Sobe - 30 Reviews

Martha, I have zero idea as to why you keep buying me these diet drinks. I'm not fat, I'm just your average middle-aged man size and there is nothing wrong with that. I am comfortable in my body, as I hope you are in yours. I mean you don't see me going around ordering you salad when we go out do you? That would just be rude. If you want to eat that cookie-sunday explosion, you go for it. It's your life and you should enjoy it, just as I am going to enjoy my life in a way that is free from the poison diet taste.

Oh what's that? You didn't buy me this because you think I need to lose weight? You like my little paunch? Well isn't that adorable. Why though, why do you keep buying these Lifewaters and put them in my lunch. They taste delicious? I doubt that. You see it says right there “0 calories” on the label. In my world that means this might be better for you but it's going to taste horrendous.

Fine I'll take a sip if it will make you happy. Well Martha, I owe you an apology. This is pretty darn good. It's very light tasting. I can tell that it's diet, but it's not the normal flavor I associate with things of that nature. It's kind of hidden in the back, right there with the acai. That is actually odd because acai is such a powerful flavor most of the time. Don't look at me like that, yes I know what acai is and what it tastes like. Just because I work construction doesn't mean I'm a complete dufus. I like to get a fancy juice every now and then. That's not important though. This has a nice raspberry flavor with some acai hints around the edges. Like I said the taste of the stevia is somewhere below that.

I don't know how Sobe did it, but I will definitely be sipping on these at work now. Not only does it taste good but it's guaranteed that none of the other guys will steal it from me. Those jerks. Seriously though honey, are we getting some cookie-Sunday explosions or what. I've been thinking about it the entire time we've been talking about these drinks. Yes I know we'll have to drive a half hour to the restaurant, but I want what I want and what I want is hot fudge drizzled over a giant soft cookie with seven different types of ice cream below it.

It has finally happened. I have found a coconut water drink that tastes exactly like I always thought coconut water would taste. To be clearer I mean it tastes like toasted coconut. To be even clearer it tastes like tanning oil. Now I've never used, nor tasted, tanning oil, as I believe it would make me spontaneously combust. I have smelled it and this tastes exactly like it smells. My ladyfriend also confirmed that it has the same taste. That is gross. Who wants to ingest anything like that? I honestly can't imagine a single person out there who would buy this, try it, be able to stomach it at all, and then go back and buy some more. Is this drink some sort of tax write off for Sobe? There has to be some strange back story here and I want to hear it!

Can I let you in on a secret? I love grocery stores. I find them comforting to walk around. I really love going into grocery stores in other cities to see how they compare to the ones back home. Yesterday we drove back from the awesomeness of the Grand Canyon to the wretchedness of Las Vegas. On the way we stopped off in Kingman, AZ for dinner. We also hit up a grocery store, and for a fairly small dessert town this store was packed. Their drink selection was one of the best I have ever seen in a grocery store outside of Whole Foods. On top of that almost all of it was on sale. Who can argue with Sobe for $.88? How could I argue with an $.88 Sobe that we haven't reviewed yet, and that I've never seen back home?

I thought this drink would be nice for the morning since orange and carrot juice are the 2nd and 3rd ingredients. I should have read the label more, because it turns out it only contains 9% juice. As a result it tastes more like a drink than a juice, and "drinks" are simply not fit for just waking up. I don't want to wake up to 56 grams of added sugar. I want to be in a waking dream of freshly squeezed juice at every turn. Instead I'm stuck with this that has that flavor that is distinct to Sobe drinks. It's definitely more orange than carrot. Actually, it's one of those drinks that if someone poured you a glass and didn't say what it was you would never suspect there to be carrots in it. I mean who ever suspects carrots? Well I guess shepherds pie would.

Mallory, a dedicated woman, was determined to acquire mangos. She loved eating them and what made them better is that there was a large competition to acquire them, as there were limited quantities and a lot of demand.

One day, merchants infiltrated the town Mallory lived in and kidnapped her and made her work in their orange orchard. When working one day, she found a tree of blood oranges on the fringe of the orchard. She then got put in jail while trying to escape during one of her shifts. She wouldn't tell anyone where the blood orange tree was. When released, Mallory immediately ran back to the blood orange tree, harvested as many as she could and escaped to a nearby village where she wasn't in danger of being found.

Thirsty, Mallory juiced some of her precious blood oranges as well as her favorite fruit, mangos. She used a local Stevia plant to sweeten it, a trick she learned in prison. She took a giant sip of it and was ecstatic. She had escaped the kidnappers and made a delicious juice. It tasted like blood orange, followed by a little mango, and then closed out with the sweetness of the sweetener. She settled into the town as a juice maker really solidifying her brand with her initial drink.

