When I was in 4th or 5th grade I got into skateboarding. It started out just skating in front of my friend's house, where we built a launch ramp and later had a quarter pipe. Eventually we grew bored of the scenery and took our adventure on the road. By that I mean we put on our backpacks, and fit our decks between the bag and our back so we could ride our bikes to new exciting places to skate. It seemed like we would ride forever to find a cool new spot. We would always end up at this one spot that had a little vending machine hidden amongst some bushes. It was no ordinary vender though because it only dispensed cartons of juice, well sugar water disguised as juice. They weren't very good, but it was always a spot that we would take a break, since they only cost a quarter.

While I was in Pittsburgh recently I found this carton of iced tea in a corner store. Sure they had the same tea in bottles, but the fact that it was in a carton made me think of all those days 25 years ago filled with riding bikes and skating. Holy crap I don't think I have ever felt as old as I do typing that out. The dust of my bones aside, I paid the 75 cents for the carton (damn inflation) with a smile and walking into the blinding sunlight.

As soon as I took a sip I remembered that some memories are better left in the past. The contents of the carton were the lowest common denominator of tea. The ingredients listed instant tea and powdered lemon juice, what on Earth is powdered lemon juice? It blew my mind that they would spend the money to use real sugar, but then skimp on the other ingredients. Overall it just tasted like overly sweetened tea water. After a couple more tentative sips I asked myself, “why the hell am I still drinking this?” and I dropped it into a conveniently placed garbage can. My childhood is now dead.

Arizona just keeps expanding their beverage lines. They have come out with at least a dozen new flavors this summer alone. I have a feeling that they may have more drinks available for purchase in the United States than any other company. Okay, I'm sure Coke or Pepsi has more if you count all their subsidiaries, but each of these proudly states that it is an Arizona product. Sure a decent amount of these drinks leave something to be desired, but a good portion of them are straight up pleasant.

After some success with their Jack Nicklaus Golden Bear line of lemonades they decided to expand a little and released this mint lemonade. Mint is a hard game to play. It's so easy to get overzealous and leave the consumer feeling like they are drinking something whilst chewing gum, or shortly after brushing their teeth. No one wants that, especially not the Golden Bear himself. In this formula Arizona decided to take it easy on the mint, so that there is just a hint in each sip. The lemonade itself isn't all that bitter, due to the use of HFCS, but it's something I can get around a lot of the time and in this instance, I can even thoroughly enjoy. This is a nice treat that would cool anyone down on a hot summer day on the greens.

"It tastes like drinking an orange." Jerome said. "That's because it's just a juiced orange." Paul said. "You could just call it orange juice." he added. "You know what? I will. Now and forever, this shall be called orange juice!" exclaimed Jerome.

Carlos was a man who knew his juice. He drank it all the time. He never drank pop and probably drank more juice than water. He drank more juice than he ate fruit. He likes the good stuff, though. He didn't drink run of the mill "drink" type juices. He went for the higher end stuff.

One day he was in a lull of drinks. There was nothing new and nothing interesting. All of a sudden he came across a bottle of Body Armor. He was attracted to the nice packaging. He read the ingredients and saw that it was gluten free which was a plus, and it was filled with not only orange and mango juice but also vitamins and minerals turning this into the "Super Drink" it said that it was.

He bought it without hesitation, cracked it open, and took a sip. He was pleased. Not only did he get a good tasting orange juice but also the mango kick was a good pair. There was also a ten percent bonus coconut water in there, too.

He felt good. He didn't feel like it was too sweet and actually the coconut water gave it a little bit of a different dimension with bite. He had found a new drink that made him a happy man.

Someday I will find a hazelnut and eat it. Will it taste like chocolate? Probably not. Will it taste like a nut? Probably. It will probably come in a shell that I cannot crack so I will end up putting it on the ground and stepping on it or hitting it with a rock like some sort of caveman. These actions will most defiantly crush the insides and I will have to climb a tree to get another one. Do they come from trees? Probably, right? I am hordiculturally an idiot.

Does this drink taste like Nutella? You know you're asking because anytime I read "hazelnut" I think of Nutella and why wouldn't I? It's a wonderful thing. So does it? Eh, not really. There is enough coffee taste in there that it's not like a liquefied spread. If you want to think of this as a mocha, you would be pretty much right. I might be able to tell the difference if I had them side by side but since I'm not made of money nor do I feel the need to drink two Frappuccinos back to back like some sort of ignorant college student who's cramming for an eight o'clock economics 101 final. For that reason I will say that this tastes like a chocolaty, caramelly, coffee drink that is very cold. It's like an adult Slurpee. Starbucks, if you want to use that internally, you can. All I ask is that you give me some sort of royalties. A drink a week? You can afford that. I can call the shots here. I'm in the driver seat and I know what I'm doing.

