite. If thinks like non nutritive chemical sweeteners don't bug you (I am all about the calorie-free drinks, so this does not bother me in the least), then these little packs are sure winners - even for your most macho dudes.

Cannabis Energy drink

2013-02-26T06:15:00.002-08:00

There is only one legal marajuana energy drink in this country, put out by Keef Cola, a great company who'se energy drink contains a full supply of vitamin C, no alcohol, electrolytes and a good deal of THC along with your caffeine dosage too. Unfortuantely, my work at the Giant Corporate Machine forbids me from sipping it even though I live in Colorado until the Feds change their minds too. The closest I can come is Cannabis Energy drink, a THC free energy drink made in Amsterdam and found by a medical-card-carrying friend at his local medical marijuana dispensary.

This is one of many pot-themed energy drinks i have come across, and for being found in a MJ shop, it set my friend back quite a few dollars as well. There is no such thing as a bargain found at at a medical marijuana dispensary - especially with a drink imported from Europe. If you want to find a less expensive hemp infused energy drink, The hypnotic chronic, Dank and Chillo are some other great hemp fueled drinks out there too. This is a drink from holland, but unfortunately was made in Austria - so the chances of this being a Bed Bull knock off are very...high.

Packaging: 2
I know they might have been stoned when making this package, but that is not an excuse for doing something so sloppily. This is one of the worst designed energy drink cans I have seen in a long time, forgoing any style or creativity in place of a gimmick product. It is a green can, with the name of the drink in Times New Roman, and an almost invisible darker green mirror image under it. When you have a product that is so niche as this one, the creative choices you have are endless. This looks like the type of thing you would see on the shelves or Repo Man - a green generic brand energy drink. There is no other copy or slogans or logos anywhere, just the name of the drink with "Hemp Energy Beverage" written underneath. The one saving grace is that they do list the caffeine content on the side or the can, which I think is a rule in many European countries.

Taste:5
This is the first of the pot themed energy drinks where there was absolutely no help flavor to it. This is about the most generic and exacting Red Bull clone i have had in a while, having every last note of Red Bulls lightly sweet flavor. If you like the flavor of Red Bull then you will like this one - plain and simple.

Buzz:5
Much like the Red Bull flavor, this has a Red Bull's amount of energy in it too. Along with the 80mg of caffeine in here, there is the standard vitamin B, taurine, inositol and glucurolactone combpo that we have all grown up with in the hundreds of Red Bull clones that have been released to market.

Really, that is the only point to this drink - a silly niche market trying to cash in on the pot theme by adding a little hemp seed oil into your product. THe problem is that you want so much more than that - something that can really stand out and proclaim to the world that you are a pot lover. This one whispers it quietly to a darkened room.

Killer Buzz Vanilla Latte

2013-02-25T05:21:00.000-08:00

A latte is not a real coffee drink. I know it can be, but in todays world of Fast Foot gourmet coffee places and grocery store half gallons of milky caramel frou-frou silliness, a latte usually is about 2 steps to removed from actual coffee to be coffee. While you can make a latte traditionally from just adding milk and espresso together, that is not what people are wanting from what they get from their drive through as they order their Double tall low-fat no foam 2 pump vanilla lattes. They get this drink from Killer Buzz, Luscious Latte - a creamy yummy concoction that is about as far from an Italian Eatery as Pizza Hut.

Killer Buzz, or as more affectionally it says on the can Klr Bz, is an energy drink company who makes some very lovely energy boosters. They also have a couple kinds of coffee drinks, namely this one and a tasty Mocha variety. The secret star in here is GHAA, which stands for stands for Giant Hornet Amino Acids. I don't like hornets, and the idea of giant ones is the stuff of my nightmares. Still the energy is a decent one, and the taste while being not one of real coffee is still one of the tastiest coffee drinks around.

Packaging:7
Just like the Mocha variety, this is a nice brownish tan color, the color you would want a vanilla latte to be. THe horizontal dotted line motif is still just as silly and out of place, but it is ovall a pretty affair. It loses the XTREME edge of the other flavors in favor of this mice pretty can with script lettering. Like all Killer Buzz cans, it has a paragraph about the drink that really has nothing to do with the drink and it just slightly amusing nonsense - this one mentions cherubs and Aphrodite. There is a custom Killer Buzz drink tab for the overall look and feel, and its really quite nice. Juat like their other drinks, there is no listing of caffeine content. Also, they do not double face their cans, which makes it harder for stockers to put their drink right in the cooler and have it point the right way. still, they are pretty minor when compared to the whole effect.

Taste:10
Killer Buzz does a good thing here - much better than I was anticipating. This can easily be compared to an iced vanilla latte you would get at a Starbucks, and might even be better than that! It is a wonderfully creamy concoction that hits all the flavors right - with the correct sweetness, the correct coffee punch and all without being chemical or syrupy. While their mocha is very good, this is even better - if not one of the best coffee drinks I have ever had the chance to try. If you are lucky enough to have this in a store near you, it is definitely worth it to try.

Buzz:7
You also have to be OK with the excessive amount of calories in here, 280 in the whole can. While I know you need this if you are going to be using regular sugar and milk and such, that is just a whole lot of goop for a coffee drink. By comparison, a tall 16 ounce cold one from Starbucks has 250 calories, so if you are already rinking one down, then just relax and enjoy it - I am just not sure it is worth knocking back a couple of these a day.

Energy-wise, it is about what you would expect. I did not notice any Giant Hornet energy in me after drinking it, although I was reasonable more alert an energetic for the couple hours after I drank it. the latte was powered by just coffee for the caffeine fix, then a little taurine and vitamin B is mixed with the GHAA mix and gave a decent boost. I crashed somewhat about 4 hours after drinking it - but not really so much that a quick walk did not fix me right up.

Still, i am not sure I would get this just for the energy. If I was looking for my morning coffee treat and wanted something quick and delicious, I would go for a Killer Buzz Vanilla Latte in a heartbeat.

