Alden Bates' Weblog

When I were a lad, we had this Soda Stream device, which you jammed a bottle into and pressed a button, and whatever was in the bottle would become carbonated. Then you'd stick some of the concentrated syrup into the bottle and get an instant soft drink. Two of the syrup flavours you could get were "monster" themed, and were blue and green, though I don't remember anything about them other than that. This story is almost completely irrelevant to this post but what the hey?

At almost $4 a can, I probably won't be trying Monster Energy again. OK, so it does come in a 473ml can, though the text on the side says "2 servings per can", I have to wonder how many people would buy a can and then only consume half of it. There isn't a precise figure printed on it for the amount of caffeine in it either - it just says "Energy blend" 2500mg (250ml cans usually have about 80mg of caffeine) and lists the caffeine along with a bunch of other ingredients included in said blend. It also says "Limit 3 cans per day", which is surprisingly high given the size of the can.

It has the usual vaguely-caramel energy drink taste, but is actually smoother as stated on the can. Not nearly as tangy as Red Bull, for instance. If they halved the can size (and price) I'd recommend it.

Doing a Google blog search for your competitors and leaving comments advertising your own drink: cunning, or a wee bit sleezy? Well, Ms Random Employee, I'd try 6 Hour Power, but unfortunately I was unable to determine whether it's available in New Zealand...

Apparently I should be boycotting Rockstar anyway, because according to The Truth about Rockstar Energy Drink, it was invented by a homophobe^[1].

...

After drinking this, I was catapaulted into a world of rock stardom, touring the world, hanging out with groupies, and the associated slide into a mire of drugs and rehab clinics. And then the caffiene buzz wore off and I was a computer programmer again.

Rockstar (or Rockst*r) is a product of the US, comes in a can the same size as Demon and Relentless, and has the standard energy drink taste. I suspect we'll be seeing more energy drinks in cans this size...

Looks like the energy drink market's getting busy again.

Cola-flavoured energy drink! Thanks, Demon! (NSFW)

Added to the usual caffeine disclaimer is: "Also not for anyone who doesn't think Jordan has a nice set of... eyes :)" Is Jordan that well known in NZ?

So, lately Fucor have added Lemon V to their range, giving us a choice of regular (green), "dark" (black), diet (silver), berry (red), or lemon (yellow). Now, lemon covered a fair range of flavours - why just in the Coca Cola stable there's Lift, which has a fairly smooth taste, Lift Plus, which has a harsher, more chemical flavour, right through to Diet Coke with Lemon, which tastes like dishwashing detergent. Lemon V tends more towards the Lift end of the Lemon Spectrum, I think. I'd be interested to know exactly why lemon as a flavour seems to be so popular, but in the meantime I'm hanging out for V Cola.

Demon "Killer Tropo", also introduced recently, contains orange, mango and passionfuit juice. And according to the ingredients list on the back, a hell of a lot more apple juice than the other three combined. The result is unsurprisingly a tropical fruit taste, albeit slightly-tart. It comes in a black and brown can. Text on the back states "If you've had a back, sack & crack wax... put this can down!"

... Yeah.

Not really a fan of that one either, but good on them for giving us a choice of flavours.

Surprise! Coca Cola has a new energy drink out on the market (apparently e² didn't last?) called Relentless. It comes in a 440ml dark-brown can with the name written up the side in a fancy Germanic font. Some of the letters have three-pronged grappling hooks hanging off them, and there's a faint image of a head made of muscle on one side. I suspect that from the can size and colour scheme, it's aimed at competing with Demon Energy.

Relentless has a sort of sweet but tangy taste which is close to resembling most of the other energy drinks out there. Hey, CC, why don't you make an energy drink which tastes like Coke? You could call it "Coke Plus" or something.

Random thought: why is it petrol stations (or gas stations for the yanks) sell matches and cigarettes? Fire + petrol is bad.

Made by the same people who make Demon Energy, of course. The chief difference between this and Demon, other than the gold and white Imperial Dalek packaging, seems to be that it's sugar free. They haven't got the Angel Energy website up and running yet, but I'm presuming it won't have pictures of naked men hanging by their penises.

...

Mental scarring! Aieeeeeeee!

For reasons which are currently beyond me, Googlebot has started requesting search result pages from the MT search script I have installed here. Some 500 or so of them yesterday. I have no links to search pages, and many of them appear to be for banal words like "since" and "though", I can only assume that some spam page somewhere has linked to them. Seems odd that it's only Googlebot. I stuck a disallow for it in my robots.txt, though I'm hoping the URLs might still pop up in Google Webmaster Tools so I can see why Googlebot's been hitting them.

QF Energy comes in a very nice shade of Decepticon purple. Kudos to the designer - it's a very nice can indeed. It doesn't, however, explain what QF stands for (Quaff Fast? Quite Feisty? Quarter Flounder?) and the website is just as enigmatic, stating "You are QF. QF Energy is all around you." which suggests that QF Energy is akin to the Force. My midichlorian count before and after drinking it was much the same, however.

