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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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...

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.

I really don't want to like International Delight's new On-The-Go mocha drink. I scoff at people who add International Delight creamers to their brews the same way that I get when people order their scotch on the rocks. If you are going to go mucking up the original intended flavor of a drink, at least have the decency to not have it be all silly and Frou Frou. OK, I give a little leeway or milk and sugar, but a coffee is supposed to still taste like coffee, not mocha caramel Cinnabon Almond Joy cottonseed oil and thickening agent with a touch of coffee flavor.

The problem is that I really like International Delight's new On-The-Go mocha drink, I like it a whole hell of a lot. Maybe I am going soft around the edges, or maybe I am just giving in, but these handy little grab-and-go bottles are just perfectly tasting sweet yummy concoctions of real coffee, and more delicious than I could have imagined.

International Delight's new On-The-Go mocha comes in these handy four pack boxes that make life easy all around - as long as you keep them refrigerated - there are not enough preservatives to keep them fresh for an extended period of time (which is a good thing).

Packaging:8
How often to coffee drinks have the caffeine listed on them? Of course the answer is not ever. Except in this case, where the little handy jug helpfully lists there is 76mg of caffeine in it - about as much caffeine as an energy drink. Also, it looks pretty while it does it too. These little 8 ounce plastic bottles are designed very prettily, and while they might not win any awards, it is certainly a decent job.

The really cool thing they did do is list caffeine content - something almost no other coffee drink does, minus a few put out by Starbucks. When you figure that into their nicely designed bottle, there is quite a lot to commend.

Taste:10
Now here is the thing. Most bottled coffee drinks end up tasting like fake useless garbage. Eight times out of ten when you pick up a pre-made coffee drink you are going to end up with either a too-sweet too strong coffee flavored Kool Aid, a coffee flavored milkshake on your hands or some cold burned-tasting weak limp thing. Rarely do you end up with what you were hoping for - a really good not-so-sweet strong REAL coffee that just happens to be lightly iced and creamy.

One of the things that ruin perfectly good coffee can be laid directly on International Delight's feet - those little awful creamers that turn a coffee drink into so much fake sweet garbage. Don't get me wrong, there are times when my coffee is so bad that adding 4 or 5 little cups of their awful chemical filled non-milk artificial packets of too-sweet garbage to my coffee is the only thing that makes it palatable, but this is to coffee as Boone's Farm is to wine.

Mix those two together and there was little hope for this coffee drink to turn out drinkable. Funny thing though, it is more that just a little drinkable. It is in fact one of the best cold coffee drinks I have ever had.

Maybe it is because they use real coffee or they left out their chemical storehouse or they just concentrated on making a delicious cup of coffee, but they just managed to make this iced coffee drink a real treat - with just enough thickness (I saw carageenan in the ingredients list - it is a seaweed used to thicken up protein drinks and chocolate milks) and sweetness (real sugar used in here) and more importantly Real Coffee to have me contemplating if maybe I got International Delight all wrong. Maybe they aren't the harbinger's of coffee death that they always seemed to be.

Buzz:8
Here is the thing about using regular coffee - you don;t need to do anything to get a nicely caffeinated drink. You don't need to add much else to get a good buzz going off the 76mg of caffeine per 8 ounce jug. When you think that this is just about what you would find in eight ounces of Red Bull or Monster, and the fact that this is just so damn drinkable, you can end up with a couple of these picked off and a ton of cold sweet caffeine pumping through your veins in less than a minute. The Buzz is nice - as you would expect from such a smooth drinking coffee.

The ingredients list also impressed me. First ingredient is actually coffee, followed by milk, sugar, corn syrup, cream, sweet whey, cocoa, Gellan Gum (a thickener used in drinks and Gummi treats), Flavorings, carageenan and some sodium citrate because you can not have this be an International Delight product without just a midge of chemical preservative. Still though, this is mostly just coffee and milk and sugar and chocolate, which really makes this product shine.

Coffee (Water, Coffee Extract), Skim Milk, Sugar, Corn Syrup, Cream, Contains 2% Or Less of Each of The Following: Sweet Whey, Cocoa (Processed With Alkali), Gellan Gum, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Carrageenan, Sodium Citrate.

I know you have heard the name before. But hey - with a name as cool as Eternal Energy, you knew it was just a matter of time before others started in on the name. Actually, I wonder if they know about each other - and it will start a huge debate in court, like when Monster cable sued Monster Energy, and then the other way around, as no one was sure which came first.

In this case there are two products called Eternal Energy. One is a tool tattoo themed drink put out by a tattoo company. The other is a discount energy drink found at places in Walmart. There are a whole lot of similarities too - both come with a berry and pomegranate shot that are pretty good, both provide a stellar buzz, and I can, and have, bought them without hesitation when I needed a good pick-me-up. If you are skeptical of these shots because they are cheap and at a Wal-Mart, do not be afraid - these yummy little powerhouses do their intended purpose and then some.

Packaging:4
This is a perfectly serviceable package, but you can definitely tell this is a discount product from it. You have some very basic an bland colors, a very standard 5 Hour Energy bottle and a gargantuan mountain of text - none of which is listing the caffeine content. The design is OK but there are some very basic things they could do to really clean things up.

Firstly, they have some of the text in black on blue, and some on white on blue, and all around makes reading the super-small text very hard. Reading the ingredients list is near impossible, and all of the text on here is jumbled together. There is all this silly copy that sounds like straight out of the energy shot handbook and means nothing but takes up room. "Wake Up, Feel Great, Live Healthy, Balanced Energy, Increased Focus, Athletic Endurance" and so on. It is a lot of copy for a small package, and nowhere in there is the caffeine content. Eternal energy has some cool ingredients in it - but you just can not tell with this layout.