Trim Stack Energy pills

2013-02-24T11:53:00.003-08:00

I am always a little scared of pills. Somehow they seem more dangerous and serious. Taking a pill means that you are doing something important, like taking your vitamins or medicine. Trim Stack NRG sent me a couple of their pills to try out along with their Pure NRG energy shot to try out - as well as these little blue and white pills that are supposed to improve my concentration, make me not hungry and give me a burst of energy. Seeing as I get very hungry in the late afternoon, always need energy and have the focus of a broken camera lens, I could use all those three things.

Unfortunately, Trim Stack just is not powerful enough to really accomplish its goals. I do laud what they are trying to do and the ingredients they use, but it is just not strong enough to deliver. Trim Stack also makes a bad workout supplement too, as my son and I tried this at the gym a couple times and it really did not have the needed energy for a good cardio either.

Packaging:4
The little blister pack this came in did not really give off a great vibe, looking very medicinal and truck-stop quality. If this is supposed to compete with other weight loss / energy pills, this one has a long way to go before it can compete with the likes of Slim Fast or Alli. THe yellow on white with light blue color combo is a big turn off too. On top of that, there is no listing of how much caffeine is in this, which is a bit of a bummer, as it also says to take without any other caffeinated products - so you are not very energetic throughout your day either.

It also has a very workout-exercise heavy vibe to it. Their website has people working hard and exercising too, so we took it to the gym to try it out as a workout supplement. Unfortunately, it is not meant for that at all, not giving anything for a boost to get you there, or enough oomph from their ingredients - we felt nothing but tired after a mediocre workout both times we gave it a shot.

Buzz:4
The thing is, Trim Stack is full of good ingredients - things which are supposed to make a difference. there is a total of 430 mg in all the ingredients they have in here, which contains glucomanann, cocoa nut, caffeine, guarana and citrus aurantium.

Glucomanann is a dietary water soluble fiber. Basically, the idea is that this stuff will fill you up with basically nothing, leaving you feeling full without actually having anything in your stomach - like a big cotton candy sponge. It cant really hurt you ( although Canada has banned it because they say it can cause throat blockage and other stuff) though the DEA has warned companies using this that they should not say that it will make them lose weight. There have been a couple studies according to the wikipedia article about it, and the weight loss claims are pretty negligible. I can tell you fro my own experience that even swallowing a couple of them about an hour after lunch had me craving the snacks by 4. Tim stack really did not affect my eating habits in the least.

The same can be said of the caffeine and focus, which I really did not feel. I kept waiting for the burt of energy, as this listed caffeine both lab made and from guarana, but it never materialized. Even taking two pills did nothing really to wake me and get me in the zone. And - because they did not list the caffeine in here, I did not ant to overdo it on the caffeine and ended up being mostly un - caffeinated for the cays I tried it. Not a pretty sight.

The citrus aurantium is a pretty common thing for weight loss and workout products - also known as bitter orange. this stuff works like ephedra does, only in a much less insane degree. It increases your metabolism and speeds up your heart rate, so your body has a thermogenic effect. Basically, your body gets hot from the inside, so you feel a bit like you just ran a marathon. I actually like the thermo rush - in the right place and time with the right dosage. Trim Stack's dose was way too weak to feel anything at all.

All in all, there are some good things in here - or at least things that are not bad for you. However, I felt nothing after trying this according to their directions.

Pyure O.E.O Organic Energy Shots

2013-02-19T18:41:00.001-08:00

This is a first - a sweetener company coming out with their own line of energy shots. Pyure are the ones behind the very marketable version of Stevia you find in grocery stores. This line has a whole lot going for it - and as they are made by a company that is concentrated in both providing a yummy flavored product as well as concerned about health and nutrition. unfortunately, Pyure does not taste that great - like many stevia products it kinda misses the mark.

Recently I have been eating at vegetarian/vegan restaurants, so I can understand the concessions made for health. But, like substituting soy protein for cream and carob for milk chocolate, your taste buds know when they are being fooled. This might be healthy and organic, but if you are wanting something tasty to give you a serious boost of power, there are better choices out there if you can handle not going the super-healthy route. If you need that buzz to come from all-natural sources, this is as good as the other choices you can find at your Natural Foods Checkout counter.

Packaging:8

When this came in the mail I did not know what to expect. In this particularly large box was a whole lot of paper shreddings and a bunch of bubble wrap. Buried in here were four lovingly bubble wrapped eery shots. At first all this fragile wrapping did not make sense - just for energy shots, but after closer inspection I got it - these are glass bottles! The last time I saw glass bottles used for energy shots was either Guayaki yerba mate shots or all those from Japan and Thailand. I am not sure why they would go to all the care and expense of using glass bottles, but I liked the change.

Wrapped around the brown glass bottle was a decent wrap - and a nice metal lid with the printed best-by date. The label looks pretty enough, and designed pretty well. It is a nice organic-y design, using lots of greens and high quality prints to get a very high-class appeal. This would definitely be at home in the cashier line at your local Whole Foods or Trader Joes. They enhanced my opinion listing caffeine as well as other energy ingredients too. While this is not a work of art, it does its job in a very nice and clear fashion.

Taste:4

I like dried fruit. I really do - there is nothing better on a day of hard hiking than diving into a big bag of bulk dried apricots and banana chips. Still, the flavor or dried citrus, raisins and prunes use do not work in an energy shot. I can taste the limes, or at least I can taste lime rind - it has a definite chalky residue along with the flavor of prunes.

What I don't understand is what makes energy shot companies decide that this is the best flavor for them to go to market with. Did they already scotch their taste buds away on so many variations that they actually thought this tasted good? Were the other versions of this so terrible that this was the best that they could do? The thing is, I have had much better energy shots than this - even ones that are natural and use organic ingredients. While this might be drinkable, it is certainly nothing you would enjoy drinking down.

Buzz:6

I can understand the angle here - an all organic energy shot full of good for you stuff that will keep you moving. Unfortunately, it just is not powerful enough to really make much or a difference. In terms of energy there is 100mg of caffeine from organic guarana, green tea and yerba mate. There is the host of vitamin Bs and hibiscus and blueberry extract to increase the antioxidant properties. I like the mix, it just needs more of it to really help.

