Jolt - 2 Reviews

My first experience with Jolt, like most people, happened when I was a kid. I had heard a lot about Jolt for years. This was a time before energy drinks so the tales of the pop with so much caffeine it makes you jittery would be passed around all the time. I finally came across a bottle at a corner store after school one day when I was 12. I was so excited to find it, but to my dismay it was flat. The store must have had it in the cooler for ages because it tasted like someone opened it up and let it sit for 3 days. It lacked even a single bubble of carbonation. For this reason, I never sought out Jolt again. I was so disappointed by my first experience it killed all the years of anticipation for this soda.

Skip to present day and I come across this bottle. Seeing as I now am more opened minded than I was in my adolescence, I decided to give Jolt another try. Verdict: it's a pretty basic cola, nothing much to it as far as flavor goes. It definitely does have more caffeine than a normal bottle of pop. I'd liken it more to a cup of coffee. In the present world of energy drinks, this is child's play.

Welcome to 1987. I'm eight years old and my two cousins are sleeping over at my house, and I'll be damned if we're not going to beat The Legend of Zelda! My mom got us stocked up on brownies, Twizzlers and Jolt. She wanted to get us store brand cola, but after a lot of begging I convinced her to shell out the cash to get the Jolt. By begging I mean promising I would do a ton of yard work to make up for it. I'll do it, but it will be half-assed by golly! She thought I wanted it because it looks a lot cooler compared to the store brand, but in reality I knew that we were going to need the extra caffeine punch if we were going to make it to Ganon.

You don't see Jolt soda in stores too much these days. You can still find their cans of energy drink, but the actual soda isn't as common. I had never seen this flavor before until I got it at Village Candy in Sewickley, PA. It differs from modern energy drinks because it doesn't have all the extra chemicals in it, just a butt load of caffeine. I actually enjoyed this way more than I expected. I was expecting this to be a cherry cola, but it's a cherry/orange mix (it actually has orange juice as an ingredient) with no cola. It's slightly candied flavor, but not as much as a lot of sodas. I appreciate that this company still exists and that they explored flavors other than straight cola.

Did we beat the game? Eventually, but not that night. We did stay up obscenely late for 8 year olds (probably 1am). That's what Jolt was to me though. It was for those nights when I needed to stay up for some menial task. It's pretty much the same way I look at energy drinks nowadays.