Where is the classic bottle? I feel cheated that I am drinking a Pop Shoppe soda that is not in a “stubbie” bottle. Look at our other reviews if you don't know what I'm talking about. Growing up 10 minutes from Canada, Pop Shoppe played a role in my childhood and their iconic bottles were a big part of it. Actually it was more likely College Club from Rochester, NY just using their bottles after Pop Shoppe closed down in '83, but my memories are the same. My friends and I would walk down to the store, pay our quarter each and grab a bottle from the cooler. Inevitably one of us would not open the bottle with the opener at the store, and forget that it didn't have a twist off cap, so far too much time would be devoted to trying to get the bottle open on a curb or something. We were kids, we were dumb…€¦.wait I opened a bottle on a curb just last week. Okay, so I may be an adult now, but I'm still dumb apparently. My point is those bottles were a big part of the Pop Shoppe charm. Their sodas generally fall on the better side of average (read: store brand), but the fact that they come in glass bottles makes them seem more legit.

I'll try to put my bottle envy in check to review this. Flat out, it's a strange root beer. It has a slight medicinal taste to it, and it makes me think that someone mixed a bottle of root beer with a bottle of Moxie. It makes me feel like it would be the kind of root beer that would be sold from the back of wagons in the old west. I don't really think that happened, but in my dreams it did, and you have no jurisdiction over my dreams. It also has a fairly strong wintergreen flavoring to it. Somehow after all of that it is still creamy. I don't hate it. In fact I find it fairly interesting. If all root beers tasted the same this planet would be an even more boring place to live.

When you've forsworn soy and dairy where is one to turn for protein based nutrition shakes? Why would you avoid such things? Oh I don't know, maybe a little thing called allergies, or perhaps a moral stance? Either way, those people exist in the world, and they need some protein after a workout just like the rest of us. True Solution is here to help those people out. They have developed a nutrition shake that derives its protein from peas and rice. I have no idea there was protein in peas. I guess that dumb, smelly vegetable had to be good for something. Luckily their gross taste isn't noticeable in the beverage. You can definitely taste rice though, but I'm not complaining. Actually the rice flavor is as potent as the vanilla, if not more. Who hates rice though? It's the water of food stuffs. It also cuts down on the grittiness that is common in protein based drinks.

In addition to the protein there are also 23 vitamins and minerals packed into this little carton to help in recovery and to just improve your life and diet. You know you've been slacking on your diet and every little bit helps.

Overall this tastes like a sweetened vanilla rice beverage with a tad bit of stevia in it. When it's nice and cold that flavor is masked, but if you take too long sipping your shake it starts to come out more and more until it leaves you with a weird gross aftertaste. You deserve to enjoy your beverage, so drink fast my friends.

Dude, are you going to the EDM festival at the abandoned amusement park across the country? You're not? That's dumb. It's only $350 plus airfare plus you get to sleep in a cold field with like thirty thousand other people who won't shower for four days. You get to eat carnival food, pay eleven dollars for a small bottled water, and see four really good acts, ten good acts, sixteen acceptable acts and fourty-eight terrible acts. You know who's going to be there? Moby. He's coming out of hibernation.

I can't believe it. After that fantastic sales approach I just gave you, you are going to stay where you are? Moby is in your house? After all these years you didn't tell me that he's coming over? I've got a fresh copy of "Play" on vinyl I'd love to have him sign. He's in your fridge? Dude you are getting weird. Oh, it's his tea. Now we're back to a regular comfort level. How is it? Good? It's a half and half? It's a half and half green tea? Oh, that's cool. And it's sweet? How sweet? Not that sweet? Moby: good at music and good at tea. He's the modern day Renaissance Man. I bet he can fix a car. He seems like the kind of dude that could secretly fix a car. So it's a half and half; go on. It has a slight lemonade taste with no pulp but a good bite. That sounds awesome.

You know what, man. I don't have a lot of money saved up. Maybe we can just get a case of this stuff, put on some Music for the Jiltered Generation, and just play video games rather than me go to that festival. Sure, it would be fun but I don't have the time or the money for that thing.