I can say that the healthiness of this shot was lovely (yeah - healthiness is a perfectly cromulent word). there is no calories in this, as they used stevia to sweeten things up. There is all organic and natural products in here, so this really can be a good-for-you drink - it just needs to be more powerful.

Buy This Energy Drink, Help Kids Energy Drink

2013-02-10T09:30:00.002-08:00

Buy This Energy Drink, Help Kids is the full name of this energy drink, which I found was the non-profit brainchild of a company called Sheetz. So, of course even before opening I had to figure out what Sheetz is. Living in Colorado, I had no idea that Sheetz was such a huge convenience store chain - established in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina with over 340 stores. Still, my guess is that this drink did not do so well in the stores as it made its way to the Energy Drink Graveyard also known as Big Lots. My sample did not come from there, however, but by the generosity of Brandon, the awesome writer of Caffeine! An Energy Blog.

Buying this energy drink supposedly goes to helping out Sheetz' big charity, Sheetz Family Charities, a non-profit that raked in $2.55 Million, which is pretty sizeable for a non-profit. The Sheetz family charities seem like a very good cause, giving their money to help by donating to the Special Olympics, The Make a Wish Foundation and their own clothing/food holiday drive. They state on their website that they donate 25 cents from each sale - which is decent for a cheapo store brand energy drink that I am hoping they don't sell for more than a buck - because it really is not worth a whole lot more than that.

Packaging:4
I am bummed that a drink that works so hard to help out people is doing the energy drink equivalent of flying a homeless cardboard sign in front of your face. What they are telling me is that they don't care how this drink tastes or works, just that if you don't buy it you are a big giant suckwad who wants kids to suffer. This does not list much of anything else to sway you to buy this drink, as they dont bother listing their caffeine content, their flavor profile or anything about the drink - other than the huge "BUY ME" sign on the front.

On top of the obnoxious design, they also don't bother to lis the caffeine, and hide everything in an energy blend. The printing is not the best or cleanest, and it is generally a sorry affair. Great intentions - just very poorly carried out.

Taste:3
Every once in a while I have encountered kids trying to sell this poorly named god-awful chocolate bard for their charity called Worlds Finest Chocolate. This bar of supposed chocolate tastes like fake cottonseed oil and emulsifiers with just enough chocolate flavor to be sold as a candy bar. The problem i that kids sell these things to go on school trips or make money for some good school or church cause, so you are compelled to purchase these horrid things and then are stuck with it.

That is exactly what is happening here. It is not that these are as bad as the chocolate bars, but this is also nothing you would ever buy for the taste. You can tell that the convenience store chain just asked a flavor house to do a traditional Sprite/7-Up-esque lemon-lime drink, but put in some energy ingredients and release to market. Usually a company will tweak a flavor profile to fit their consumer base - but seeing as this drink was only made to help a charity, the flavor was left as a poor generic wannabe with far too much sugar and a little off flavor bitterness. These are the types of things that would usually be picked up on if the drink owners gave this flavor half a mind. Sheetz just did not care how this stuff tastes - people were going to buy it for their guilty conscience, not because of the lemon-lime flavor - it is just plain sloppy carelessness.

Buzz:4
Fitting right along with the theme of carelessness is the energy and nutrition found in Buy This Energy Drink, Help Kids. If you do not care enough to bother with the flavor of your drink, you obviously do not care enough to deal with the energy blend in your drink either. The mix is the very standard delivery found in the best of energy drinks. Of course they don't list their caffeine contents, but it is pretty clear there is between 170-180mg in the whole can, and the usual suspects can be found in here too, like taurine, inositol, choline, glucurolactone and your usual vitamin B overload. It looks like there is a little Vitamin C in here too, which was nice to see, but by and large there was absolutely nothing surprising about what you were going to find in here. There was a light to moderate burst of energy, lasting for about 2 hours before the need for caffeine kicks in again.

There was a really heavy crash for me - probably owing to the 250 calories made up mostly of sugar in the can. On top of that there was quite a few chemical preservatives and artificial flavors and dyes. It is pretty clear that while your purchase might have gone to helping out kids, It is not going to do your body much good either.

I love the idea of using energy drinks to raise money for a cause, and gladly support energy drinks and shots that donate their money to worthy charities such as the Special Olympics and Make a Wish foundation. This mess, however, is the wrong way to go about it. But if you are going to offer a product to market with the idea it is going to raise money for the charity, it does a disservice to not come out with the best product you can. Buy This Energy Drink, Help Kids would have done their charity a much bigger favor if they worked on the product to develop something special, instead of this bottom tier energy product.

RealBeanz Energize Cappuccino

2013-02-06T20:15:00.001-08:00

For those of you who do not feel like your coffee has enough caffeine in it, RealBeanz has brought to market an iced cappuccino with even more caffeine in it. How much caffeine is anybody's guess, as they add all sorts of extra energy ingredients but choose not to list any of their amounts - which is pretty annoying.

For some reason I found this whole energy drink a bit annoying - from the hipster packaging to the chemical taste and the mediocre buzz. I got pretty excited when I saw there was a new coffee energy drink in my local convenience store, even at the very expensive price tag when compared to the other coffee drinks they had. As functional coffee drinks go this one just failed to excite. I appreciate the basic idea of a functional coffee drink, but this execution is way too cute, and not nearly special enough to get excited over.

Packaging:6
Extra annoying is the extra paragraph on the side, written by a guy named Kurt (It starts off by stating Hi. I'm Kurt. the guy guy who writes the packaging text"). Kurt manages to talk about all the things that are cool with this drink, like how he needs the money from writing this paragraph and admonishing you if you stole it. It is just sooo twee I feel like it should come with it's own special hipster hat.