If a company thinks that we might have gotten a bad bottle, or they change their formula, and they want to send us some samples to re-review it, we will. There is no guarantee that our review will improve, but we're willing to give it a shot.

I think Core Power was right to send us more of these. When Mike reviewed this he said that it was nice and chocolaty, but that it had a definite diet undertone. While I do notice the taste of stevia a bit, I feel it is far outshined by the chocolate. This is in fact the most accurately chocolate diet drink that I have ever tried. Even better is that it is a protein drink without the chalkiness. If you search it out you can taste the diet but it's certainly not punching you in the face. I really think this may be as good as it gets with diet.

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Old Review:

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Oh she's far down the list, she is, but thar she blows. Stevia. This is very chocolaty. It's just what you want, but with those four little letters, D.I.E.T. it changes the whole game. This tastes diet. It doesn't taste terrible like poison diet, but there is no beating around the bush. This is diet. I am typically on the fence when it comes to protein drinks but I think that it lends itself well to chocolate because chocolate shakes are eternally wonderful. You don't get any of that sandy stuff in this, which is a great thing.

All in all, this is a blatantly diet chocolate protein drink that is actually a tolerable attempt at being both diet and protein. Success? Yes. Success.

New Orleans, I would one day like to be inside of you. The love for Cajun spiced food runs deep in my veins. I also hear that you make fantastic sweet tea. You know what you don't make well? Pineapple pop. This, without any sort of hesitation, is the worst pineapple pop I have ever had. I think I know why you don't make good pineapple pop. It's because you don't know anything about pineapples.

Look, I'm from New York. What do we know about pineapple? Nothing. You can say that right back at me and I have to agree with you. We are in this together, The South.

Now that you know that we know about each other's strong suits, I'm really going to hammer it home. This is awful. It is a dense, thick, syrupy abomination of a drink. I don't know how this left the test bed. It's so bad. Maybe it's the tester's fault. Perhaps all that Cajun spice has dulled your taste buds like when you stupidly use a knife to cut things like rocks and stuff. Dull. Flat. Terrible. Your spices and your crawdads? You've got that nailed, buddy. This though, leave it in the dust. It blows.

Oh I'm such a dumb dummy. I see this iced tea on the shelf in Ontario, Canada, blur through the ingredients, see "sugar" and jump to conclusions. Yeah, whatever. It's one dollar Canadian which at the time of review is ninety-seven cents American. Who cares, right? Right.

Well as bad as it could have been, which it wasn't, I managed to drink eighty percent of it. I should shut up now but what review would be complete without an actual review. Sure, we love reviewing things poorly, but poorly is better than non-existent. It tastes thicker than I like my tea. Dare I say the word, "unnatural" because Mother Nature's liquids aren't this thick? Ugh. Chalk that up on the "gross" board. No, I'm leaving it in there. The tea taste is fine but it is the "wrong" sweet. Good tea taste but bad sweet.

Also, "pure tea solids" is an ingredient in this and it sounds almost as gross as "Mother Nature's Liquids."

Hank went on a cruise. Hank loved cruises. He would go anywhere that the boat told him to go. He was like a lemming when it came to sight seeing. The people at the docks would say, "Sir. Do you want to go to swim with the dolphins?" and he would almost never not do it. The only time he would say no would be when he saw a souvenir shop in a country that he hadn't been to and just needed to get a key chain to add to his collection.

Hank loved going to shore as much as he loved going on the ship but when he was on the ship, he would eat a copious amount of fruit. One day, he came from the shore with a coconut. He knew that he would have to use it before he got back to the States because they couldn't bring it back into the country. He decided to have some fun with it.

He went to the cafeteria at night and got a bowl full of fruit. He got cherries, apples, pineapples, and oranges. He brought them to the kids pool which was now empty as the kids were asleep. He hated getting sticky so he went into the pool with all the fruit. He started mushing up all the fruit into a cup; one fruit at a time into the cup. Finally, when all the fruit was properly mushed up, he put some of the coconut juice into the cup. He took one sip and regretted not doing it sooner. It tastes like a fruit punch that was properly sweetened not with corn syrup but with the natural sugar from the fruit as well as some raw sugar packets from the cafeteria. It was slightly chalky because of the coconut water but still very drinkable.