I think it might be a stone cold fact that every American elderly woman who was a grandmother in the late 80's/early 90's drank Red Rose tea. Mine certainly did and everyone I've questioned about it came back with an affirmative response. Red Rose ruled the tea world at that time, and as an added bonus, the boxes came with little animal (Wade) figurines, which were nice for the grandchildren; everyone was a winner.

As I drank this tea all I could think of was Red Rose. This tastes exactly like how my grandmother's tea would taste cold. It's a nice black tea with a bit of sugar in it. It's actually probably about a spoonful. This is a nice genuine tea. It's not particularly fancy, but it's just black tea and sugar with a little citric acid in it. I've had many a cup of tea in my life from all sorts of companies, and this has the very specific Red Rose taste. I had other try this to confirm my thoughts and we all agreed. So where …€˜s my little figurine?

I'm pretty sure that if I was at some sort of gathering for my ladyfriend's family/friends and I was given this to drink, I would lean over and whisper/plead in her ear “Do I have to?” It would be an honest question as well, because I have no concept of how far I have to take social niceties so that I don't seem like a complete mutant. I don't often interact with “normal people” or grownups (yes I know I'm 35, but I swear I'm still a kid), and as a result I don't know how to properly act around them and I have a tendency to anger people or make them feel uncomfortable. So when someone hands you an iced tea by a company who doesn't have a great track record (and you've already turned down their offers for beer and other alcoholic beverages several times), can you say no thank you, or do you just accept it with a smile?

I will say that had I accepted with a smile, I wouldn't have been terribly disappointed. This is lacking the harshness that normally accompanies the Brisk name. It's also sweetened by a mixture of high fructose corn syrup and sucralose, which makes it more palatable. I mean sure it still tastes more like sweetened liquid than it does actual tea, but would you expect anything different?

There is no real mango in here, but it still mimics the taste at least slightly. I have to admit that this is the most reserved flavor of Brisk I have yet to encounter. Nothing is blasting you in the face. It's pretty calm on all fronts. It's still not great, but it's something I can sip on without grumbling too many complaints.

Dear readers, I was certainly not ready for today. Not ready at all. You see I go to the gym three times a week, and I have my little routine I do. It's a solitary thing that I do whilst listening to the Jen Kirkman and Julie Klausner podcasts. I've been doing it for probably about two years now. I saw the results I wanted early on, and now I'm just kind of maintaining that. Being a gentleman of 35 years I can no longer eat what I want all the time and just let my metabolism do its thing. It's fine, I actually enjoy it. Well today I ran into a friend there who is into weight lifting and I joined him and his cohort in their routine. I kept up way better than I expected and I was proud of myself. I felt worn out but good as I left the gym. It's now about two hours later and I am destroyed. It takes effort to lift my arms over my head. Tomorrow is not going to be a fun day, and I see myself getting zero work done at the print shop. It's going to be a nightmare. Seriously we did more/different exercises than I'm used to, but I didn't it were that crazy.

As things would have it, we recently received a box of these protein drinks in the mail, so what better time to down one then now? Power Crunch, who is known for their protein bars, has expanded their reach into ready to drink shakes. They've done something with these shakes that I have never come across before. It has 20g of protein in it, but it doesn't have the thick, grittiness to it that every other protein shake has. I shook the hell out of the bottle and the first sip was pretty close to what I would expect, but after that it's consistency was closer to water than anything else. It was strange, but nice for those of us who get a little skeeved out by the grit.

I don't know where the double chocolate comes into play here as all I see is cocoa on the ingredients list, but the chocolate flavor is does has is nice. It tastes like it was made from a decent bar of the good dark stuff, and not some garbage low grade filth that most chocolate drinks use. In fact the only downfall of this drink was that it was flavored with sucralose, but its inclusion is completely understandable, as this is for when you work out, and who wants to be downing real sugar then?

Okay, now I have to drag myself to band practice and hope I have the strength to play my bass. I'm such a child.

Never in my life have I said, "I need more magnesium." I'm not a heath teacher so I'm not entirely sure what magnesium does. Is it good that I have increased my intake to the maximum required daily dose in such a short period of time? Is something going to happen to me? Something good, I hope. Titanium and palladium kind of sounds like magnesium. Perhaps I'll become like a poor man's Midas where everything I touch turns to a cool metal.