The bottle itself is nice enough - made with glass and wrapped nicely enough, but it is full of useless info - informing the drinker what guarana is - complete with a drawing some something that I think it supposed to be a guarana seed, or maybe it is a feaf - or maybe a guarana spider web - it is pretty hard to tell. . There is also a big orange sticker on here, letting you know that this is "Made with Natural Ingredients". Note that it is not saying it is all natural, but that there are some natural things in here - it is not ALL chemical. But we will get to the preservative list later.

Taste:6
I was hoping for some incredible cappuccino taste from this - after all Kurt told me that is has an "authentic Italian Cappuccino Taste"and a Hint of Cinnamon and will tickle my taste buds. Unfortunately, I got no tickle-y. Instead I got the flavor of packaged coffee - and not terribly good coffee at that.
When you make a coffee drink, the best thing you can do is either make it out of insanely good coffee, or disguise the fact that you use Coffee Extract and Reduced fat milk in so much sugar and flavor that you forget you are drinking ass-y coffee. This coffee uses coffee extract and not a really good one at that. These are not in any way special beans, and give off no real flavor other than a general packaged coffee flavor. There is enough cane sugar and carageenan that it has a decent thick sweetness, but not nearly enough to disguise the quality of the coffee. RealBeanz is not bad, but it is not something you are going to be overjoyed about.

Buzz:8
I do like the caffeine in here - although I would like it better if I had a clue how much caffeine they have in here. Not only is there caffeine from coffee in here, but then they up the ante with extra Lab Made Caffeine, guarana and yerba mate - all of which have extra caffeine in them. For all I know this has 250-300mg of caffeine in the bottle, and it definitely felt that way after slamming the bottle. They also add Ginseng, Vitamin B complex and Panthothenic acid, all of which are very common energy drink ingredients. The sugar is strong enough in here for a good sugar rush early too - and the strong rush lasted for a good three hours before I felt the sugar crash come on. I know that Kurt mentioned I should not a crash, but I felt one regardless.

Now don't be fooled that just because this contains natural ingredients that this is natural. Last time I was in the grocery store, I don't remember seeing much Pyridoxine Hydrochloride in my spice aisle. and wouldn't you know that my cupboards were dry of Sodium Phosphates too. There are enough preservatives in here to preserve you for a good long time. I am sure the milk was natural enough, but just because it looks pretty and hipster and is coffee related, the 140 calories of goop in here is not what anyone would call healthy.

While I like the idea of functional coffee drinks, I would definitely try this one again. This time, however, try making it out of actual coffee next time - and then you dont need to add all the chemical goop to keep it on the shelves too. And losing the Hipster would be a nice change while you are at it.

Quick Strike energy shot

2013-01-29T22:15:00.000-08:00

There is only so much you can expect from a convenience store energy shot. If you are lucky, it does the job of waking you up. You get even luckier when you get something that tastes good too. Every once in a while, you can even find one that looks great, tastes great and does the job - but that is a pretty rare thing. Unfortunately, that does not happen with Murphy's store brand Quick Strike energy shots. Like their energy drinks, the design is OK, if a little bland, the kick is OK, though not that strong, and the flavor is fine, as long as you enjoy concentrated grape Kool Aid.

Packaging:5
This is about as standard as it gets - a 5 hour energy shaped bottle with a wrap. It is an OK design, although it certainly does not blow me away. This is the same as the Quick Strike cans, with a basic logo on a grey background. There is a funny little purple lightning bolt there only they gave it a little tail, so it looks little like a mountain when it is facing up. From the side, the lightning bolt really does not make sense with that little tail on it. I would not mind it that much if they just listed the caffeine, rather than hide the amount within their "energy blend".

Taste:6
Quick Strike energy shot isn't bad, and I have had hundreds worse. Basically, it is the flavor of Grape Kool Aid - with a little hint of something more complex. But yeah - mostly the flavor of articially flavored grape. There was a little pomegranate flavor in here too, just enough to give it a little something special - not much, but a little. I give it credit for not tasting bad, although it does not taste terribly good either.

Buzz:6

I took this on a day without my normal coffee jolt, in the hopes that it could keep me moving on my weekend of driving kids around and pulling errands. While I would have loved a bigger burst of energy, it was not bad. It took a good 20 minutes to kick in, which was a long time to wait for the energy. I know that might have something to do with how fast my body metabolizes things, but I needed the burst to get me on the road and navigating the world of bickering siblings and my patience was thin. When it did kick in, my guess is there was about 3 hours of happiness before I felt the pull for more caffeine.

Again there was no listing of caffeine, but my guess is there is 100-150mg of caffeine in here - about as much as a decent cup of coffee. along with that, there is an undisclosed amount of Taurine and glucurolactone, malice acid and an amino acid blend. The interesting ingredient in here is Cognizin, a brand name product that is supposed to help you with concentration. As it is the last ingredient in the "Blend", it is probably wary little - and I did not feel any more focused, just a bit more caffeinated. There is the usual overdose of vitamin Bs in here, as well as enough preservatives and fake sugars to keep make sure you don't confuse this with something healthy. I like the lack of calories, but I could have done without the extra potassium benzoate, sorbate and EDTA calcifying my body.

If I were a regular next to Murphy's gas stations, I would go back to these if I were in a money pinch. While they could have been much better, for a convenience store brand product they could have done a whole lot worse.

Full Throttle Twisted energy drink

2013-01-24T22:40:00.003-08:00

The one big secret to most energy drink is that deep down, we all know what they are. That four dollar carbonated sports drink full with siberian ginseng and antioxidants is really soda pop. While the cool can and cache of the brand and interesting ingredients might mask that, when you come down to it, the only reason this does not come in two liter bottles is because they know they can get a whole lot more money putting it into tiny 8 ounce cans instead. I know some people might disagree with the caffeine content, but if they can sell half gallons of pre-made coffee and 44 ounce coffee thermoses, not having Big Gulps of energy drink available is all because of the cache.

This is why my heart leapt a little when I went into a local gas station and found Full Throttle Twisted as a fountain drink! Now I could have all the joy of my energy drink, but in Big Ol' Jug size. Not to mention, I could even get to drink it with ice and a straw - something you don't get when you drink cans all the time.