She would never forget the terrors that she faced in her past but looks forward to a bright future of juicing.

If it was Sobe's mission to take two of the most potent fruit juices this word has ever seen and use them to flavor water in a way that makes them not potent at all, well job well done. I actually don't get much pomegranate out of this. It's mostly just cherry and I'm okay with that. To be frank I'm getting pretty sick of our friend the pomegranate. He's infiltrated far too much of the beverage world, and I could use a break from him. To get back on track, this like every Lifewater is just Sobe's version of Vitamin Water and it's completely apparent in the taste. Sure Sobe has been around longer, but their drinks didn't use to be so “water based.” The only thing different between this and Vitamin Water is that this has taurine in it. I'm pretty sure no Vitamin Waters do. If I did a blind taste test I would guess this was a new flavor of Vitamin Water, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. Billions of people, including myself, love their products and drink them all the time. Here's to competition.

I drank this for a long time and out of nowhere just stopped. I don't know what happened, probably nothing, but then I just stopped. Then I read that unfortunate article in either Men's Health or Maxim that put this drink in the "Do not drink" column versus something that has fewer calories. That being said, this has an abominable amount of calories. If you have an element of self-control, you will be fine. Half this and you're at a standard bottle of pop. Naturally, if you drink the whole thing because you're thirsty or weak you will ingest 240 calories. Vicious.

I do love this drink, though. It tastes nothing like green tea and everything like mint...something. If you took all the bite out of green tea, added sugar to cut it down even more, and then a secret ingredient that I think tastes like mint but half of the people that say that to disagree. Look I'm wrong about a lot of things a lot of the time and can accept this, but I have always thought it was minty.

This stuff rules. Drink it with a friend and don't get chunky together.

Jeremy had a very limited space at his farm but since farming was in his blood, he never gave it up. He harvested only strawberries and herded one thing, which oddly enough, were dragons. Yes, sure the strawberries encroached into the dragon pen but the dragons never cared about having to eat them. Jeremy didn't mind either. It was a lot cheaper than feeding the dragons their usual diet of giant rats, mice, and Raisin Bran.

Once a week, Jeremy would milk the dragons to harvest their juice. Yes, dragons lactate juice. Where did you think that dragonfruit flavored drinks get their taste from, an actual fruit? That's crazy. He would get all the juice, put it inside a giant containment unit and then hand squish strawberries into it and make his own juice. This juice was nothing short of awesome, too. It was sweet and still left room to taste like both strawberries and dragonfruit. Jeremy was concerned about health and was also on the forefront of sweeteners so he used natural alternative sweeteners like Stevia.

One day, a giant tour bus drove up to Jeremy's farm. The door opened and loud rock music and smoke emerged. Three men in black suits came out. Two were some of the largest men he'd ever seen. The one in the middle carried a suitcase. He explained that he worked for Sobe and was prepared to offer him "a large sum of money" for his secret. Jeremy, having done this for about fifteen years, thought that it might be time to start something new like becoming a honeydipper or used car salesman. He shook the smaller mans tiny, frail, uncalloused hands, and said goodbye to the two behemoths who gave him a nod but didn't actually say anything which Jeremy thought was rude.

Jeremy was rich. His hard work had paid off and now he could spend time riding the dragons and eating strawberries rather than making juice out of them.

Marco and his family had money. Not only did they have money, but they were filthy, stinking rich. Where as normal families save all year to go on a weeklong vacation his family went to exotic locations every weekend. You would think that all of that travel time would be rough on a child of ten, but you'd be surprised at how much faster a Lear jet can get you places. Marco's favorite weekend trips were the ones they took to tropical locations. He liked the beaches and all the crazy birds, but his favorite part was all of the crazy exotic sounds drinks his parents would have, but never let him try. As he laid his head down on his pillow each night his mind was filled with visions of margaritas, mojitos, mai tais, and daiquiris. The names and colors were so intriguing, but since they were “adult drinks” not a drop ever passed his lips. For years he begged, but his parents were relentless.

One unlikely day whilst on a trip to NYC where he had tagged along with his dad, his life changed forever. His dad had stopped at a corner store for a pack of cigarettes, and told Marco to grab himself a drink. Being disgustingly rich, Marco was not used to shopping for himself. There were people who did that sort of thing for him. He was shocked at the selection of drinks set before him. Instantly a pink bottle caught his eye. He instantly knew he needed this drink in his mouth as soon as possible. This was all before he even saw what flavor the drink was. When he pulled it from the shelf he saw that it was a strawberry daiquiri. His brain was suddenly filled with the Gabrielle song “Dreams” (you know the one “Dreams can come true, look at me baby I'm with you.”). It took until the second verse until he realized that the song was actually just on the radio in the shop. As he held it in his hands his dad gave him an understanding smile and gave the shop keep some money.