Taste: 8
Eternal comes in 4 flavors, Berry, Tropical Punch, Pomegranate and Grape. I could not find the tropical punch, but was fortunate enough to find the other three flavors, all for less than a buck at the Walmart. While the pomegranate was my least favorite, tasting bland and not at all like pomegranates, the grape and the berry were both most excellent. In both cases the flavor was not exactly real, but definitely identifiable - like a Dum Dum lollipop. It was a fake berry and fake grape flavor, but it still was pretty yummy. There was enough sweetness in this for the whole thing to be enjoyable, and no chalkiness or bitterness that you come to expect from energy shots. I think I liked the berry just a little more than the grape, but both were delicious and went down nice and smooth.

Buzz:8
There is an energy profile in here I did not expect from such an inexpensive drink, and one that I really enjoyed seeing too. You have to work to read the ingredients list posted on the side because of the color contrast, but there are some very cool ingredients listed.

While of course there is the usual overload of B vitamins, there is a great boost of caffeine in here - 220ish MG, enough to get you moving again and get that great caffeinated pumped up feeling. THey help the boost with an undisclosed amount of taurine, Quercetin (the thing Lance Armstrong's drinks keep promoting), Green Tea extract, elderberry extract, your daily vitamin C needs, and they even threw some yerba mate and grape seed extract in here as well! This really is a powerful drink with some extra cool ingredients, and that is not even considering they made it with no calories as well.

I love the energy blend in here - it is not only powerful, but gives you the sense that you have actually done your body a little good too. You don't feel the energy for that long - maybe 3 hours, but then t tapers off with a nice natural finish that does not leave you taking a nap soon after. It is tasty enough that drinking it is a pleasure and not a task, like most other energy shots do. I just wish they advertised all the good stuff in here more, and took all that useless " Tastes great - less filling" stuff off their bottle.

Walking through the local King Soopers I spied a new exciting energy shot - made even more exciting by the way it embarrassed my kids too - looking like a sex toy as much as an energy shot. Taking it to the gym was fun too, specially when the plastic peeled off and it was really just a energy-shot-infused battery-free vibrator I was drinking out of. I know that some naive people wight look at this shape and not think it was meant for the bedroom, but pretty much anyone wit hormones would be a little giggly seeing this package without the wrapper.

fortunately, was a pretty powerful energy-shot-infused dildo too, with a little more caffeine and energy than I was prepared for at the gym. It is a pretty intense shot with an intense flavor and weird texture. Just to put a stop to all the madness, The next few times it was brought to the gym it was split between my son and I, poured into normal shaped water bottles and diluted with normal water. This helped the flavor, the texture and those WTF looks we got sucking long drinks of it out of it on the treadmill.

Packaging:7
I will be the first to say I find the energy/protein shot that comes in a translucent vibrator is just plain wrong. I thought it was cool the very first time i saw a drink come in it - in that case it was a clearly marked TEST TUBE called Blutonium. At least then it was in a thematic package - sold as a new chemical and coming in that shape. But why do you a sex toy in a gym drink? A Barbell shape, maybe. But what are they trying to say here? I really see no point in making this energy shot in a sex toy. I mean, people say that sex is great for a good workout, but I don't think that is what they are trying to go for here.

The good news is they did a great job on the wrap of the tube, listing all their ingredients (including the caffeine content) very nicely and cleanly, without excess verbiage and useless information. It is a vey high class quality job, and one which really works.

In other words, keep the design, lose the dildo.

Taste:3
If you were to fill a dildo up with anything, don't tell me that one of the things that cross your mind ISN'T going to be jello. Of Course it is going to be Jello, and that is just what they did. Sorta. Both flavors I tried, the orange and the berry, have the consistency of Jello that was did not quite set - like you added too much water or you messed up on the timing. Either way, it has a very distinct thick, slightly-gelatinous, taste which is a little off-putting.

On top of that, these are about as sweet as you can get with calorie free sweetener and not feel like you just licked the insides of a chemical plant. Neither one of the flavors I tried, the orange or the berry, were particularly bad, but I am not going so far as to say they were good either. They were just a bit...intense. The flavor profile is very heavy, enough so that diluting with water really helped.

Buzz:9
I really did like the effects of Super Energy Shot - and it was used to great effect in the gym. For the week I tried this out, the boost it provides was a little too strong, leaving me pumped and a quite a bit jittery too. I did have a great workout, but I felt a bit TOO wired. My son tried it when he went with me and it gave him queasiness too. I don't know if it was just early morning, or there is something in here I am not seeing to give it that extra power or maybe it is purely psychosomatic, but I definitely felt the rush from it, and it lasted from before the workout to the late morning - a good 4 hours later.

The thing is, it is not really just the caffeine content doing this. There is only 200mg of caffeine in here - which is not really a huge amount. I regularly bring hydrating energy drinks with more caffeine than this to the gym and had a decent time with no lasting jitters and powerful rush. There might be a little extra caffeine from the green tea and yerba mate they add, but it is probably not too much. On top of that, Super Energy Shot has Taurine, Tyrosine, and Inositol, so nothing out of the ordinary for energy shots - no Yohimbe or thermogenic stuff, just a plain-old standard energy shot mixture.

Finally. Some things are just such simple ideas when it comes to caffeinated drinks that I am not surprised most of the market has not come out with a beverage that covers it. For example, people used energy drinks to keep awake while driving, so drink companies came out with their caffeine products in gum form so it is more convenient on the go. Same holds true for protein energy drinks for helping muscle workouts in the gym.

Next on the list for the big drink companies to try their hand at is hydrating energy drinks, something that only a handful of niche energy drinks, such as Hydrive, have released. Well now some big players like Coca Cola and Rockstar are trying their hand at the fake Kool Aid-esque salty drinks, and really the marriage of these two beverages is just a given. This is one of those products that should have some out years ago. NOS Active Energy is the first of the Big Boys I found at my local convenience store - and according to all the press releases this is a big deal for the Coca Cola crew, who seem to be favoring NOS over their legacy Full Throttle line.