Atop becoming the man behind the silvers, this drink also provides me with a pretty good mango flavor but in small doses. There is a strongness that this drink has and it's not the flavor. The flavor is good. As far as mango drinks go, this is great. There is something else in there that tastes both sour and sweet. It is completely drinkable, let it be known, but it is not going to go without a solid amount of "jazz faces."

If you don't play an instrument and feel the need to make a jazz face, this is the drink for you. If you know what magnesium does and you feel the need to get more of it, this is the drink for you. If you like mango and still like to see what happens when you bite into a lemon, you guessed it. This is the drink for you. Plus it comes in an adorable five ounce metal can and that is pretty cool. What isn't cool is that this is a supplement drink so to get the full effect, you would probably have to drink a regiment of these and that could get costly. If you, for some strange reason, need an instant dose to put you over the top of your magnesium quota, it's there for you.

At first, I had to double check this because it smells like something alcoholic. It also is deceiving since it tastes half as strong as it smells. I'm trying to come up with an example of something that is half as strong as it smells and it's a really gross thought. Someone must be really smelly or really weak to have that ratio work.

Citrus Berry? Alright. It should be switched since it's berrier than it is citrus but it's all there so I'm not complaining. It's lightly carbonated, too and isn't too bad. It's considered a "Focus" drink but it's giving me the jitters like an energy drink would. Do people take cocaine to concentrate? Isn't that an "upper?" Shouldn't weed help you concentrate since you are calm? I don't know anything. I do know that although I might be cranking through this review because my hands are moving faster than my mind will let me go. If there was no backspace key, this review would be a pile of garbage. I suppose it's letting me focus on this lightning fast cursor tear across the screen as I write a review on the drink that's making me speedy. Is that what the kids call "meta." Kids, stop supplementing and go outside. Always on those drugs. Calm down. I need some water.

Coconut water; I don't know what I like and I'm not sure what I don't like about you. I think the stuff I like might have some sugar in it. This is a little sweet but you can tell that it's "naturally" sweet and not sweetened with anything. No, I am not just reading the ingredients. I am tasting it and making an evaluation. You think I base everything off the ingredients? Sometimes I don't even read them. I just go by the seat of my pants and hope for the best.

Coconut water. This is naturally sweetened but it's also, I feel, very strong. If you are on the fence about coconut water, this might not be the place to start. There are weaker coconut waters out there which I needn't name. If you love coconut, which a lot of you do, this is going to be a fantastic treat for you. I suppose I just need to put everyone in buckets. Call me a racist, but if categorizing people by the way they like their coconut, then I'm a regular David Duke.

In the Batman mythology Dr. Penelope young worked out a way to combine Poison Ivy's plants and Venom, the chemical that gives Bane his strength, into a new formula she called Titan. It's a fast acting, small dosage version of Venom, which has some unfortunate side effects. If the Gotham world were real I would only assume that this beverage company had found a way to clean up Titan and infuse extremely small doses of it into their teas to create a powerful beverage.

I'm sure there would be a stronger version for superheroes to get a little pick me up and hydrate. Hydration is important, even to those who protect our fair city from tyranny. This though, this version is for the everyday Joe and Mary out there. It says it has caffeine and ribose in it for sustained energy, but we all know that is just hiding the fact that Titan is involved. They can call it whatever they want, as long as it gives us a little pick me up and tastes like it does. This drink is on the bitter side of the tea world, and I personally appreciate it. Far too many iced teas these days are overly sweetened and the flavor o the brew is lost in a sea of sweetness. In here you can definitely taste the tea, and it makes the beverage stand out. Also it actually tastes like peaches and not fake sweetness in that regard as well. To be more specific it tastes like the part of the peach that touches the pit. It's a weird part of the peach to strive for, as it's not as sweet as the outer part, but that's exactly what this tastes like.

My ladyfriend did not enjoy this as she said it was too bitter. That is the exact reason I love it. It tastes natural and proper. Nothing tastes artificial. I would guess that is Poison Ivy's doing. She always has had such a way with nature.

