Amp - 10 Reviews

Let's begin by looking past the fact that this is an energy drink and all that entails and the flavors that brings to your mind. Instead, let us concentrate on the fact that this is an organic beverage, an organic grape beverage at that, yet nowhere on the shockingly short ingredients list (five items) is grape juice, or anything grape listed. The flavor falls under the category “natural flavor.” I'm guessing that natural flavor is in fact grape juice as it tastes more like sparkling juice than grape soda, but that leaves me concerned about what other things can fall under that header and make it to market. “Natural” can entail a wide variety of things. I'm not saying there is anything nefarious going on here, but it makes me uneasy what companies can feed us without us knowing.

Anyway, as I said it tastes more like sparkling grape juice than soda and tastes nothing like a typical energy drink. It's just sparking juice, with unnecessary sugar added and caffeine thrown into the mix. It's not going to make you crazy, but it will give you a little boost and a whole lot of sugar (44g).

All my life I thought I despised coconuts. As it turns out I just hate it in toasted form, and it has ruined many otherwise delicious desserts for me. Raw coconut and coconut water on the other hand are pretty tasty. Pina colada is a flavor that always eluded me. It sounded like, for those who liked coconut, it would be the ultimate tropical summer drink. Keep in mind these are the thoughts that came to me in my youth. Now that I am older and wiser I can say, ehhh it's not bad at all. I'll rather have a fruity tropical drink, but it does taste like sunny weather.

For all their energy drink promotion, and the association with Mountain Dew (I think they are trying to distance themselves from that) this really just tastes like a pina colada soda, and I am into it. It's very sweet, like your average soda, but there is no energy drink taste to it. The entire boost in here comes from organic caffeine, no other nonsense. I would drink this on a beach if I were ever kidnapped and forced to go to the beach during the day, which I believe is one of the circles of hell for someone as pale as I am. It's summer. This is tasty. What are you waiting for?

Amp started off as Mountain Dew's energy drink that was put out by Pepsico. The Dew logo may not be on the can anymore, but it's the same formula and I'm sure extreme dudes and dudettes are the largest customer base of this product. My point is that since the original Amp was basically Mountain Dew infused with taurine and the like, it stands that this is some sort of organic Mountain Dew flavor and now the world no longer makes sense to me. Mountain Dew is pretty much the definition of junk food to me and the fact that there is an organic version (in some form) it has turned everything upside down for me.

The flavors in here are orange, mango, and passionfruit. They are all present, but in a strange Mountain Dew sort of way. I don't know how else to describe it. It's like they made three separate Dews, one for each of the flavors and then mixed them together. There is also something about this that tastes vaguely diet, even though it's chock full of sugar. At first I kind of dug the strangeness of it all, but the more I drank the worse it got. That could partially be due to the fact that I didn't do the customary chugging of the can and it warmed up over time, but the quality of the flavor definitely decreased for me.

Do you ever find yourself wondering why cleaners always seem to be lemon scented? Do you find yourself wishing that you lived in a world where you could clean your counters, floors and woodwork with something that smelled like blueberries? Does your mind then drift and you find yourself contemplating what that delicious smelling cleaning product would taste like? Well lucky for you Amp has the answer for you and it's fairly gross.

First off, blueberries are great. Who hasn't sat down and accidently ate an entire basket in one sitting? Secondly, I also love grapes, especially white grapes. When they are nice and plump at a perfectly ripe phase they are fantastic. This beverage somehow messed up mixing two wonderful tastes together and I blame the sweetener. This doesn't have the typical sucralose flavor to it, but it does something to the other flavors that just ruins them. It starts off with a decent blueberry taste but then it turn to the white grape. The two don't mingle. They simply do no mix together. The thing is at the exact moment of the switch the sucralose does something and it tastes like a cleaner and everything is ruined. This is so close to being good. It makes the jump from roof top to roof top, but just misses and plummets to its death.

I have been sitting here for 10 minutes drinking this white grape tasting energy drink trying to think of clever plays on "Amp" but I'm coming up empty handed. I'm going to blame the Sabres because they're not playing that great right now despite firing their coach. At least this drink tastes decent for an energy drink. Somehow it tastes more like a juice energy drink, despite not containing a drop of real juice. Why can't more diet energy drinks taste this good? It would make diet drinks have a better name.

Mountain Dew Code Red used to be my go-to soda. I probably bought a bottle every day I went to high school for a couple years. The problem was I over did it and I got sick of something I used to love. They don't make it obvious anymore, but Pepsi/Mountain Dew makes AMP Energy. It really shows with this flavor because it tastes like someone pour an energy drink into a bottle of Code Red. For those who have never had Code Red before: a. what is your problem? and b. it tastes like a really syrupy cherry soda with a citrus kick in the aftertaste. With the energy drink component in this, the kick is extra strong.