Packaging:8
This is in just about what you would expect an energy ade to come in - a clear PET bottle with a sliver of lid. It looks good - and there is a lot of it to be drunk too, which is fine. Thee i really nothing special here, but the design is all-right, and they were nice enough to list all their ingredients including the caffeine content as well. While I personally would have increased the NOS logo to emphasize their branding, it is still a decent job without any real gotchas.

Taste:9
Raspberry Lemonade is like Powerade Strawberry Lemonade only with the added benefit of the caffeine kick. Gatorades and Powerades were meant for a specific purpose - and this NOS is no different. Having it as an energy drink just to keep you awake during the day is missing the point. This is made for times when an active workout it leaving you dehydrated and tired. Just drinking it if not active it tastes like salty Kool Aid. But , if you just finished a heavy workout or a couple hours in the yard, This is Mana from heaven! It turns from just an ordinary drink so something special that instantly quenches your thirst as well as picks you up.

There could be something mental about this too, but I know that I have actually chosen this over beer after spending the afternoon tilling and mowing and raking - it really hits the spot.

Buzz:8
Yes, it is a good 221mg of caffeine, but that is in the entire 22 ounce bottle. That means that even though that sounds like a lot of energy, it really has as much caffeine per ounce as your basic Monster or Red Bull.

So yes, it is not a lot of caffeine, but it is when you think of how easy it is do slam down a bottle of this yummy lemonade. Unlike carbonated sodas, it is a little too easy to drink down the bottle in a few minutes, leaving the rush of caffeine to come on pretty strong. I tried this a couple times, both before during and well after a workout, and I can definitely tell the difference in energy boost as well as recovery. As a regular energy drink for anytime use, I would probably shy away from it, but the potassium and sodium flush back into your body plus the caffeine to speed energy is really a fantastic mix.

Just because Nos Active Energy has Active in the title it is healthy in terms of ingredients, as this THE MOST UNNATURAL DRINK I I HAVE EVER TRIED. The only thing Iin here that did not come from a lab somewhere is the water, and I am even suspect about that. Excepting for the water, NOS contains a whole slew of unpronounceable ingredients, such as Sodium Hexametaphosphate (a preservative), Potassium Sorbate (another preservative), Potassium Phosphate and Potassium Benzoate (Still another preservative), Calcium Disodium EDTA (could it be, YES! A fourth preservative), sweetened by Sucralose and Acesulfame Potassium, and made to look and taste pretty thanks to artificial flavors and colors.

Whey Up knows how to make their protein drinks taste like smoothies, and the caffeine variety is no different. The berry has that lovely tart sweetness and slight acid tang of a yogurt smoothie, but so much easier to swallow. The good thing is that if you like the taste of a yogurt protein shake, you will love this drink. There is not even a hint of caffeine and all you taste is just that yummy milky sour taste.

I have been wanting to try out Whey Up for a long time, but the cost of a bottle was always a little prohibitive to me. I dont mind spending a little for an energy drink, but the three bucks or more this usually sells for is a little stepp for me - seeing as I have a fridge of caffeinated goodies to play with already chilling in my bertha, me energy-drink fridge.

Fortunately, one day my local 7 11 got their pricing mixed up, and I was finally able to exact my revenge for that time they gave me a counterfeit 5 dollar bill as change and would not exchange it. I was able to walk out of there with three Whey Ups for less than the cost of one at GNC. I tried two of these out at the gym, and one while trying to code up a web site late night.

Packaging:9
Whey up has gone a very long way from their first product line - coming in a big aluminum can. Now whey up looks like a real workout drink, coming in a nice clean attractive PET bottle. It is good to see that a drink with such promise has evolved their look over the years to a point in which it is a very serious looking workout drink.

Their design is a very nice and clean swirl pattern, very busy, but still calling attention to the major benefits of this drink. It looks very pro - like something that a big sporting manufacturer would produce. Every ingredients is labeled in non-intrusive way, along with their caffeine and protein content, and it still looks like something I would happily take to a trendy gym and pull out of an expensive gym bag - not that I go to a trendy gym or anything (as long as I don't pull out a bottle of Jack Daniels to work out with, I doubt anyone would even pay attention).

Taste:9
Whey Up tastes yummy - if you get into yogurt based drinks. The whey and berry flavors in here give Whey Up a definitely flavor of a thick yogurt shake, although that is not really a bad thing. For one thing, it is not really thick - it just tastes like it should be. It has that litte bit of chalkiness that makes the whole drink very cloying and puckery.

Strangely, the cloying and sour works in its favor. You can definitely feel this drink working, kinda like slugging a V8 when you are hung over. Whey Up is a drink that you take seriously, and drinking it gives you a few seconds of pause. I could almost feel the protein and caffeine kick into my body, preparing me for an intense gym workout. Whey up is certainly not a drink to just have when you are tooling around on the computer trying to concentrate on coding - moments after consuming you will feel an urge to start lifting things and going for a quick few laps around the house.

Buzz: 8
Going along with their theme of building a workout drink right, they don't add any of the garbage that are in sports drinks and chemicals before doing something healthy for your body. The 22mg of protein in here is from whey and not soy, so it is a better form of protein. Also the 150mg is a nice boost without really getting you pumped. By the end of the workout I was not feeling tired, but it is not like I was feeling any sort of rush from it either. It seems like this is really a great pre-workout drink to get you to the gym and pumped while you are there, but it is not such a good one to help you recover from an intense workout afterwards. So don't expect a boost from it, a much as a more intense workout.