He wasn't even out the door before he had opened the bottle and let the sweet, sweet liquid pour over his tongue. To tell you the truth, it wasn't as magical as he had expected. Maybe it was because he was in a dirty metropolitan and not in a tropical paradise, but the drink seemed off. It certainly tasted like strawberries, but more like a combination of real strawberries and strawberry flavored candy. It was also way milkier/thicker than he had expected it to be. This wasn't what he expected to be drinking when he turned 21 in Cabo. Okay this is stupid. This drink is okay, but it's nothing special.

Sometimes we get to a point where we have just reviewed far too many flavors of the same product line. What's left to say? That you're stuck in a desert and your hallucinating from the heat and lack of fluids, so you follow a lizard, and the lizard talks to you and tells you the secrets of the universe, and informs you specifically what the secret behind pi is. Finally he reaches into his stomach and pulls out a bottle of mango melon flavored Lifewater. The bottle is dripping with viscera and such, but as I said you've been wandering this godforsaken desert for what feels like 40 days and nights and you're wondering how the Jews did it in the bible, so you open the bottle and even though lizard guts are touching your lips you chug that bottle of refreshment. It tastes like someone dissolved a mango and melon flavored powder in a bottle of water and didn't quite shake it up well enough. It also tastes very diet, but in the erythritol way and not the sucralose way, you know the way that is tolerable. As soon as you swallow that last drop that tastes somehow grainy even though it doesn't in texture, you turn to look at the lizard, but you realize that you're not in the desert at all. You are actually in the middle of math class and you've drooled all over your protractor. There is an empty bottle on the floor next to your desk and you have a vague recollection of buying it from the pop machine in the cafeteria. For some reason there is still lizard guts on your lips. Is that what's left to say? If so, strange times indeed.

Dear old friend. I've missed you. You've grown up a lot since I've last seen you. Dare I say you've become a man while we've been apart? I might just say that. You have made new friends, I see. I don't blame you. I wouldn't have expected you to wait around for me after all these years. You've also lost a ton of weight. Good for you on that venture. You weren't fat before, but you had some extra chunk and bad skin.

So what have you been doing with yourself? You joined a gym and started eating better? That's awesome. Oh, you've replaced your regular sugar with Stevia? Good for you. Forward thinking. I wasn't introduced to your friend. Hello, my name is Mike. Oh, Acai? Interesting name. Is that Scandinavian? You don't know? Well, nice to meet you all the same. What else besides the gym, dude? It's been so long. Oh, you taste the same? Normally that would not be a big deal except that you have met your new friend Acai here and are using Erythritol and you kept your priorities in check. Everyone always loved you. Now you're even better!

Well here's my number. Don't let this happen again, Fruit Punch.

When I was a youth, I used to drink a lot of the non-Lean Sobe honey green tea. It was awesome. Later on in life I realized that it was one of the worst drinks for you on the shelves. I don't eat particularly well, but anything I can do to ensure that I don't become a chunk helps, so I dropped it.

Cut to today, I've got a bottle of the Lean and I'm excited to see what zero calories versus 240 tastes like. Different? A little sweeter and just as oddly minty as it's fully fattened predecessor. Do you know what that means? Awesome. It means awesome. It means that for one of the limited times, you can get a good tasting diet version of the non-diet version of a drink you love. It has Erythritol and tastes like it but I don't hate it as an alternative sweetener so I won't count it against them.

Science and diet drinks have come a long way since Sweet & Low. Diet drinks don't all suck. Re-give them a chance.

On the molten surface of the sun there lives two lizards. They go by the names Mac and Gertrude, but names are meaningless in a story such as this. You see it is the strife between these two lizards that causes all of the planets in the solar system to revolve around the sun. There is a weird polar magnetism at work. For some unknown reason one of the lizards sweats mango, and the other melon. Gertrude (okay the names do make it easier) excretes the essence of melon and Mac wants so very badly to mix his mango with her. He's been chasing her around the surface of the sun for millennia, but he never seems to catch her. It's the chase that causes the magnetism. Scientists and astrologers have known it for centuries, but they thought it was just too weird for the general public to accept. A philosopher who is also a higher up at the Sobe corporation found out about the lizards and pondered it for some time. He then invented a drink to represent the struggle of the sun lizard. He made a melon heavy drink that had traces of mango in it's after taste. It was bold and sweet and everything wonderful. He used a mixture of cantaloupe and honeydew for his melon base and it turned out absolutely perfect. It actually tasted like a fruit punch that was very heavy on the melon. That mango just slipped in there at the end. Like Mac it is always chasing the melonous wonder of Gertrude, but it never quite catches up to over take the flavor. To represent their environment he made the drink bright orange like the fires of the sun. That philosopher should be made president of the company because he invented the finest flavor Sobe has ever produced and it was all due to a pair of lizards millions of miles away.