Packaging:5

Other than the name on the fountain dispenser, I had no more knowledge of exactly what I was drinking. It seemed like I was getting some higher-caffeinated drink, but had no way to tell if I just filled my 44 ounce jug with something that just had the Full Throttle logo but has a soda's amount of energy - or the real bona-fine full on Full Throttle Energy drink. Also, with only having the word Twisted underneath, I had no idea what kind of flavor I was getting into as well

I know that when your drink is on the fountain gun there is a very limited amount of space, but listing the actual flavor or caffeine in it would have been nice.

Taste:5

So what kind of flavor is Twisted? I did not know what to expect, as this flavor seems to be for fountain drinks only - they never have had a Twisted can before. I like the original Full Throttle enough - although it is not like it really stands out from the crowd. But seeing as the button was a purple color, my guess was that the drink had a little berry in it. While this might have been sold better if it came out something other than energy-drink yellow that would have helped out, but really the look and smell did not give anything away.

For that matter, the taste really did not give anything away either. It was good - albeit very sweet. I tasted a definite berry - but it was the fake berry of a lollipop, only mixed with the usual apple-bubblegum that you would expect from an energy drink. It had a little something else in it though, something that made it pretty a little hard to pin down - like a bit of exotic-ness.

Turns out it is supposed to be Guava Berry - which after drinking it seems to fit. Still, for a drink that you want people coming back to, why not pick something really delicious that really sticks out from the pack.

Buzz:6

The good news is this does have some good energy ingredients in it - and of course there is some not so good too. This is made like your average soda pop, full of preservatives and additives and all that. But it also has 47mg per 8 ounces, so it is a little less than half as strong as the canned variety. That means that in your average 44 ounce jug, it has a grand total of 258mg of caffeine in it. I liked the buzz I got from drinking it, but I am not sure of the work it took to get through that much liquid quickly.

For a fountain drink it was exciting to find anything close to an energy drink in there. Still, it is not quite an energy drink - actually about half as much as one. But if it was a choice between this and any other soda I would probably reach for this one instead.

Rip It Java Mite Coffee energy shot

2013-01-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

I am very critical of my coffee drinks, as I really like the flavor of coffee. Most coffee drinks don't really taste like coffee, and even less so when they are low calorie energy shots. When you put a coffee drink together with a discount brand such as Rip It, the effect should be pretty unbearable.

However, in this case it turns out quite differently - Rip It Java-Mite every shots are more than drinkable, they are downright tasty! On top of that, they provide a great boost of energy that lasts a while too! If only they did not look like an urban assault weapon this would be one of the top energy shots I have tried. I have seen pictures of this same drink in a big 16ounce can, and if it is as good as their shot it would be one hell of an amazing thing.

Packaging:9

For the most part, Rip It designers go with a very plain package - something that looks if nothing else a little minimal. Not the case here - adorning the standard 5-hour-energy shaped bottle with a plastic wrap that could best be described as post apocalyptic. While I like the look of armageddon on energy supplements, I am not quite sure how this works with a coffee shot. While they do manage to put the "X" on this shot, it is a big difference from the rest of their designs, covered in brown red and yellow, like it got hit with too many pain balls. The font is deeply embossed, and though it is readable it is a far cry from their usual primary colors.

Functionally, it is very readable, and even lists all the caffeine and other energy ingredients clearly. They have their website and indications printed nicely too. The only thing I found interesting is they did not bother putting the calorie content on it, which is kinda odd, but probably so negligible that they felt they could leave it off.

I love the design, but not on a coffee shot. I don't think anyone would think of coffee as being Xtreme. The package is great - it just does not belong on this flavor.

Taste:10

This should by all accounts taste somewhere between revolting and candy like. No, it does not taste like real coffee, but it is very very close to tasting like a shot of Turkish Coffee, only without the sludge on bottom. There is real coffee somewhere in this, but mainly it is made up of fake flavors and colors. It still really works, tasting like a delicious strong espresso which is neither over-sweet or overbitter. While I am not sure how this would play out in a big 16 ounce can, in this formula it is a real winner.

Buzz:7

Java-Mite lists right up front on the package that there is 100mg of caffeine, and all the usual energy stuff in big bold letters. This is great for people who are making sure of their caffeine intake, and the amount is just enough to get you up and moving, but not so much to get you wired.

Now I love to be wired, and just a little over-caffeinated is really my favorite way to be. Unfortunately, this is nowhere strong enough to get me there. Fortunately, these are very cheap - and it is easy enough to get two of them to give me the boost I am looking for.

I found the usual energy suspects along with not much in the way of healthy or nutritious. No idea about the calories as they are not listed, but since they sweetened this with sucralose, Ace K and maltodextrin, my guess is it is pretty close to zero. On top of those chemicals, they dumped artifical flavors, preservatives and caramel color in here, so if you are looking for something nutritious I would look somewhere else. If you are just looking for a cheap decent coffee shot with great flavor, look no further.

Victory Energize Fruit Punch

2013-01-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

Energy drinks are too expensive. Everyone knows that spending over three bucks for any soda is way too much, regardless if it is a masterpiece of herbs and spices. Not that it stops us from buying it, but deep down it does not matter how good an energy drink is, you are still buying soda pop for about three or four times what it should cost.

This is where value drinks, like Knockout and the new Jolt have stepped in and found a foothold, providing a great burst of energy is a much cheaper package. Sure, that means they have to make it look more Valu, but that is all part of the deal. Victory is one of those brands trying to capture this cheapskate market - and it is one I really do appreciate. However, while I liked Knockout for coming up with some decent clones at a fraction of a normal energy drink's price, this can of Victory Energy drink's fruit punch, available only in Washington, Oregon, Montana or Idaho and son to be found in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama, really did not impress me the way that Knockout did.

As I live in none of those states, I really appreciate Brandon with Caffeine!, The Energy Blog for hooking me up with this flavor. Muchas Mucha Gracias!