Besides the caffeine and protein, I like the ingredients list. They sweeten things with sucralose, which makes for the fewer calories than if they used sugar, no preservatives, and the only non-natural ingredients in any of their formulas that I see if a little food coloring. There is a few energy drink ingredients in here too, like inositol, glucurolactone and the required B vitamins (after all, you can not make any product these days with the word energy and not have B vitamins in them). Overall, if it were not for the face that these are so damn expensive, I would add them to my regular workout regimen.

I was looking for this new monster flavor for quite a long time, since I saw it showing up on blogs and heard friends talking about it. Yet no matter where I looked for it, there was no sign. Little did I know I had to look at the coffee drinks to find them away from all the workout supplements and energy drinks.

I imagine it is an issue with distributors and shelf space, either way I am so glad I finally came across this yummy workout treat. Monster muscle is very different than all the dozens of Monsters out there. This one is not only non-carbonated but also thicker than you would expect - almost like a real shake. I see why they put there with the biggest, but isn't even close to any sort of coffee drink. Monster Muscle belongs next to the powders. EAS and other sports / nutrition drinks.

Packaging : 9
this is exactly what monster needed for their package designers, a unique specific target group - and they go after them with a vengeance. This design screams put to muscleheads that this is THE thing they need for the gym, blending in the Monster logo, unexpected appealing over the top MUSCLE wording All wrapped in folds of brown silk backgrounds. You know going into this drink that it is a drink specially formulated to appeal to gym rats and pretty much nobody else. They do a great job listing the protein, caffeine and ingredients clearly and prominently on the can, and making it look so pretty and brutal at the same time.

I know it took lawsuits and court orders before they got round to listing the caffeine content, but while I am very against stricter drink regulations, knowing how much caffeine my monster has is a good thing.. The usual dumb paragraph these written by 50 year olds trying to appeal to teens didn't even irritate me like they usually do. Overall this is a really decent job.

Taste:8
I had literally no idea what to expect from this Monster . They list this as a coffee shake. But seeing as this drink is not really being marketed to the coffee drinker, I did not hold up much hope that this would taste like a regular coffee. Most protein drinks end up having a sour chalky flavor to them, which does not lend itself well witness coffee flavors.

For a protein shake Monster did about as good as expected, with a nice smooth ultra thick coffee shake with no bitter notes from the caffeine nor chalkiness of the protein. What I really appreciate is that they managed to make something something so thick not taste really heavy. The flavor was still light enough to make thus pretty enjoyable, although knocking one of these back while working out would coat my mouth too much to enjoy it. Now don't expect this to taste like real coffee, as it has about as much in common with that as it does with

Buzz:8
It is fine that it is too thick for taking to the gum, as there is really nothing in here to help during a workout or cardio session. This is really good as a pre-lifting drink, something to help you get pumped and energized before lifting heavy metal. There is nothing in here to help hydrate or recover from exercise, so to drink this properly you should down it a little while before getting down to business.
As for what it does have, there is more whey protein in a Muscle Monster than your body can even metabolize (25g), a moderate dose of caffeine(160mg), and some energy stuff lime b vitamins. The important things here is the caffeine and protein, and while I would have loved a bit more caffeine, and it would have been nice to see other weightlifting supplements in here like creative, it is still decent enough that I can see working this onto my lifting routine occasionally.

G Fuel is not the drink mix you expect it to be. This stuff is put out by Gamma Labs - the ones behind many of those sports supplements you can find in GNC and other weightlifting shops. They sell big jugs of testosterone boosters and pre-workout formulas and such - and their packaging makes this look like something pre-made for powerful workouts in the gym.

Turns out that this is actually made for those who prefer virtual workouts - those who down pizza and onuts a while performing great feats of physical agility with their joysticks while downing 2 liters of Mountain Dew or Rockstars. The only difference is instead of washing down their gamer snacks with loads of energy drinks, they can now guzzle super-sweet G Fuel energy drinks and get a bit of brain boosting power with their energy boost.

Truthfully, I was a bit bummed when I realized that these were not powders I could take to the gym. They came in that brushed steel package looking like something out of a lab - and they even sent me a cool shaker so I could mix it all up on my way out the door. It just did not seem like this would be the thing you would take to then sit on your ass and whip out Mortal Combat. I liked it - actually I liked it a lot, but it took me a while of drinking down these powders before I was able to take it for the right circumstance.

Packaging: 8
Now that I get it, everything seems to make a bit more sense. However, I still think this look is better for the gym than sitting next to a bag of Ruffles. They even sell it in those giant fat containers like they sell protein powders. I like the idea of targeting gamers, but I am not sure that this is the way to do it. For testing, when my son threw his birthday party and there were these along with some Diet Mountain Dews for a Mortal Combat marathon, the Diet Mountain Dews were demolished, and only a few brave souls took the time to find a glass, mix in the powder and drink. I think it is a good idea, but I am not sure a powdered stick that you need to futz with is what people in a 19 hour marathon of violent disturbing action games is really looking for.

That being said, it is very pretty. It is also waterproof - ish if you accidentally spill something on the package. Every stick labels the information clearly, and the caffeine content is right there in the ingredients list. I like their overall look, but I think it misses the target audience they are shooting for.

Taste:8
G Fuel comes in four flavors - Pink Lemonade, Blue Ice, Fruit Punch and Lemon Lime. There might be a little accounting for personal taste here, but when you come down to it these all taste like yummy Kool Aid-esue sport drinks heavily sweetened and brightly colored. I mean BRIGHTLy colored too - the lemon lime looks like something you took accidentally in the lab and the blue looks light it would glow under UV light. These puppies are FULL of food coloring and look most awesome when sitting around with a bunch of other people drinking boring drinks.