Just as he finished his drink, some of the deckhands saw him and chased him out of the kid's pool. He ran away holding his cup but dropping a trail of squished fruit and seeds along the way. The security aboard the ship found his room easily and just told him not to make a mess in the pool anymore. He obliged and sat quietly in his room and drank what was left of his concoction.

Mango nectar. Should that be it? Should that be the entire review? Do you like mangos? Then why do you have a carton of mango juice? Look at the ingredients. The number one ingredient is mango. Did you think that it was going to taste like strawberries? Come on, dude. It's going to taste like mango. I don't know how I got to review it because Jay is the mangoman and he must have forgotten how to read when I got to pull this out of the collective pile. Hey Jay! This was wonderful. It tasted like genuine mango juice. Wonderfully sweetened mango juice. Jay, you missed out. You drank the passion fruit one and you liked it, but I drank the mango one and it was good. It wasn't pulpy but it was thicker than a regular juice.

On a recent trip to the Asian market Mark decided to get a bunch of things he had never heard of before to expand his palate's horizons. He picked up some job's tears seeds, fragrant solomonseal rhizome, lily bulbs, lotus seeds, longan, gordon euryale seeds, and coastal glehnia root. He was so proud of his haul that Mike went right home and set out to make supper. That is where the troubles arose. No matter what he did with any of these ingredients the results were not very tasty. He tried to make tofu, pasta and even went as far as sprinkling them on toast. All were a no go.

It was in a moment of frustration that Mark decided to juice boil all of the ingredients together along with some rock sugar he had inexplicably laying around. He decided that a tea would be his last ditch effort. In the final moments of the game, he finally got his break. It tasted decent hot, but he decided to put it on ice and see what he had. Once cold his “tea” took on a new life. It was fairly sweet in the way that only rock sugar can make things. He's still convinced it's just rock candy ground up. It tastes about the same. Everything else just kind of blended together in a way that he could only racially describe as Asian. The flavor of this tea is just not naturally found in the Western world. It's hard to explain, but it tasted decent enough, so he drank it and was glad that his ingredients went to some productive use. It will be quite some time before Mark goes out and blindly buys unheard of ingredients again.

All of a sudden, two flavors are spending a lot of time together. If I didn't know better, I would call it "cahoots." When I worked for the state one summer, I learned the word "cahoots." For those who don't know, it means "partners" but for the people I worked with, it means "people teaming up to take our jobs away." The people I worked with there were some of the laziest employees I have ever worked with in my life: long breaks, long lunches, minimal effort, complaining, and everything in between. I am lucky that work ethic didn't wear off on me.

On the positive side of cahoots, we have cherry and pomegranate. Two buddies both red in color teaming up to save the world. One pretty sweet, the other pretty bitter, but together they cancel each other out leaving us with a cop comedy that ended seemingly before it began. This is not too sweet or too anything really. It is almost a watered down juice, which I like more than a "properly mixed" juice. You can taste more cherry than pomegranate but they are both in there doing their thing. Fighting for the good city of Fruitburg against the bank robbers, jewel thieves, cat burglars, and unlicensed beach peddlers. They never stop selling those seashell necklaces no matter how many times the cops come. They never will. That's why the beat don't stop. Cherry and pomegranate are always on the beat.

Sometimes when you're working out in the old cranberry swamp you need to take some snacks with you. It can drive a person crazy to be working around a potential food all day, but it's not in a form that is easily ingested. It's these times you bring along a sack of grapes to help pass the time and sate your hunger. What happens when you become mister butter fingers and you drop all of your grapes into the bushel of cranberries you've just gathered? Well, it obviously doesn't result in you spending the time to separate the grapes out. You're too lazy and they certainly don't pay you enough for that. What happens in reality is that you end up with cran grape juice. That's nothing to complain about.

Grape juice is one of the best juices readily available in any grocery store across America. It's delicious, but it's a little strong and you can't drink much without getting an ache in your guts. It's so strong that it's one of the few juices that can overpower cranberry juice. This mostly tastes like a nice purple grape juice with a cranberry aftertaste. Each juice is normally intense and I couldn't drink more than a glass at a sitting. When they are combined by Ocean Spray I think I could drink a gallon for breakfast.