Packaging:4
The first thing that really got to me was the silly packaging - a design that seemed pretty commonplace - with a big bubbly V for Victory. I love the name for an energy drink, but the design looked commonplace and not terribly unique. Wile this would be fine for a store brand energy drink, as a company trying to edge in the market a little more originality would have been nice.

On top of that, they do not list their caffeine contents. Even on their website they say they have a "secret formula" and don't list their contents. As more and more legislators are seeing, not listing the caffeine amounts on drinks can be irresponsible, and something I personally find obnoxious.

Taste:5
I love a good fruit punch drink. There is something so yummy about the right combo of sweetness and tartness, the juicy fruit splash in your mouth mixed with the sweet and sour tang to create a delicious experience. Unfortunately, that something was not here. This was just a super syrupy thick carbonated Hawaiian Punch with some energy ingredients in it.

While I know not to expect much for a buck, I was hoping for something more than the usual Flavor House Punch Blend. Victory's Fruit Punch was not at all tart or pungent - and was instead candy sweet and as fake as a This was a cheap run-of-the-mill punch drink, nothing special or good enough to try again, unless you are broke and needing something fruity to pour over your pancakes.

Buzz:7
While I am not sure how much caffeine is in here, it is a decent enough blend to get a good three or four hours of energy. The blast of (my guess is around 200mg) caffeine, taurine, ginseng and the usual overdose of B vitamins is enough to put enough pep in my step - especially when you add i the simple sugars from the sugar.

In terms of health, forget about it. Victory Fruit Punch reads like a Log Cabin bottle - with both High Fructose Corn syrup and sucralose to sweeten things up. Then this is packed with 220 caloies worth of preservatives and artificial flavors and food dye to make sure you will be well preserved when you die. I am sure if you drink enough Victory you will never need worry about your body decomposing for many years to come.

No matter, If you want something healthy I am sure there are quite enough three dollar drinks that you can find. For only a buck, I guess you can't expect nutrition along with your buzz. Either way, I like the new wave of cheaper energy drinks, and would love to see this one make its way own to the Denver area too.

Clean and Sober energy drink

2013-01-09T01:30:00.004-08:00

Clean and Sober is an energy drink put out by The Hypnotic Chronic company - the ones behind a very trippy hemp infused energy drink called Wake and Bake. Their aforementioned drink does not actually contain any weed in it, but just hemp oil - enough to give it a distinct Ganja flavor with none of the high. Clean and Sober is more confusing, as it is a Hemp-esque product that does not have any hemp oil in it or any trippy pot themes jokes or references - really just a basic energy drink. The Clean and Sober moniker more confusing, as I am not sure what I am supposed to be clean and sober from. My first thought is that this is a drink for Straight Edgers, like 3-in-1 Trinity energy drink only without the godliness, but that is not the case. My second thought was it would be a rehab drink to help you get over your imbibing the night before, but there is no real nutrients to help you recover like a Rehab drink. Am I supposed to be more clean and sober after drinking this? Does it celebrate that I am not into drugs or alcohol? Does it help me to clean up my act? Not really. There is nothing to help with hangovers or party nights or anything I would want to be clean and sober from. The only addiction I have is to caffeine, and Clean and Sober is as caffeinated as any other drink. SO what exactly is the point?

I am sure this drink is a funny inside joke to the people who make THC but I don't get the punchline.

Packaging:3
Things go from odd to downright bad with their packaging job. It is a wrapped can - so instead of a printing job it just has a layer of easy-to-peel-off plastic with the label, which gives this a very cheap feel. It just does not look like they took this very seriously. Along with that, the font style and even the brand itself does not lend itself to professionalism. There are no callouts for the energy readings, but a really big one for using Organic Sugar, which I am not sure anyone who drink this really cares about. There is a bizarre 12 paragraph written on the side that reads:

12 Steps to getting your (sic) Clean and Sober:
1. You admit you are powerless over hemp - that your life has become (slightly) unmanageable
2. You believe that The Hypnotic Chronic's Clean and Sober will restore you to sanity
3. You have decided to turn your taste buds to the care of Clean and Sober
4. That you have made a true search at the local stores and the internet for THC inventory
5. That you admit to THC the exact nature of your hemp fueled wrongs

and it gets stranger from there - 12 full steps that make no sense whatsoever. these steps are some crazy almost stream-of-consciuos stuff that does nothing to help me understand what they are trying to convey, except maybe that they are trying to make a joke about being clean and sober when they made this package. The only thing that I can think of is that this whole drink including all the text was carried out while being extremely high. But like most great ideas created when baked, once you come back to the real world those ideas just don't make sense.

Taste:4
I was hoping maybe the flavor would pull all this together - that it would taste like something that would be so delicious or unique or "clean" that I would get in on the joke - but it just did not happen. For one thing, the flavor settled in the can - so if you leave this lying around you will be hit with a mouthful of unsweet bitterness that is most unpleasant. If you give the can a light toss you will find it tastes much better.

After making that discovery, I liked the flavor more, but I am not that keen on the grapefruity flavor. It's not bad - it tastes like if you poured a whole lot of granulated sugar on your grapefruit slice and ate it - but it also tastes very syrupy and thick. It certainly does not taste clean or fresh. I would have given this a 5, but my experiences of drinking a number of these can before learning that the flavor settles made me like it quite a lot less.

Buzz:5
Pretty standard stuff to be found in this pretty standard drink. It is nie that they are using Organic sugar in here, but that is balanced out by also adding Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Benzoate. It is hard to feel Clean and Healthy when you are downing 112 calories in 8 small ounces with preservatives and artificial flavors.

The buzz in here is not bad for 80 mg. There is all the other energy drink cohorts, like inositol and glucurolactone, plus the big does of vitamin b and taurine. There is a very little buzz in here, about as much as a small cup of coffee.

Overall, I just don't get it. It is a non novelty product put out by a novelty drink company - Like Cocaine energy coming out with a non-caffeinated boringly named drink - I just understand what the impetus is to make or buy it. TCH made an amusingly named and overall decent energy drink with Wake and Bake. In my opinion, they should have stopped right there, and never bothered with this inside joke of a product.