Welcome to gym class weaklings! You're in high school now and that means you're in the big leagues, and no we will not be chewing shredded bubble gum. If I even think one of you has a wad of chewing stuff in their mouth it's five laps of the track for all of you! As I was saying you're in the big leagues now and you're going to work like dogs. Say so long to the world of badminton and square dancing and say hello to the burnt hands of the rope climb and the slashed shins of floor hockey. For those of you wimps who have doctors notes to excuse you from my class, you will be sitting on the bleachers writing me a five-page paper each class on how you could only wish in your deepest dreams that you could ring the bell at the time of the rope. While you are doing this you will also be sipping from childish milk cartons filled with childish fruit punch. The rest of us will spend seven minutes at the beginning of each class laughing at you while we crush bottles of big boy drinks. That's right gentleman, at the beginning of every class it is mandatory for each of you to drink a bottle of Sobe Energy. We've got an assortment of flavors but the Power Fruit Punch is what I assume most of you will choose, since you are just little boys posing as grown men. It is full of aronia and grape juice according to the label. I always thought it was blueberries and cranberries from the picture, but what do I know about fruits, I'm no fruitologist. Actually now that I know I was wrong about the fruits contained with in the flavor makes more sense. It's has a grape flavor if grapes were from some tropical region. Does that make sense? It doesn't? Well it looks like you just bought yourself 50 pushups Mr. Smartypants. Whatever it tastes like, it's tasty and you should feel proud to be able to down it. It's got taurine, caffeine and guarana in it, so it will give you a nice energy boost for class, as well as the rest of the school day. I don't want to hear anything about sensitivity to caffeine or heart problems. You will drink it and you will like it. Now, BOMBARDMENT!

A punch in the face: that's what I'm going to give you. You hit my brand new, 2001 Hyundai Accent and now I've got to get insurance involved...man. I just got out of the dealership. I know it's 2012, but it's new to me. Sure it's got 104,000 but that's just broken in. It's Korean and they make a quality product. So, to reiterate, I am going to make you black and blue.

No, you don't understand. I paid $800 for this car and sure it was a smoker's car and sure the transmission was a little wonky and sure it had a "Hatchet Man" vinyl graphic on the back hatch, but it was in great shape and the lady who sold it to me was so nice.

I'm sorry. Who did you say you were? You work for Sobe? Oh, your green tea is pretty sweet but a guilty pleasure of mine. Oh, that's right. You do make Lifewater. I've had some good ones of those. Black and Blue? No, I'm going to make you black and blue. Oh, you're going to give me a case of black and blue so that I don't punch your lights out. Alright, that's a fair trade. All this talking calmed me down anyway. Let's give it a go.

Well that's interesting. It's like blueberry when you sip it and when you swallow it tastes like a blackberry. That is real science there, Sobe man. There is a slight artificial sweetener taste, but it's just additional sweetness, not gross.

You know, this crash might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, I do have a pretty great kid and wife, and I've accomplished a great deal. This was going to be a field car anyhow so I guess I didn't need it. Well, don't worry about anything. We'll let our insurance take care of it. Have a nice day, Sobe man. Next time, remember to stop at stop signs.

Yesterday's limeade is today's lemonade. To be different, you've got to go and sweeten with strange stuff, like agave, or that's what you like to let people think. See here's the thing. This is a strange drink that is full of lies. Agave is a natural sweetener. Going through the ingredients, you will notice that there is no agave in it. Oh, there's "natural flavor" but come on. What does that even mean. That's a copout. It would be like making a drink that is genuinely "all natural" and then for ingredients just putting down "natural flavors, natural sweeteners, natural preservatives" What a joke.

Lies aside, this is alright. It's lemonade and it tastes like lemonade but you miss out on a lot of the things that you love about lemonade. Pulp? I love pulp and it's gone. This lemonade would be like strained lemonade that's a little thicker. Not a bad thicker but noticeably thicker. There is yerba mate in there but it doesn't have the bitterness that comes with it. Don't really know why it's there.

There are a lot of questions that I don't care if they get answered or not. I don't care where the agave is. I don't care where the pulp is. I'm completely apathetic. I don't care. It's good enough. It's above honorable mention but below a medal. Right smack dab in the middle.