Jay, generous man of the year, bought this for me. I drove to Toronto and he bought me an iced tea. What a man, right? When we are in Canada, we are on our game. We have to memorize everything we drink because once we get over the border our phone data is down. What? We're not millionaires and cannot afford to just tether eleven devices? No, sir or ma'am. We cannot do that. We Thirsty Dudes pinch pennies so when Jay spends two dollars and forty nine cents Canadian on a drink, that's awesome.

Protein drinks are rough. They are often thick and taste like you're trying to do something. Something functional. Something that should be subsidized with, you know, good old-fashioned exercise. This drink is different, though. Let's run through the flavor. Cranberry and pomegranate are two delicious but bitter buddies. When together in a lightly sweetened tea are a great team. The green tea is there but between the cranberry and the pomegranate, the bitterness of a green tea is easily thwarted.

I am happy to have the protein I probably didn't have in me prior inside of me. I figure I earned it since I did go through the whole trouble of drinking it. I like it, though. It tastes like a cranberry and pomegranate juice and then watering it down a bit. Sure, you're paying for a premium for an organic, all natural drink, but hey, you're worth it. Well, you're worth it if Jay decides you're worth it.

Are you tired of energy drinks all tasting the same (ie. like some candy Willy Wonka dreamt up)? Well Vemma has a solution for you with their “insanely healthy energy” drink. Now I have qualms with them saying this is actually healthy as I don't think it's helping your health at all by drinking it, but I will say that after perusing the ingredients list and seeing what is in it I will concede that it is a “healthier” version of an energy drink. It may not cure, nor prevent illness, but hey it's an energy drink and it's not supposed to.

The base of the drink is mangosteen juice, and its caffeine comes from green tea and aloe vera. It also has taurine and a bunch of B vitamins in it, but you take your health where you can get it nowadays. When you open the can it has a weird almost bubble gum smell, that I don't understand. I don't think I can actually taste it. I think I can, but I also believe that the smell may be planting subliminal flavors in my brain. Overall this tastes more like a weird juice than it does an energy drink, and that is a great thing.

This is also the more intense energy version of the beverage. I drank this around 1PM as I had to go to a family party, then another party, and then another. I didn't think I would make it through the day. I also knew if I drank this later in the day when I actually needed it I would never sleep. So I drank it early. Around 6PM I started to crash. I made it through, but then by 9PM I was back with a crazy second wind that was anything but natural. I hadn't had anything else caffeinated or anything like that, so I can only hold this drink accountable. I came back with a fury and I felt like I had drunk three Red Bulls. Luckily by the time I was ready for sleep around 2AM it had worn off and I passed right out. Now that's efficiency.

I am currently a denim demon which means...well it means a few things. Thing one is that I side with Canadians in their outfit of choice. Two is that I have a poor sense of fashion. Third and the most related to my point is that fall is upon us. Sure this is my "go to" outfit for Spring, too, but we're not talking about Spring now, are we? We're talking about Fall so pay attention and stop thinking about Spring. They're like the same season. One is getting warmer while raining all the time and the other is getting colder while raining all the time. There, I put it into perspective.

Since fall is clearly upon us, I thought that a good way to go would be the "I'm not done with Summer" route with a lemonade. There are certain things I like about lemonade and one of those things is pulp. I enjoy nice, pulpy lemonade. It makes me feel like a kid and their mom's dirty hands were crushing lemons to make an enjoyable drink. This does not have pulp and although I cannot really penalize them for it, I can still want it in there for cripes sake. There is a good sour taste to it and, as mentioned on the bottle, there is real blackberry juice in it, which you can taste, and tastes good. Made really makes good lemonade. No, this is not as good as the blueberry one, but it doesn't mean that it's not good. It's a great, sweet lemonade that I have unfortunately never seen outside of a discount store which means that either people never "got" Made or that they made too much. I hope it's the latter and not the former because they made a consistently good product.

Can we all agree that Christopher McDonald is one of the greatest character actors of our time? On top of being a great actor, he also has come of the best character names in cinematic history. From Reed Standish to Travis Cole, he has perfect antagonist names. Of course who could forget Shooter McGavin? I could only think about him as I drank this. A man who takes breaks from the golf course to sell his line of misleading juice drinks. Misleading you say? Well the bottle clearly states “No Added Sugar,” yet the ingredients clearly show that it actually contains sucralose. I guess technically sucralose is not sugar, but it still is a sweetener, albeit a zero calorie one.