Green Dragon energy drink

2013-01-06T10:07:00.000-08:00

Until they manage to find a way to juice up rainbow unicorns, the next best fictional beast to make energy drinks out of HAS to be dragons! I have tried all sorts of drinks named for real animals; Red Bulls, Blue Oxen, Blue Frogs, blue rebels, black bears, Black Scorpions, not to mention little pussies, big cocks, and a giant Commando Bear, but never have I had the pleasure of trying a full on Dragon.

Now I have had a couple Dragon Tails and the Soul of a dragon in tasty mint form, but they are not quite all of the cool of a full Green Dragon. Unfortunately, even though I was excited to see this can in a big delicious box of goodies from Brandon, purveyor and reviewer extraordinaire at Caffeine - The Energy Blog ( if you have not checked out his site yet, I would be sure to get there as soon as possible), it turns out that Green Dragons are really not as exciting as I hoped they would be. Figuring as they picked a green one, and not the more dangerous black or even grey dragons I guess it is to be expected. According to my friends that play both Warcrack and Runescape, green ones are a dime a dozen - the weakest of all the dragons, and according to Mr. Rose's posts found sniveling in WinCo stores in the western part of the US.

Turns out this is the value drink made by Unique Beverage, the ones behind the time-tested Wired Energy drinks. I love many of Wired's energy drinks, and they have about a dozen different flavors. While I get that they were probably commissioned to make these for WinCo stores, that also means that I know that they do know how to make a serious energy drink f they so desired - and just chose not to.

Packaging:4
I think companies that are contracted to produce store brands go out of their way to create ugly products so they look like they are more of a value than their brand name counterparts. I know Kroger got in trouble a few years back for making their store value brand products look too good - and bigger brands complained. Well, energy drink companies do not have to worry about that going on here. Green Dragon looks like the cheap knock off that it is.

Stretched serif font instead of a logo stock dragon head on a bare aluminum background. You can tell that this whole concept and subsequent artwork probably took the Wired Art team 20 minutes to come up with the entire brand, with can layout done in Microsoft Word. Of course there is no listing of caffeine, the printing job is not so hot and there is no listing of website or energy ingredients. It is like Unique worked very hard to make a sub-par drink package, because I know they can do much better.

Taste:5
Firstly, it does not taste at all like green dragons. That is unless they taste like Red Bull Clone - although not exactly like a clone. This is more bitter and sour than your average clone - and replaces the usual bubblegum/apple/citrus flavor with a syrupy grapefruit-y flavor that is not really that enjoyable. Unique's Wired drinks were very hit-and-miss when it came to their flavorings, and this one is a miss. It is not a bad flavor, but it is just mildly displeasing as you make your way through the can.

Buzz:6
As for the ingredients list, it is pretty run of the mill. They use HFCS for a sweetener, and then pack in the usual suspects with no real surprises. There is taurine, caffeine and B Vitamins, along with inositol and Yellow #5, but somehow it does the trick.

I really don't know how much of anything is in here, but it is a pretty decent buzz - more than what I was expecting from a tiny cheap can. It could be that they upped the caffeine content - I have no way of knowing. What I do know was that I expected a standard cheap 75mg boost of energy - enough to calm the caffeine cravings but not much else. Instead, I was pretty energetic and pumped for a good couple hours. Still, I think I will stick to their soul and tail for my energy needs instead.

Whoopass Energy Drink

2013-01-02T20:41:00.002-08:00

Whoopass has always been one of those brands that was more fun to say than to drink. This was back in the early part of the century, where there were more energy drinks flooding the market than there were flavors of Starbucks. IT had a big strangely drawn mascot boy and the overall feeling was that this was a funnier drink to give as a gag gift than something you would actually want to drink.

Then sometime in 2010, Jones Soda did a very smart move and overhauled their Whoopass line into a real Whoop Ass energy drink. For a drink brand this has just about everything you would want - a cool can, some decent flavor profiles, a wicked buzz and still has the funny too.

Packaging:9
This is the flagship Whoopass flavor - the big black can full of sugar and calories, but also full of the flavor and image they are going for - and it is one hell of an image. While I might not have been wanting to have been seen carrying around their old can in my hand, the Iron Cross design is done well enough that I actually feel more macho drinking it. It is like wearing a leather vest or a motorcycle chain wallet - it is a way to buy a little into the biker culture and still not give in completely to the 2% or OCC crowd. The slogan "Open a can" written on bottom gets their point across without going over the top.

Functionally, they did fantastic too. They list all caffeine and other ingredients, double face the can, and do an overall top notch job in production. This is a very cool can - made cooler by starting out its life so silly.

Taste:8
There is no real flavor written on the can, so my first inclination was that it was going to taste like the usual Red Bull/Monster clone, but it was more berry and fruity than that. Rather than go for the apple bubblegum that most energy drinks go for, I tasted hints of berries and grapes - and rather juicy and real - not candied and fake. Part of this could be because of the real sugar used in here giving a nice soft sweetness to the whole thing.

Buzz:8
This is one of the better energy blends I have seen for an energy drink in a long time. Now in terms of being healthy, do keep in mind that a can has 220 calories in it - and almost all of that is made up from the 52 grams of sugar added, so healthy is a pretty relative term. But there is more than just sugar in here too, with grapes and green tea polyphenols and catechins if you get into that antioxidant stuff too. Along with that, there is a host of B vitamins and l-carnitine to help with workout recovery at the gym too.

In terms of Buzz, there is a nice jolt of caffeine too. The sugar helps get you moving, and the 100mg caffeine, guarana, yerba mate and green tea all have even more caffeine which puts this far beyond the energy found in most other popular brands. On top of that, they also add 5 Hours secret weapons - the amino acids L-arginine and L-lysine. I got a very nice four hour buzz from a can - and a pretty heavy crash from it afterwards too. While I would definitely go for their Low Calorie version in a white can - if you are down for the high calorie version it is a great drink to have around for your next poker run.

