NOS - 6 Reviews

I really want the mango flavor in here to come from actual mango juice. It really tastes like it does, but it is simply not listed on the ingredients. If I were asked in a blind taste test, I would reply, with conviction, that this is mango juice mixed with an energy drink. At the point an alarm would sound announcing that I had lost. Did I not mention that I was on a game show in this scenario? Well, I was and I did not win any of the fabulous prizes. I went home with a belly full of artificial flavoring and corn syrup. Oh yeah, and nitrogenated water. I don't really know what that has to do with an energy drink, and the internet (aka the NOS website) was no help. I suspiciously think they did it just because of the company name and not for any performance reasons.

I equate NOS with everyday cars that kids soup up with kits and parts to make them faster and look cooler, mainly so they can hang out in local parking lots at night and show off what they have done. These cars, such as a Ford Focus, never were meant to be fast cars, but these kids dump all their money into putting parts in to make them that way. They would even go as far as to swap out engines and put in NOS systems for a little extra boost. In reality they could have just used all of the money they have spent making a “crappy” car “fancy” on a car that was that way to begin with, but I guess the process is part of the enjoyment. I mean everyone needs a hobby.

Now NOS energy drink takes a normal person's fairly unhealthy body and gives it a little shot, so that they can feel what it would be like to be a little healthier and to have more energy. It has mplx6 for enhanced mental focus and high performance energy, what ever that is.

I have always had a disinterest in all things car related, so by default I have also stayed away from this brand of energy drinks. In fact this is the first one I have ever drunk. You know what? I was correct to stay away. This tastes like a bad Mountain Dew rip off, which isn't anything great to begin with. It doesn't have much of a traditional energy drink taste to it, which I generally applaud, but the base flavor is just something I have no taste for. I'll stick to my little Chevy hatchback that gets good gas mileage, and can be parked anywhere.

NOS has decided to delve into the world of sports drinks. If you weren't careful, this could easily be mistaken for a bottle of Gatorade or Powerade or Genericade. They all have what plants crave, but this one also has caffeine. I like that companies started to include the amount of caffeine on the label because I can see this bottle has the equivalent of a couple 12oz cups of coffee.

But you didn't come here to learn how to prank your friends who love sports drinks but are sensitive to caffeine. You came here to find out what this tastes like. Well, the flavor description is pretty accurate in this case. It's like a fruit salad that no one would ever make, but is surprisingly not that bad. It's not as refreshing/thirst quenching as normal/non-caffeinated sports drinks though. It tastes like a lot of non-carbonated energy drinks we've had. So in that respect, this really would be a mean prank to pull on someone.

"A Drink For The Tired Athlete" might not be the greatest line, Jim. I know we at NOS pride ourselves on cool packaging and potent energy drinks but the term "tired" is kind of insulting, don't you think? Yes, this is our first foray into the world of hydration but this isn't our first tagline and that one isn't going to push a lot of product. Jim, come on. Look, this isn't our finest drink, I know, but we aren't the type of company to phone it in. We can't be lazy, especially since there are other players already in the market. Let's take a look at what we've got here before we move any further.

We've got an energy drink. We've already proven ourselves a big fish in that market. Let's just move on. We've got a hydration drink. Yes, it's like Gatorade and Powerade but we're mixing other stuff in so it's different. Those other guys don't have caffeine in there and we do so we are going to stand out. The fruit punch flavor is really hard, or so I hear from the flavor scientists at the lab. They did an alright job with this. Right when you take a sip you get a good fruit punch flavor. That lasts about a second. What's strange is that when it sits on your tongue for any longer it starts to get more and more stingy. I don't know where that's coming from to be honest. Neither does the lab. You think they would since they carefully added each ingredient.

You know what, Jim? The more I think about it; maybe it's the lab guys that are the issue. It's easy not to release a bad item into the marketplace. You just don't do it. These guys said it was alright and pushed it out and it's not bad but it's got a certain "really diet energy drink" taste to it. It tastes like a really diet version of two otherwise fine things. That diet branch might have just allowed me to go on a purge of my own because I'm about to trim the fat all over this place, Jim. Get out of my office! I've got some firing to do!

It has recently come to my attention that through all the gallons of beverage that I have drank throughout my 34 years I have never once had a NOS energy drink. I've drunk far more energy drinks than I am comfortable admitting, but for some reason I have never reached for one of these. Perhaps it's because far too much of my time during my 20's was spent with friends who cared far too much (in my opinion at the time) about cars. We're talking about “pimping” and sooping up cars for cars shows and the like. Because of the boredom I underwent I became disinterested in all things car related. Now that I am older I say, whatever makes you happy, do it, but back them I was a surly bastard about it.

Anyways here I stand at my inaugural tasting, and of course it's not even for their flagship product, but a new line that they are promoting called Active. This line is basically an energy drink/sports drink hybrid. Due to the bottle and the fact that both are distributed by Coca Cola, I have it in my mind that this is NOS mixed with Powerade. I have no idea if that is true, but that is the way it looks and that is the way it tastes.

What we have here is very light lemonade with a little bit of raspberry flavor to it with a whole lot of electrolytes thrown in the mix. Oh, and a whole lot of sodium, which is normal for sports drinks. You don't taste the energy drink aspect of this at all. The only foreign flavor I can really taste is the artificial sweetener sucralose. Overall this isn't all that bad. It's not a flavor that I generally go for, but I know there is definitely a lot of people out there that would.

This is a beverage made for when you work out. My question is when are you supposed to drink it though? If you drink it before you work out you get the benefit of the caffeine, taurine and the like, but the electrolytes are wasted. If you drink it after, the opposite is true. I suppose you could drink it during your work out, but I feel like you'd only get half the benefits from each side. I chose to drink it before hand, in hopes that somehow the electrolytes are set on a time release. We can only hope.

The Fast and the Furious 6 comes out next week. It would seem appropriate to save this can and review it alongside of the movie, but I don't think they would be so keen on that idea. I could probably wait until an engine revs in the opening credits and time my can opening to that moment so no one would notice. It would probably enhance my experience of watching it.

But let's not kid ourselves, the series is a guilty pleasure of mine and I'm already really excited to see it. Those who know me might be really shocked for my love of a tricked out car racing movie franchise because I have never had my driver's license. I like taking the bus/ riding my bike and have never had to urge/need to drive. As for my love of the Fast and Furious movies, I look at them the same way I do the Die Hard series: they are really fun to watch.

Now for the drink at hand, it's good but not worthy to be featured next to a fancy car that costs more than I will make in 5 years (Mike is the car guy, I don't know the names/makes/models of cars). It's on the better end of diet energy drinks, but it doesn't have much character to it. It's like the racer that crashes first in each movie; they have a prominent role in the movie but are very forgettable.