I'll tell you what, if they weren't a bunch of big fat liars and had omitted the sucralose, this would be a nice little drinks. Sure it has a bunch of added nonsense, but the base of it is a decent tasting juice. Raspberry juice is rare, although I would kill for a nice cold glass of pure raspberry juice to accompany my dream glass of cantaloupe juice. Mixed with the strawberry juice it's nice, and I think kids (who this is marketed toward) would really enjoy this. The reality is there is only 10% juice in here, but I could easily over look that if that pesky sucralose wasn't present. It may not be strong in the taste, but it's still there and annoying.

Stopping at a gas station was difficult for James. He had a bit of a "thing" when it came to using public toilets. It seems that most times when he goes to use a rest stop bathroom, he has to get a key chained to a giant piece of wood and then when he gets into the bathroom it smells and there is almost all times feces on everything. James has had bad luck with bathrooms to say the least.

One time he went to a gas station in Maryland and needed to go to the bathroom. He knew what he was in for but knew that he had to go through it all the same. He talked to the attendant to get the key and the attendant was a kind, attractive young woman who said, "Oh, I'm sorry sir but our public bathroom is out of commission." James really had to go and the woman noticed and said, "Sir? If you'd like, you can use the employee bathroom. It's right through here." James light up like a Christmas tree. He was so happy that he was getting treated with respect and that someone was helping him out at a gas station for once. The bathroom was in immaculate condition and he couldn't be happier. He left the bathroom and thanked the woman.

Thirsty, James scoured the drink cooler and found a bottle of a lime iced tea. He thought that he had grown tired of lemon and regular iced tea and it was time for a change. He thanked the lady for the use of the bathroom and her sunny attitude and then left.

In his car, he took a sip and was once again pleasantly surprised. It was a naturally sweetened iced tea with a good but not overpowering lime flavor. James' bad gas station streak was over. He put his keys in the ignition, started the car, put the car in drive and began to drive off when he heard a loud sound. He stopped the car and looked around but didn't see anything. He continued to drive and as soon as he took his foot off the brake it made the same loud sound. He stopped the car and got out only to discover that his wheels had been stolen. His best gas station experience had promptly turned into his worst.

This is such an odd drink to review. I drank about ¾ of the bottle Monday evening, and I decided I was not in the right state of mind to properly convey what this is all about. Here I am two days later, and I still really don't have a clue. Every time I open the fridge this bottle is staring me right in the eye, daring me to write something about it. I'm at the point where I can't take it anymore, and it's now or never.

The main construct of the contents of this bottle is coconut water. The thing is that with the added fruit and extracts, it barely tastes like what you would expect. I even had to double check to make sure this was coconut water, like the other flavor I had reviewed a few months ago. It is, but it has such an odd, yet interesting taste. Papaya, a fruit that smells like vomit, but tastes delicious, is present. I do believe that it is the camu camu extract that is running the show here. According to the internet it tastes like a mixture of hibiscus, berry and citrus. I can't pin down a great reference to the way this beverage tastes, but I would say that is a appropriate enough description of this odd flavor. I don't know if I have ever tasted anything like this before, and that is exciting, because it is new, and doesn't make me want to blow chunks.

In addition to tasting strange this drink is actually healthy. It is antioxidant rich, it has zero fat or cholesterol, there are only two grams of sugar in the entire bottle, and it's chock full of a ton of vitamins. It's a wild ride that you don't have to feel guilty about, so you can keep getting back in line and ride it over and over, until you are the one who blows the previously mentioned chunks.

If you spent a lot of money on a blueberry drink, took a sip, and immediately felt ripped off, this drink is for you. This is the drink you would make if you bought that drink, got frustrated, went to the store, bought a box of blueberries, went home, juiced them, and added a little sugar.

The thing about this drink is that it might be better than blueberries. I am not the world's strongest proponent of blueberries. Unless they are really fresh, they are too squishy and I do not like the texture. I do like the taste but texture is everything and I just don't like it. Blueberries are such a “limited time offer” that it's hard to get behind them. This is better than blueberries because it is clearly a juice at heart with sugar to actually calm it down. I don't know what science the Swedes used to make this but they should keep it up because it's great.

If blueberries stayed firm and tasted like this drink, I would eat them by the handful everyday, increasing my antioxidant chart to frighteningly high levels where I might be immune to small gauge bullets. Until then, I am well less than immune.