As far as all the flavors, the flavors are all so sweet I just can not imagine adding it to just the recommended 12 ounces of water. This stuff is way too damn strong for that - by about half. Adding a package into about 20-24 ounces is strong and sweet enough. If they are trying to make a drink that would fit in a 12 ounce cup, you could really use half this package to achieve a much better flavor.

The only other downside I saw was that their mix did not really dissolve all too well - they even sent me with a shaker to help dissolve the drink with water. Some mixes I have tried dissolve right on contact, but the pieces of powder were sometimes a little clumpy and did not dissolve fully when I got to the bottom of the cup. Really, this is not a big deal, but it makes whatever container you are drinking it out of a little more annoying to wash out once you are done.

Buzz:9
To hell with gaming - I found these to be the perfect things for me to take to work with me for those really hard coding sessions in the morning. It was provided the perfect 2pm pick-me-up when my brain was feeling too sloggy to code anymore and I still had hours to go. While I would have appreciated a bit more caffeine, I like the 150mg they put in here, along with other ingredients to help keep my brain cells popping and me alert enough to make it through the day and into dinner. In terms of energy, expect around 2 hours of extra alertness before fading.

In terms of energy, this has a bunch of taurine, and some citrulline malate which gym folk take to decrease their muscle fatigue - so I guess you can press buttons without getting tired.There is L-Dopa in here, which i am guessing is supposed to give you a mental lift of some sort - but in terms of energy drinks this ingredient is pretty rare. They also list ATP, which I am guessing to be Adenosine triphosphate. All around , this would be an excellent thing to take to the gym for a high aerobic workout - except for the fact that is really too sweet and lacks anything to rehydrate you.

In terms of nutrition, it is not bad either. There is a lot to help your brain function in here, like Tyrosene, Choline and a great antioxidant formula. I really did find that my mind was more alert and functioning after drinking this down, and love it for that alone. I have easily gone from being brain-tired coder to alert and proficient coder in about 20 minutes.

While I am still bummed that I am not going to bringing this with me to the gym anymore, I am glad that I found something to help me on those marathon 19 hour coding sessions I seem to find myself in on a fairly regular basis now. While I don't really have the time for gaming enough to need a special energy drink for it, If you need a quick mental boost - I would recommend G Fuel in a heartbeat.

Getting myself up and off to the gym is never an easy task. The only way I can manage to get in a decent workout before work and life starts up is to get to the gym at 6AM, which means getting up and ready for the gym well before that. I welcome any product that gets me through the obnoxiousness of waking up that early with pleasure. One of these products is a new gel pack called Frog Fuel - no relation to Blu Frog Energy drink.

This one at least has a reason to be called Frog, as it was made by Navy SEALs, used to increase their performance and such while performing their superheroic acts across the globe. Frogs are the common nickname for SEALs, which some say it has to do with the old SCUBA suits some of them used to wear. Either way, this drink is supposed to give the extra edge to your workout.

My only problem with this is that even though they were nice enough to send me a few samples, they did not have the caffeinated variety (which they do sell on their site) on hand. Instead sent me the non - energy variety to sample, even though that is primarily what I review. That being said, I still thought I should give it a try, even though I did not think that this would give me any energy without the caffeine. I thought it was still worth a go in the gym, and hoped it could power me through a couple workouts if nothing else.

Packaging:6

When you go to the gym you want a serious supplement - something that does not look like it came from your kid's lunch. You also need something that is easily taken, easy to figure out what you are taking and something that can take the abuse of being stuffed in a backpack or tossed in with all your other crap without being ripped or torn. Frog Fuel accomplishes three of those four goals.

Frog fuel is small - just 1 ounce of liquid, and highly concentrated. It is a snap to open and it was very clear what this has , or in this case doesn't have, with a quick look. It took a day of being in my back pocket without popping, and after opening creates very little waste that can easily be packed away.

What I cant get over is the silly catoon frog on the front. There is no way to better sell a workout shot made by and for freakin' SEALS than by having a big Popeye frog creepily grinning at me? Both the caffeine version I have not been able to try and the Blue non-energy version have the froggy on the front - with patriotic stars in the background. I get what they are going for here - but I can not imagine some big dudes in Golds Gym or Afghanistan feeling secure enough to pull one of these silly frogs from their gear around their buddies - even if he could crush you with one hand.

Taste:2

I know this is a protein shot - so the chances of this tasting like yogurt are very high. For some reason almost all protein energy products go for the mixed berry/protein sour flavor profile, and this stuff is no exception. The thing that makes Frog Fuel unique is that it is concentrated yogurt, like if you took an entire cup of the mixed berry Dannon and intensified it to the power of maple syrup. Now, I like yogurt, but the sour and chalky slurp of liquid is overwhelmingly bitter and made everyone's face who tried it pucker. Of the 6 people who tried it, I found one who thought it was pleasant enough that he would take it of his own volition. All of the other tasters, including myself, thought that this powerful honey-textured goo was far too unpleasant to take - especially if there was no immediate energy boost from it either.

Buzz:1

Nope. Frog Fuel is full of good things for you at the gym, like amino acids and taurine, then uses a great form of protein ( collagen protein is some of the best - workout-wise that you can find). I really like this idea - and there is certainly enough of that good stuff in here to make for a decent pre or post workout supplement. That being said, this will not give you any of the energy needed to push yourself that etra little bit. It will not help you recover from a very vigorous workout not will it help wake you up to get you to the gym either.

On the other version that they did not send me, there is a decent 80mg of caffeine inside - about as much as a Red Bull or a medium coffee. About 80 is all you really need for a decent gym product - and probably will do this product nothing but good.