While writing this review I realized I hadn't seen an Amp Energy commercial in a while so I went to youtube to see if I could find any. While I found one featuring Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller hurling insults at another goalie in some weird underground insult competition, the majority of the videos were of 8-12 year old kids chugging AMP Energy drinks. I knew there were some dark corners of youtube that didn't have funny cat videos or Rebecca Black parodies, but I didn't think there would be adolescent boys in their backyard shotgunning energy drinks in hopes that the video will become viral/impress their friends.

Earlier today I was making fun of a friend for drinking Mountain Dew before noon. I'll give them that it was diet Mountain Dew, but it's still soda right after you woke up and it's gross Mountain Dew on top of that. Later in the day I was on my way to a party at a friends house and I grabbed this to drink/help me get through a long week.
It wasn't until after I had took a sip until I realized that this was just the original Amp repackaged. Oh payback, you've gotten me again.

It basically tastes like they took their original Mountain Dew recipe and added some chemicals to give it a little “boost.” If you are a teenager and love Mountain Dew, you'd probably go crazy over this stuff. If you're a grown ass man, like myself, you will have realized that regular Mountain Dew is pretty gross and I would pass this one over.

Energy drinks are a dime a dozen. There is one vat of that crud that all of the other energy drink companies suckle off of like a mama pig and her lil' piglets. They take the same stuff, add one ingredient, put it in a can with their logo on it, and sell it as their own stuff. Someone, probably a secret conglomerate company, is making a killing off of these little guys, but not Amp. They decided to take their business elsewhere. They are the rebels, the vigilantes. They do things their own way. They somehow managed to create an energy drink that doesn't taste like an energy drink. If you drank this and didn't know it was an energy drink, you would wonder why a half hour later you were bouncing off the walls.

This drink just tastes like grape pop. If you like grape pop and need a pick-me-up, this is it. It doesn't taste too syrupy regardless of the corn syrup. It just tastes like grape pop. Did I say that? It's just grape pop, in case I didn't.

There is an entire new line of these and now I'm not as disinterested in reviewing them because they don't taste like what "the man" thinks an energy drink should taste like. All of a sudden, Amp is like a cool dude that just came to your high school who might be 25, has a full beard, and somehow rides a motorcycle and keeps his hair looking sharp. How does he do it? You'll never know. You'll never be as cool as him and man, is that bike loud. The teachers hate it but even they think he's cool.

Dude I know you've been working out a flat-tax proposal, but we totally have a gig tonight and we need your head in the game. What's that? No, I don't care that you somehow proved that there's no god with your numbers. Don't you see that is completely meaningless when we're about to play the BATTLE OF THE BANDS! We've been practicing for weeks in Mark's garage, and to be honest I need something to show my wife that this whole “little hobby” as she calls it is worthwhile. I mean I know we're the best rockers this town has ever seen and that we're totally going to ride to the top of the Billboard charts, but unless we win this thing I'm pretty sure Mavis is going to make me quit. So now drop the calculator, grab your bass and let's go. You look a bit sluggish from going over those numbers all night, so I grabbed you an energy drink. They had a whole mess of them, but I grabbed this one because it's called Amp and we're rockers and there ain't no rocker that's gonna rock without his trusty Carvin amp. Also, it's got some other junk in it that is supposed to help you keep focus and concentrate, and again to be honest you're thunderous bass lines have been a bit sloppy lately. This should keep you on target. Actually I could use a little focus myself for my fiery solos. Hmm that stuff tastes pretty good. It tastes like some kind of blue candy that is basically just compressed sugar, you know like Spree or Sweet Tarts. It tastes better than your run of the mill energy drink. It actually doesn't taste too chemically either. I would have thought adding more junk in an energy drink like choline and theanine would have made it taste more like a science experiment, but that sugary berry flavor really masks it well.

I really can't believe that I talked about that energy drink the entire time we loaded up the truck, drove to the show, unloaded and set up. It's time for us to start so here we go “If I Had A Million Dollars” in 4 3 2 1…€¦…€¦.

There are two types of people in the world: those who love Mountain Dew, and those that think it's really disgusting. I am on team "Mountain Spew". I have had this Mountain Dew flavored energy drink before and didn't like it. I bought this for a friend who was going to be screen printing all night, but he ended up not needing it so I decided to drink it.

Now when you mix a drink I already hate with lots of typically gross tasting energy ingredients, it's a recipe for disaster. This taste like someone mixed Mountain Dew in a vat with a piece of carpet and then filtered it through a moldy sponge. Sure it does the job and gives you energy, but at what cost? I feel like my stomach hates me right now.