Chocolate pop sounds like it would be a good idea right? Well it is rarely good. Having drunk a couple of them in my day, I can say that it's strange first, and "just alright" second. It's not bad but it feels like something that just shouldn't be. This, though. What would you think of if I gave you this? You've got not only chocolate but maple and everyone's clichè favorite food bacon in it. Now look. You've got to be some sort of madman to think this was going to be great. Are you a madman? I did not think so.

You taste the chocolate pop in this. It's not like a chocolate really. If there was, and there probably is, chocolate candy that isn't actually milk or dark chocolate, that is the chocolate that is used. Something about the way real chocolate melts is smooth and nice. This is sharp and sweet. You do not get bacon but you do get a bit of a salty chocolate. I really searched for it when I drank it. Jay did the same as you can see in the video below. It just tastes salty. The maple might be in the tail end of the drink when the salt and "chocolate" calms down.

All in all, it's not fantastic. Seems like a better gag-gift than an actual drink. They probably don't make too many of them so I'm sure they aren't losing their shirts at Real Soda putting everything they have into a really niche drink.

Want to see what Jay and I thought with the "help" of my jerk kid? Welp, here you are, friend:

Forgive me, for the only thing I can think of as I sip on this beverage is “Little Triggers” by Elvis Costello. It may not be the strongest track on This Year's Model, but that doesn't mean it isn't one hell of a song. The same thing could be said about this beverage. It's not the best energy drink, tea or juice I've ever had, but it's still extremely enjoyable.

I don't think I have ever disliked any beverage that has contained cherry juice. When the real thing is used it is so superior to anything that is just cherry flavored. Drinking this is like eating a huge bowl of fresh cherries while sipping on some lightly sweetened white tea on the back porch of a country home with a light breeze blowing the laundry on the line clean. Can you tell I've been stuck inside for too long?

You know what, maybe I was wrong before, maybe this beverage is even better than I thought. Every ingredient is in the exact right place with the exact right amount. The choice of using agave syrup and apple juice to sweeten it was the exact right choice. It gives it a very specific taste that is dead on. Sure there are other fruit juices in the mix, but they don't shine too much. Instead they are there to dull down the cherry a bit, as straight juice from that fruit can tend to be a little intense. The way it mingles with the other fruits in here just make it perfectly smooth.

It's called an energy drink, but don't be a fool and think it's anything like Monster, Red Bull or any of those types of companies. The energy in here comes from nature. It's the caffeine from the white tea and a little extra kick from some ginseng. It's not going to make you feel all crazy and give you the shakes. It will just keep you even with a little push to help you keep going. Little Miracles I think I love you. To bring it back to Costello, I will say something about “Miracle Man.” Now discuss which is better, This Year's Model or My Aim is True. There really is only one correct answer.

Quick, if you had to be one sort of insect, what would you be? A spider? Too much work my friend. You spend almost all of your life constructing intricate little webs that get destroyed in an instant by some unappreciative oaf of a human. Flies deal with a lot of poop, so they are out of the running. Caterpillars are just too creepy, if they are even considered insects. Ants might be cool; you get to have crazy strength, but a lot of your life is spent in search of food. If I had to choose number one with a bullet would be the bee. You are feared, your spit is sweet and you get to spend you days lackadaisically just flying around just smelling some flowers, hanging out in the sun. Now that is a life of leisure I could get down with.

Being a bee must take a lot of energy though. Flapping your winds that fast has to be exhausting at some point. It's a good thing bees know where to get the best natural energy. They just head down to the store and get themselves a can of EnerBee. Wait, that's only Bumble Bee Man from the Simpsons, but I like his style. People, myself included, drink far too many chemical energy drinks to help them get through their days. This here is organic and natural. Who needs all that artificial junk when you have green tea, yerba mate, ginseng and B vitamins to get the blood flowing? Also, there is royal jelly in here, which kind of creeps me out. It's what bees feed their larvae when they want to breed a new queen. It messes with genetics people! If I drink enough of this will I become royalty? Will I gain special bee powers? Only time will tell.