They have a website with lots of workout ideas as well as an app with motivational quotes and such at https://archive.partnershub.com/show/4/frog-fuel/widget/frog-fuel

I am not really much of a tea drinker. Yes, I do love my Celestial Seasonings Fast Lane variety and have had quite a few good tea based energy drinks, but by and large I would rather settle down with a big cuppa joe than a cup of Earl Grey. The reasons for this are threefold. Firstly, I am impatient as hell, and I can never wait long enough or my tea to finish before I start drinking it, and secondly, teas are rarely powerful enough to keep me going through the day. Thirdly, I am not really a subtle guy, and most teas are very subtly flavored - lacking that same exquisite kick that you get from smelling a freshly roasted and filled cup of coffee.

All that might soon change, thanks to a couple ingenious inventors who loved tea but wanted to see it kicked up a notch. Between playing with tea extracts and antioxidants, and crowd-funding their venture through Rockethub - they ended up with the ONLY teas I will now ever drink outside of Fast Lane. These teas were strong, flavorful, and urned into a delicious way to both start my morning and continue my energy through the entire day.

The brilliant creators need to bring their Zest Tea to market - pronto.

Packaging: n/a
As this is a crowd funded project and not quite going all gangbusters, the package this came in is not going to be the one they hit stores with. They just wrapped it i in cellophane, and sent some ery pretty looking labels to tell me what I am drinking.

One thing to note of the actual tea package is that they are larger than my normal tea bags. While it does not necessarily look like they have more in them than your average te bag, the bag itself looks more...roomy. According to one of the founders, they did that on purpose to allow the quality teas to expand to a greater volume than the normal bags. This is important because it lets all the caffeine, flavors and nutrients diffuse more easily through the tea.

Taste: 10
I got to try four different varieties of their teas, two of them based on green tea and the other two on black - and all of them were definitely more full of a big punch of flavor than I expected from a normal tea bag. When I make tea, I usually use two teabags so I can really taste it. But in this case, all the tea bags were tried one at a time so I could really taste the flavors in the way they were meant to. As I was instructed, I followed the steeping times precisely. One of the important things to keep in mind is steeping times, as good tea can become bitter relatively quickly if allowed to steep for too long.

English Breakfast Black Tea
I was expecting the most kick from this one so I started here first. The first thing I noticed was that there was a very big punch of flavors - much more than I ever got from Celestial Seasonings. I could really taste stuff in here! More than that - it was nice and strong too. I drank a couple cups of it and felt totally and completely energized like I just downed a big Starbucks coffee drink. The difference was that I could actually taste the actual tea - without it getting all bitter and chalky in my mouth. The aftertaste was certainly the best of all of them - giving a rich sweetness for a few minutes after each sip.

Blue Lady Black Tea
This is my favorite out of all the different teas I was able to try. One thing that I have never really done with tea before is take a good whiff of it as I am drinking - I am still pretty new to tea drinking it seems. The odor this tea gives off is almost as inviting as a cup of coffee - only without the invigorating properties my mind reacts to like a pavlovian dog. It is a seriously good tea, with flavors that are fruity and a bit exotic, and at the same time it was also very floral tasting - like eating an orange in a flower shop. If i were to pick a tea to get myself up and moving in the morning this would be it.

Pomegranate Mojito Green Tea
I fond that for the most part green teas give off a certain pungent notes - something you just have to get used to if you like green tea. The flavor here is not as strong as I would have hoped for (I like my teas strong)- and this flavor was on the weaker site when compared to the others. I did taste a little mintiness and a bit of the pomegranate, but it was too subtle a taste for my untrained tea taste buds.

Cinnamon Apple Black Tea
I have to admit I kinda faked on tasting this one. I tried to drink all the teas pure to really get a good idea for the flavor, but this one just cried out for a little sugar! This one would not be my everyday drinking flavor, but could definitely see heading down this path if I ever wanted something more unique than the regular black teas. I liked it - but like drinking Chai it is not something you are normally going to be doing every day for your energy fix in the mornings.

Buzz:10
Normally, teas do not give much in the way of kick. Even an over-brewed strong Lipton has about 40-60mg of caffeine, compared to the 100 in a similar sized coffee. If you are looking for something in the energy department, tea is usually not the place to go.

The extra tea extract added to these blends is what really gets these babies humming - without really deviating from the tea experience ( they don't use any other non-tea based substance to add the caffeine). So rather than the usual 30-40mg of a green tea, Zest has around 100-130. Their black tea is even stronger - giving a boost equal to coffee in all regards.

We all have to sit tight a little bit for their products to come to market now that their funding round is over. Soon though, they promise to release their four chosen flavors to market. I still have a problem waiting the time for a good tea to steep - but in this case it is definitely worth the wait.

I know I can be a little rough on energy drink powders. I seem to get particularly picky with my supplements when they come in a mixer form - especially ones that make my water get all fizzy. They almost always use some version of baking soda and citric acid which not only produces those little tiny fizzy bubbles (very different than the big carbonated bubbles of canned soda) , but also leaves your water tasting like a mix of Kool Aid and Alka Seltzer. Energy drinks are even worse - as so many of them add salty and bitter ingredients into the mix that the baking soda flavor just puts it right into the undrinkable category. There is a reason Arm and Hammer does not come out with flavored baking soda.

Eruption Energy powder is one of those drinks too. Fortunately for them the experience is not altogether that bad, and if only the drink wasn't so weak they might have had a decent product on their hands.

Packaging:9
Eruption's packets are cool enough - they are little foil squares that do a decent job of getting their information across quickly and leave out the business, while still holding a consistent design and scheme. They even list the caffeine as well as all the other ingredients clearly and neatly on back. The foil packet is also pretty sturdy - although also easy to open. I had tossed one into my pocket and forgot about it for a day, and the thing still managed to hold up without rips or tears being knocked around with my wallet and keys without any damage. Overall, you could not want any more for a powder container than this.