The drink itself has a very grape-like flavour, which makes a pleasant change from all those Red Bull clones. So far as energy effect goes, it has roughly the same amount of caffiene as most other energy drinks.

QF Energy is made in Queensland, Australia. Regardless, I give it an 8 out of 10. Nice!

Supplied in a generous 440ml can (I paid $3 for a can, which is about the same price as a 250ml can of Red Bull or a 350ml bottle of V), this energy drink looks like it should be being sold at Hell Pizza, and is manufactured by Energy Products Ltd in Takapuna, Auckland. Their website has soft porn and a naked man hanging upside-down by his penis. This makes it 100% awesome.

It contains, according to the can, 141mg of caffeine (which would be about right given the same proportions as the usual 250ml can energy drinks). Disclaimer says "Not recommended for children, pussys, lactating women, or individuals sensitive to caffeine." and there's various other text obviously designed to appeal to a demographic approximately half my terrestrial age. Or possibly Satanists.

The energy drink itself, disappointingly, is just another Red Bull clone. I was expecting a tinge of brimstone or the blood of virgins or something. Man, all that build up.

To sum up: generic, but has amusing packaging.

Go Fast! appears to be an American product, though this can seems to have been imported from Australia. It contains Australian Honey ("The best honey for optimum taste" - my inner Kiwi is making a face right now), taurine, ginseng, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, ginkgo biloba, guarana, riboflavin, niacin, and milk thistle herb ("provides good kidney and liver health"). Quite what the cumulative effects of these ingredients is likely to be, I'm not sure. It sounds like a mad scientist's idea of how to make an energy drink. It also describes itself as "The athlete's energy drink" (Note that in general caffeine plus exercise is not recommended).

It tastes... very tangy. There's a definite hint of honey there, but the main flavour is very harsh and sharp, not unlike Red Bull, and with the same lingering aftertaste (albeit still with a hint of honey).

In the search for an energy drink which doesn't taste like Red Bull, I raided the local New World, and found this New Zealand made drink which, as the label says, tastes very strongly of apple and is also very green in colour. It doesn't actually contain apples of course, though there are other exotic ingrediants like green tea leaf extract, Zhi-Shi (bitter orange) extract, and grapefruit extract. It's worth noting that the best before date on the bottom of this can is dated two weeks ago, so, er, this might not be at its best.

Also the can states that it contains "252mL" (Red Bull should ask them how they squeezed the extra 2mL in) and is distributed on Tahiti.

Another Austrian import. Good on for them for going against the flow and having a short squat can instead of a tall thin one, but unfortunately this is the only notable thing about Power Horse - it tastes very similar to Red Bull and Shot and Go. Seriously, it seems like every energy drink to come out of Austria tastes the same. Man, do I miss the days of Dirty Dog and its five or six different flavours (Cactus!).

And, really, a black animal on two tone background screams "Red Bull knockoff".

Also "Power Horse" sounds like the name of an anthropomorphic horse super hero.

I ambled in to my local dairy this morning to find a new energy drink on the shelves!

Tab Energy is a "low calorie energy drink" (sounds like a contradiction in terms but is just a diet drink with the usual high levels of caffeine) produced by Coca Cola. I suspect this is to supplement their current range of energy drinks (Lift Plus and e²) rather than replace them, and I'll be interested to see what demographic the advertising is aimed at.

Available in a hot pink can, Tab Energy is roughly the same colour as its packaging and tastes of strawberries.

Made in Austria, distributed by National Beverages Ltd in Auckland, this energy drink comes in an eye-catching bright YELLOW can (yellow in lower case is not sufficient to describe the yellowness of this can) which this photo does not do justice. So far as I can tell there's no particular gimmick (other than the extreme yellowness they've managed to acquire) - this is just a regular energy drink which comes in a YELLOW can, has 80mg of caffeine, and tastes almost exactly like Red Bull. It scores over Red Bull in that it's slightly cheaper, and is yellower.

Wait, is that name a "Shop and Go" pun? FOUL!

Wikipedia defines Hype as "A hyperbole, largely synonymous with exaggeration and overstatement, is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated or extravagant."

So, I'm not sure exactly why someone (It's manufactured by Mmm Int. in Holland) thought this was a good name for an energy drink. Hype comes in silver (elderberry/cranberry flavoured) and gold (which tastes vaguely like Red Bull). Gold also has slightly less caffeine than silver according to the can.

The disclaimer on the side is funny though:
"HYPE should be kept safely out of reach of those whose conversation you do not enjoy! Drinking HYPE before a BBQ may lead to excessive smack talking. Any action you get while drinking HYPE will be purely coincidental. Look for HYPE! wherever things are happening."

Those crazy Dutch!

[Edit 07/03/07: Razzmatazz no longer appear to be importing Hype]