A short time ago I discovered what I thought to be the best caffeinated mints in the world. These mints had a cool name and combined both the fun of menthol with the buzz of Guarana and called it a really cool name too - Dragon Soul. I did not think I would ever find anything quite as tasty, until now.
These new mints have an equally cool name of Dry Hard, come in a cool credit card-esque design, and are just as powerful as the Drgon Soul mints - although they seem to be even stronger. It seems much of Asia is already hooked on these little tasty bits of uber-freshness, created by Asahi, the beer giant. While Asahi is most known for their beer (they are the second biggest brewer in Japan), they are also producing sweets, freeze dried foods and baby formulas too. However, in all their products, Dry Hard seems to be the only one that is caffeinated - and certainly packs a punch! According to their website using Google Translate, their description of this product is : Super strong mint tablet for heavy users of caffeine capsule formulation. This is the sense of taste will be painful stimulus habit.
That about fits the description too. Even besides the caffeine, these little mints are very habit forming. While it might take a while for me to work through a pack of regular mints - even if they are tasty, I ate through a 50 pack of these little devils in about 3 days. I would have run out and gotten more if it did not take 2 weeks for someone on ebay to send me a pack.
Packaging:8
Mintia Dry Hard comes in cool plastic case that is slightly larger than a credit card. Carrying a pack of this around reminds me of carrying an extra cell phone battery. The pack is virtually indestructable and neatly slipped into my pocket. It also has this handy clicky opening that you could play with when you are bored, and does a great job of keeping all the minds from sliding into my pocket. Sometimes it was hard just getting one mint to slide out rather instead of three or four, but that was pretty minor.
The design of Mintia Super Hard looked very cool too. It comes in a black case with shiny writing and looks like something only cool people get to eat. The one problem is that they failed to list the caffeine content anywhere on the label. Yes - their label is in Japanese, but even in Japanese they don't bother with it. Nowhere on line or on their site do they talk about how much caffeine they have.
Taste:
It is like a super tiny peppermint midget punched me in the back of my throat! Imagine taking an Altoid and condensing it down to a quarter of the size. These things are so tiny that it is hard to think that they would carry such a lovely wallop of mintiness.
There is something else to them too - like they fill these little candies with tiny bits of crack - something to make you eat more and more and more. 1 little mint is just enough to get you hooked on the rest.
Buzz :8
You would never think that such a little mint would pack much of a punch, but it feels like there is about 20 mg or so in each little pill. Since these are so addictive, it is far too easy to down a couple hundred milligrams without effort.
The ingredients are in Japanese, of course, but their website helpfully has an English version that lists it out. Unfortunately, Mintia uses gelatin, So these who keep kosher or are vegetarians should be wary. There is lots of non nutrative sweeteners in here including sorbitol, aspartame compound and L-phenylalanine. No, it is Not terrible beautiful, but when something tastes this good I could really care less.