Taste:6
After opening the packet up, the first thing that I saw was some deliciously bright green powder - the same color as the packaging. I love it when there is some consistency, and was hoping that it was bright enough to make my drink that color too. Unfortunately, the powder turned a yellowish-green in the small bottle of water I added this to. Still, I liked the initial small of the powder, and there wasn't any clumping as I easily poured the mix out of the little packet.

Unfortunately, Eruption could not escape the saltiness of the baking soda concoction. It could have been a whole lot worse - but the whole thing tasted more like a carbonated lime Gatorade than a soda - which I think was what they were going for. I added it to about 12 ounces of water too, so the flavor was strong without being overly - potent. If you don't mind the flavor of sports drinks then you wont mind Eruption. If this has any more kick to it I might have even tried this more than twice.

Buzz:3
Unfortunately, the buzz in eruption is so weak I can not see ever trying this again. There is a whole 45mg of caffeine in here, and when you add that to 12 ounces of energy this gives off about as much energy as a diet coke. If it were not for the fact this is a powder this would not even register on the DMD scale to be reviewed on the site (almost all products I review should at least have as much caffeine as a Diet Mountain Dew).

Its really a shame because there is a whole bunch of other great ingredients too, but there is just not enough of them to make much of a difference energy-wise either. On top of that, they managed to make a drink with all natural ingredients - from the stevia as a sweetener to using veggies for the coloring. This is really a cool thing - and should be somewhere on the packaging as it is a really unique thing.

There is quite a lot of taurine in here (1500mg) along with Ginseng, Inositol and L-Carnitine to try to boost energy levels. To help focus and get your brain in gear, they have a combination of Ginko Biloba and Coenzyme Q10, which is a great combo. It also has your vitamins C, D, and B, not to mention electrolytes to aid you as a workout drink.

All in all it is a great combo - great physical and mental ingredients, plus nutrition and sports recovery. For being a baking soda filled stevia sweetened soda it is decent as well. If they doubled their formula this would be fantastic - but it is just way too little of everything to get much notice.

Protein to Go does not make their caffeinated French Vanilla Latte energy shots any more. At first I thought this was because of the exorbitant four bucks you need to spend on the energy shot - which really does not seem worth any two ounces of liquid. But no... Turns out the reason they are not making it any more might have something to do with the recall of the product - Seems that unbeknownst to me when buying this at my local 7 11, this drink might contain Clostridium botulinum– a bacterium which can cause life-threatening illness or death. The good news is this energy shot did not kill me - the bad news is that they are still selling it in stores around me even after the recall - and it really is not that great a shot to begin with.

Truthfully, I was not so excited to give this energy shot a try - mainly because the combination of coffee flavor, protein and caffeine in an energy shot is not destined for greatness. As a matter of fact,t he only time a coffee energy shot was any good was in Rip It's Java Mite. Other than that one time, the combo is a bad idea. When you add in all that whey protein, you are begging for a bad time - especially now that it seems you can get a deadly bacteria in it as well.

Packaging:8
The overall look works pretty well for all the PTG shots - they have a unique bottle shape,and they do a nice job making the graphics that are consumer friendly - meant for all sorts of occasions than just muscleheads at the gym. You can tell from the outset that this is a drink meant for any active people - and would work just as well being pulled form the inside of a handbag as well as a gym bag.

They do a decent job listing the ingredients too - listing the caffeine content as well as all the other information in a very clear and easy to read manner. If I were to package a drink that would cause people to have double vision, blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth, and muscle weakness, this would be a great way to unassumingly make consumers suck it down.

Taste:3
At the time I drank this - I had not known that it could contain evil. As a matter of fact, this is still sold in all the stores surrounding me - and now I have to do my duty of going around and pulling them from the 7 11 store shelves myself and informing the manager they are selling tainted products.

Now, looking back, I wonder if I could taste the botulism, or if the mixture of coffee and sour whey protein and caffeine just left a bad taste in my mouth because it tasted bad. Either way, this was not an enjoyable drink to have even before I found out I just drank a recalled product.

The closest thing I found to this flavor is a Coffee yogurt - only this had a sharp sour cream flavor to it too, like I was drinking a mixture of berries and french vanilla coffee - only mixed up with plain yogurt. It was all around not a pleasant experience.

Buzz:0
If it were not for the killer bacteria in here, I would say that they had at least a decent amount of energy and nutrition in here, but now I am not so sure.

There was around 125mg of caffeine in here, which is more than enough for a good gym workout - and when you add in the 28 grams of protein, it is a decent combination of ingredients. Mind you there were over 100 calories in this little shot - which is a lot for a drink that proposes to be all for the gym and staying healthy, but it is expected with all this protein as well.

If it were not for the fact that these drinks are not being made any more by PTG and the rest on the shelves might get you violently ill, I would actually say this works well for the gym. There was enough energy to get me going to the gym, and enough protein to really fuel my muscle routine as well. Sadly, it seems this drink is also just what I need to get me tot he hospital too.

The thing that separates Java Gum from the rest of the dozens and dozens of (This officially makes over 50 types of energy gum and Chews I have reviewed!) other products out there is that Java Gum is , uh, truthfully... nothing. If you have never tried a caffeine gum before, this might be something new or exciting, but seeing as big players such as Wrigleys, Rockstar, Go Fast and Amp have all come out with a gum version of their standard products, you would be hard pressed to find many energy junkies out there who have not come across them in the past.

I was hoping that, since this product won an award from CSNews for a "best of 2012", they would have done something original - like make their java gum slightly coffee flavored or use some sort of coffee-like ingredients. But no - this is just a chicklet wrapped in foil - like the dozens of other energy gums which have been out in the market for the last couple decades. I am guessing that the reason they won the award is that they decided to pay the steep 125$ entry fee to sign up for the category and there were not that many other entries that year. With a standard energy boost, generic packaging, short flavor time and the fact that for me to find this I had to order it off Ebay, I can not imagine that this product will be sticking around very long.