This tastes mostly like yerba mate, with a bit of green tea in it. It has a fairly strong lemon flavor, and you can really taste the honey in it. I think everything about it is perfect, with the exception of two things. I guess that doesn't make it perfect then, does it. First off, if you drink this when it's really cold it's better. Once it starts to warm up you can taste the stevia in it a lot more. I actually didn't even realize it was sweetened with the plant, until I was near the end and some time had passed from the initial crack of the can. Secondly, this whole lightly carbonated business is just weird. It's so light that I wasn't sure if there were bubbles in it at all, or if the flavor was just sharp. When it comes to carbonation I say go big or go home. This is a tea, it doesn't need bubbles. That's just this drinker's opinion though.

A lot of people don't pout stock in natural energy drinks, as they say they don't get the job done. I assure you this one had me bouncing off the walls when I drank it. It was as if I was bouncing from flower to flower, collecting the precious pollen for my queen.

Next to plain water, this might be the simplest drink ever. Also, it's pretty fantastic. Lastly, this drink single handedly lets me know why real maple syrup is like eight dollars an ounce. This is just maple water. If you tapped a tree, this is what would come out. Nothing else is in this, it's just one ingredient. "Maple sap" and that's it. It also tastes faintly of maple syrup. "Essence" if you will. Therefore, the fact that you have to boil this down to get dark, sweet maple syrup blows my mind. This I would absolutely drink again because it's nothing like what you would think. Like I said, it's only a hint of that delicious syrup. It holds back like a nice, Catholic girl with a killer body. You know she could kill you with one flutter of her eye but she decides to hide behind the book. That's why we have prostitutes and pure maple syrup, so we can get our fix immediately for a price.

I was hanging out the other night. You know just sitting around with some friends having a nice relaxing evening, when my friend Jay tosses me this drink and says it's for review on my blog. After several minutes of me berating him and telling him it's not a blog, it's a fully functional database that was coded by Mike and runs off of a database, I thanked Hova for the drink that he had made named after his chain of sports bars, which are in turn names after the baseball term for people who have gotten over 40 home runs and stolen bases in a single season. What, you're not close and personal friends with Jay Z? well I guess everyone can't be or else he would have no time to sit around listening to the new Morrissey album with me and discussing how it seems like he's just parodying himself at this point.

As far as the tea goes, I'm a fan. It's a slightly different take on an Arnold Palmer. It's black tea with a bunch of lemon in it (it doesn't taste like cleaner), but there is also a bit of citrus in there that reminds me of a mellower version of Sweet Leaf's Citrus Tea. It's on the sweeter side of teas, but the flavors involved lean towards that, so I have no qualms with it.

This isn't your typical iced tea in taste or experience. When you scan the bottle with your smart phone it unlocks a world of information about the clubs and sportsmen. I personally wasn't able to test it out, but that's what Jay tells me, and I'm not about to call him a liar. Maybe he's a bit of a no it all, but not a liar. Me? Oh, I'm the one who is the liar. The only time I saw Jay was at a football stadium in Washington DC. I was waiting for The Cure to play and he was on stage doing his thing. We were a field away from each other, but in that moment he placed all of that information into my brain.

"Red," huh? It pretty undisputedly tastes "red." It could be cherry, strawberry, raspberry or something else. I can't tell but it's actually pretty good. Normally with a drink like this, red pop that is, it's really sweet and really fruity. This is actually a good step back and it's not too much of either.

I enjoy seeing the glass bottles with the wear on the sides. It reminds me of a time where you would buy bottles of pop and return them and they would be washed and reused. If Mexico still does it, good for you. We can all agree that pop in glass tastes better than canned or plastic'd pop. This one will be recycled but will not go back to its birthplace.

It should be a crime against nature. It should be an ultimate evil. Artificial sugar combining with lemonade should be akin to the raising of the antichrist, but for some reason I don't mind it. Does that mean I've gone to the dark side? Do I need to start having rituals with some sort of sacrifice? Do I need to shave my head and grow a goatee? You know what? Why not?

This is a sparkling lemon drink that is in fact sweetened with sucralose, but it doesn't taste like poison and I don't feel like all humanity should be slaughtered because real sugar wasn't used in making lemonade. I still feel dirty that I enjoy this, but I'm not going to deny myself. Sure it tastes diet, but the lemon does a good job covering it up.

This is better than I ever could have imagined it to be, but at the same time it's not something I would crave. I would happily drink it if it were presented to me, but I wouldn't chug-a-lug all day long on the stuff, which is probably for the best.