Monster Zero Ultra Energy Drink

2013-01-01T18:44:00.000-08:00

I used to feel very proud of the fact that I read every stephen King book out there. I enjoyed the good ones and suffered through the bland ones. I feel exactly the same about new hanses drinks, as they seem to come out with new versions of their old drinks every quarter. I would not mind all this new innovation is it actually made a difference, but it seems like all they are doing is trying to cover the shelf spaces in convenience stores with a hundred versions of their products.

This is all the more true when you are talking of yet another diet drink. Now, adding to their Monster Blue Sugar Free version, there is Monster Absolutely Zero, Monster Imported Light and now Monster Zero Ultra. They have moved away from their normal bluish diet color to a completely white version this time - and I was ready for a carbon copy of their drink for a fourth time.

But then something very surprising happened - it looks and tastes unlike any other Monster out there - this is more than just a reissue of a not-yet-out-of-print energy drink but a hole new one. And I like it a whole hell of a lot!

Packaging:7

More than just a new facelift, Monster went back tot eh drawing board on this one. Like the new Rockstar drinks, the can itself is mottled and raised, something I have not seen in energy drinks before. Now even more than just looks, this energy drink can has texture - and a cool one too. THis fees more expensive and classier than previous Monsters, alluding somewhat to the design they picked, off a Art Deco poster full of filigrees and swirls. They even made their usual asinine Xtreme paragraph that is usually full of info about how they were getting trashed in hotel rooms in Vegas has been replaced by a only-slightly-obnoxious paragraph about how this drink is less sweet and made because their hard riding Monster riders and Monster girls have been dropping hints. It is still trite and ridiculous crap spewed forth by 50 year olds trying to be cool to 15 year olds, but I have seen much worse.

Like every Monster, they refuse to list their caffeine content clearly, which sooner or later is going to bite them in the ass. They say there is their proprietary 1400mg energy blend, but that could mean all sorts of caffeine content. In this day and age, it is ridiculous not to list it. They still double face their cans and make special tabs and have a perfect printing job with easy to read text - although it would be cooler if they would point their lids in the correct direction so the logo would face outward while drinking it, but it is pretty enough to make up for many shortcomings.

Taste:10

I fully expected this to be just another Monster clone of a Monster clone - yet another version of a low-carb sugar-fee diet Monster. What I get instead is a grapefruit juicy drink that is strong on flavor - and none of the classic Monster Citrus Berry flavor. The closest thing I could place this is a fresco, as there is a whole lot of grapefruit in here. But it is not just grapefruit, there is a heavy dose of pear flavor as well to really fill out the taste and makes for a very couple and juicy sweet drink. This is one of the strongest flavors Monster has in its repertoire, and hopefully will be around for a long time.

Buzz:7

This is exactly what you would expect from your Monster drink. There is the very usual buzz that you get from downing a mMonster - with my guess of 160-180mg of caffeine. The lack of calories did not inhibit the taste or the buzz, as it gives a good couple hours of solid energy with a big dose of taurine, ginseng,glucuronolactone and inositol. In terms of caffeine this has some lab caffeine as well as natural caffeine from guarana. There is the usual overdose of B Vitamins you would expect from a mainstream energy drink. and the overall mixture works well enough.

If you are down with Monster drinks, this is a good one to try, and probably the best of their low-calorie line.

Killer Buzz Zilch Energy Drink

2013-01-01T17:09:00.001-08:00

Killer Buzz made a decent enough mocha drink that I looked forward to seeing what they had in store for me with their new low carb energy drink. I could tell ti was a diet version because it has a blue strip on the top. Blue strips always mean diet, regardless of what food or drink it happens to be. The fact that no food in the natural world is that color of blue means that your eye rejects it as a food-like substance, which is the reason that all diet foods from Weight-watchers to Atkins.

Blue is also reminiscent of the blue Monster energy drink - which is close enough to how this tastes that it works pretty well for a clone drink too. The reason this drink is supposed to be different than Monster is because this contains the same amino acid blend as the Giant Hornet Amino Acid combinations. While it would have been cooler if this actually came from actual Giant Hornets, it is still a pretty clever idea.

Packaging: 8
The look of Killer Buzz is great using the bare aluminum with style. The big block letters and styalized name work well with what it is trying to convey without being over the top. What is a little over the top is their silly paragraph on the side. Where Monster drinks usually have their dumb paragraph about partying in Vegas, Biller Buzz talks about being a Ninja and being an Op so black you could wear it to a funeral. It is silly - but works.

Functionally, this works well - except that they refused to list their caffeine content. It looks very clean and is very pretty. It is clear and minimal, and does a good job calling out that their has the 17 essential amino acids of the hornet. Still, not having the caffeine content printed is a big bummer on an otherwise stellar design.

Taste:7
Seeing as this color and overall look was one borrowed from the Monster line, I was not surprised to fine the usual candy-like Monster/Red Bull flavor of so many other diet energy drinks. There was a bit of tartness from the citric acid in here, and it seemed to be a bit less sweet than than Monster. Instead, it has a lighter flavor which I liked.quite a lot. While I am not sure if the flavor would blow me away enough that I would choose this over all the other energy drinks out there, it is tasty enough that I would not mind going back.

Buzz:6
I was hoping for a big blast of energy from this - and seeing as there was no caffeine listing, I really did not know what to expect. I did know that the 17 amino acids might have made me feel differently about the buzz, and there was the chance this was loaded with tons of caffeine. Unfortunately, it was a rather bland buzz.

The Amino Acid blend really did not do anything for me that I could tell. I did have a decent buzz, but it was not really extraordinary or in any way different than a normal 16 ounce energy drink. The 17 essential GHAAs did not seem to power me more through the day or really have any big effect on me.

That is not to say that I did not like the buzz, as it was a decent blend amounting to about 3 hours of a nice sustained energy boost - like the kind you could find from a Rockstar. My guess is that this has around 200-220mg of caffiene, enough for a nice buzz without going off the charts with no jitter or crash. I did like Killer Buzz Zilch, although it did not really blow me away.