Packaging:6
Java Gum does about as well as any other energy gum has - except for the fact that this one does a nice job at listing the caffeine content on the gum, which is nice. They also compare this to a 10 ounce cup of coffee or an energy drink, which makes for some pretty weak coffee not EVEN the caffeine of an energy drink. The rest of the design is pretty standard fare - just a paper sleeve around 10 squares of gum - although the generic and easy to read block lettering makes this appealing to just about everyone - not just caffeine fiends. While there is certainly nothing wrong with this type of design, it is also not terribly unique or innovative either.

Taste:6
The good thing about Java Gum is it does not taste caffeine-y or sour, and has a very pleasant flavor. I tried the two flavors they have, both a peppermint and a spearmint, both of which were very serviceable. I did not get any sort of blast of freshness or felt like my mouth was any cleaner after chewing a couple pieces, and the flavor lasted a good minute or so - about as long as most of these kinds of gum have their flavor. After about 3 minutes, all the caffeine and flavor was gone - this is not gum that you will want to have hanging around in your mouth for very long - as it does not take more than 5 minutes or so to turn hard and like candle wax in your mouth.

Buzz: 5
Java Gum has a little more caffeine than your average chicklet, 65mg as opposed to most other caffeine gum that has 40-50. However, there is certainly more powerful chicklet-type gum out there. For me to feel any boost or just to kill my caffeine craving I definitely needed two pieces of the gum, and the buzz ain't bad. I did like having the convenience of energy stashed in my pocket as opposed to futzing around with an energy drink, but it also lacked all theother cool stuff energy drinks have too. No Vitamins, no minerals, no extra energy boost, no mental clarity, just regular gum - only with some caffeine in it.

Java Gum is not bad, it is just another me-too product in a long line of energy gum already languishing on the market. This had the chance to be original - to really embrace their name and do something - anything - with coffee as their name implies, but that is wasted here on just another food that happens to have caffeine in it too.

I love the idea of a super sour energy drink. That is why for a very long time I stayed away from it - because I was sure that whatever concoction Rockstar came out with they were not going to live up to my Warheads-esque notion of how a super sour drink should be. I wanted something that would make my teeth hurt and my jaws ache, something that would make it hard to drink the can in one go.

That is not Rockstar SuperSours - which is about the same sour as you would find in sour gummi bears. Now I liked it overall - The Green Apple variety is a very decent green apple energy drink and there is a good deal of caffeine to get a body all sorts of energy, but I wanted so much more out of it.

Packaging:8
Like most Rockstars which are hitting the shelves these days, their can design has definitely stepped it up a notch. The SuperSour look is still very much in tune with the grungy xtreme look, but the colors used and the font style for the SuperSour logo look almost retro. I love the combination of the green and pink to really get across that the flavor is supposed to be just as disconcerting as the can itself.

Beyond the purposely jarring scheme they have going on, they do all the other stuff you are supposed to do with energy drinks too. The can is labeled on 2 or 3 sides, so no matter which way you hold it the brand face outward. It is easier for stockers to put on the shelf that way too. They list the caffeine and all the other ingredients nicely. While this is not going to be saved as art, for a 16 ounce can you could not get a whole lot better than this.

Taste:6
SuperSour Apple does not taste bad. It actually tastes pretty decently for a full-on sugary slightly tart soda. The reason that it only gets a 6 is because I really wanted this to be a super sour drink. It is like when you go for an Atomic Fireball candy and end up with just a cinnamon bubblegum. Supersours should be that over-the-top flavor that turns your mouth inside out, or at least makes you feel like you have just sucked on a lemon. I was hoping for that jaw aching feeling you get when you put Warheads or other sour candies in your mouth, but that overly-pungent reaction did not happen - the sour just really never was brought on.

Now in terms of a tart granny apple flavor this does fine. The taste reminded me of a Caramel Apple - full of juice and sweetness, with just a touch of darker heavier sugar to offset the tartness. If this were not a SuperSour and just a caramel apple flavor this would have gotten some mad props.

Buzz:8
I find it harder and harder to drink full calorie energy drinks. SuperSours are loaded with calories (280) and a third of a cup of sugar, which I find hard to knock down like I can with less sugary or low calorie versions. That being said, it did provide a nice little energy boost - and a not-so-fun crash about hours after too.
There is certainly enough caffeine to get a person moving, with 240mg of the good stuff packed in here - along with some taurine, inositol and ginseng. It is a good mix, and one that cuts through the density of the drink to give a nice little buzzy energy. Once all that sugar wears off though, prepare for a nice little nap to keep moving.

I have not really had much of a crash from energy products lately, so this one took me by surprise - and I found myself looking longingly at the stack of toilet paper at an end cap of Target and wondering if I could use them as a mattress. Fortunately, my kids force fed me a Xyience they had on a shelf and 20 minutes later I was humming again, and now I know to be prepared.

Eco Lips caffeinated Energy Lip Balm

Clif Bar - Peanut Toffee Crunch

Xyience Melon Mayhem energy drink

Team Realtree Orange Blaze energy drink

Mountain Dew Kickstart Orange Citrus

Runa Clean Energy

Alert Energy Gum

International Delight On-The-Go Mocha Iced Coffee

Eternal Energy shots

Body Fortress Super Energy Shot

Nos Active Energy Raspberry Lemonade

Whey Up Protein plus Energy berry drink

Monster Muscle Mocha Protein Shake

G Fuel Energy mix

Frog Fuel Protein shot

Zest Tea

Eruption Energy powder - Lava Lime flavor

Protein to Go French Vanilla Latte energy shot

Java Gum - spearmint and peppermint

Rockstar SuperSours Green Apple energy