I want so badly for the eldest male in the Harney clan to be named James, and for everyone to call him Jim. I also hope his sons are really only in their mid-twenties. My whole reasoning for this is that I am a child and I so badly want Mr. Harney to have been about 15/16 in 1987, when the classic film Earnest Goes to Camp came out. The only dumb reason I have for this is that every time I read Harney and Sons, all I can think of is Varney and Sons, and in case you don't know the actor who played the role of Ernest was named Jim Varney. You see I am a cruel man and I want to patriarchal head of the Harney clan to have been teased as a child because of his name. It's a rite of passage for teenage boys and I would hate for him to have missed it. If no one yelled “Hey Vern” at him, there is no hope for this world.

Okay, never mind that tangent I just went off on. It had absolutely nothing to do with the contents of this bottle. So let's move on to the important information. Harney & Sons make delicious beverages that I have enjoyed up to this point. When you take a solid company and introduce blackberry in to the mix, magic is bound to happen. This is a wonderful mixture of black tea, blackberry juice, hibiscus, and boysenberry juice. It all blends together into a beverage that anyone would long for on the long nights at camp. It's very sweet and fruity, actually it's a tad bit too sweet with 42g of sugar per bottle. It probably wouldn't taste overly sweet to most people, but I've been drinking unsweetened tea constantly this summer, so I've been noticing sweetness more.

My only real complaint here, and it's hardly a complaint, is that I wish the tea flavor was a bit stronger. The berry taste is a natural one, but it's still very in your face. If it were mellowed out a bit, that might take care of the sugar as well and this would be absolutely perfect.

Like many of us, from time to time you have probably found yourself wondering what exactly happened to the river of psychomagnotheric slime from Ghostbusters 2. Sure Vigo was using it as a power source, but after we was blasted back into the painting and drained of his powers, what happened to the slime?

Well the truth of the matter is that the slime was a bit of a problem for the city. As you know it fed off of emotions, and being such an angry city (at least while Lady Liberty herself isn't walking around blasting feel good tunes), it was only a matter of time before the city destroyed itself. Not wanting that to occur officials loaded it up into thousands of tanker trucks and shipped it off to Chicago, without them knowing. Hey, if a city is going to destroy itself it might as well be in the Midwest, right? A weird thing happened though, Chicago's love of food and sweets somehow changed the river of slime into a river of salted caramel, which can be seen on this bottle's label. Strange times indeed.

The Cicero company dips into this river from time to time when they want to make root beer. They put just a dab into each bottle and it flavors it right up. There's already caramel in a lot of darker sodas and the addition of the “slime” really amped it up. Luckily it's not overly salted. Wouldn't a really salty soda be the worst thing ever? Can you imagine your disappointment? There's a bit of salt in here, but it's not over the top. In reality this just makes me think of pretzels. Actually, I want some really bad. A bag of pretzels and a bottle of this would pair up for the perfect Midwest snack.

I'm not the world's biggest caramel guy, so I admit that I couldn't finish this entire bottle, but if you are a lover of that specific form of sugar, this has your name written all over it. Especially if your name is Vigo of Gozer.

Australian favorite's Bundaberg gave guava soda a shot, but they just missed the mark. You see they make their soda the old fashioned way, by brewing it with yeast, and as a result it ended up tasting a bit too alcoholic for my liking. Now the creators of some of my favorite ginger beer are trying their hand at my second favorite fruit, passion fruit. With this one the bases were loaded and they didn't blow it with a lot of grandstanding. They took what simple ingredients they had, and hit that pitch right out of the park for a grand slam.

This is soda brewed the way it should be, with a less processed flavor that what most of us are used to. It tastes like carbonated passionfruit juice, with a little something extra from the yeast brew that just makes it perfect. It does border on the wine cooler flavor, but it stays to the proper side and not the alcoholic side that far too many people became acquainted with in the 80s.

I am thoroughly disappointed that I only had one bottle of this. It simply wasn't enough, and I'm already craving more. Is it wrong to book a rip halfway across the world just for soda? Oh wait, I could probably get more of this at a Cost Plus. I'll probably have to do that.