Wow, this drink has one of the strongest scents I've ever experienced in a beverage. It smells like two people were making a fruit salad and they sliced into a mango and mandarin orange simultaneously. It's quite a smell to be smelled. I wish the taste were as strong and specific as the smell. There is little if any coconut water flavor in this. The only trace of it is in the aftertaste. The mango and mandarin flavors blend together into a new tropical citrus fruit. If I drank this blind I don't know if I would guess either of those fruits were in it, but knowing they are I can spot them. I like this a lot. If you're into Vitamin Water, but would like to mix things up a bit this would be the drink to do it with. It's evolution baby!

James, it's great to see you. How was space? Great? Did you play golf in space? Man, I would have driven the ball all the way to earth and then, somehow, watch it burn up on re-entry. Oh, the thought of that gets me so pumped. So, space. That must have been awesome. Really? No cheese. Well, the pamphlets they are handing out down here on earth are telling me otherwise. It's Swiss, but it's space cheese nonetheless.

Woah! What is this? Really? Gifts, from space? Oh, gifts from NASA. Cool, but honestly, space gifts sounds a lot better. I guess NASA gifts would be of better quality since there is nothing in space, apparently, except space rocks. Really though? Not one moon rock? You brought me official NASA dried fruit. That's cool. What am I supposed to do with this? Oh, mix it in with this space water you gave me? What are these, strawberries and apricots? Awesome. Let me mix it here. Oh, this is delicious. You know what, though? It just tastes like Sobe Lifewater. It's better the more I drink it. No one uses apricots and I cannot appreciate these space dried ones more. Strawberries? I have had these and they are delicious, but I've had them. I appreciate them, but I've had them. I enjoy the erythritol sweetness and the fifty-fifty strawberry/apricot mix. This is good, dude. Thanks. I can buy it mostly anywhere as, like I said, Sobe Lifewater, but this being space juice makes it so much better. Thank you very much.

Woah! You brought me a Fisher Space Pen from NASA, too? This is the pen that writes upside down! Awesome. I'm sorry that I gave you such a hard time about that moon rock and space cheese stuff. This is a great gift.

Pomegranates: +1
Nectarines: -1
Coconut Water: 0

Total Score: 0

Regardless of the rather neutral score, I was somewhat enthusiastic to try it. Maybe it's because I don't ingest a lot of nectarine flavored drinks. I don't like to eat oranges, but I enjoy the orange flavor. I sped drank think before the coconut water took over. You know, the inherent chalkiness that comes with a coconut drink. You get a flavor, and it's fruity, but I personally couldn't distinguish between pomegranate and nectarine.

If I had to make a list of coconut drinks for people who don't like coconut drinks, this would be one on the list.

I've been drinking a lot of pop and my mouth has gotten tired of it. I needed something to break the monotony. It happens when you drink so much stuff. It all starts to blend together and you need a break. Since we don't take actual "breaks" here at Thirsty Dudes, our breaks are us drinking something different.

For the trillionth time, I can't believe that we haven't done this yet. Strawberry Kiwi Lifewater? Get out. It's been out forever and we're just now getting to it. This should give you the incentive to go out and try something new if we have just now gotten around to something that you can get anywhere.

This is probably a standby classic for you because it's so good. It's light, sweet, and has a great fruit flavor. Great. Did you hear me? I don't use that word a lot. Good, alright, OK, whatever. I don't use "great" a lot. I do and I don't care. I'll say it again. It isn't too sweet and has no bad aftertaste. It's not to bad in the calorie department which is good as I just Gregory House M.D.'d this entire bottle.

This new season of House is pretty good and all over the place, too, if you haven't gotten around to it. You're only three episodes deep. You could catch up on one rainy day. Hugh Laurie. You're a great man. Come do a guest review. Someone get Hugh Laurie to do a guest review.

That little Sobe lizard has gone a long way. When they first popped up in the mid to late 90's I was a fan, but I never expected them to stay around very long. I worked in a grocery store and one of my jobs was to return items that people decided they didn't want, or returned to the shelves. The number of bottles of Sobe that I had to put back was a bit ridiculous. The number of Sobe bottles that I took into the back room and drank instead of putting them back on the shelves likes I was supposed to was also pretty ridiculous. On a similar note, one day I took a bottle of each kind of BBQ sauce we carried and took them to my secret area of the back room (where I knew there were no cameras) and tried them all to discover what brand it was that a local taco chain used on a limited burrito they had. Sadly it was none of the 20+ I tried and the possibly slow kid that took my money in exchange for tacos refused to tell me. I should probably find him and throw a water balloon full of BBQ sauce at him.

Now that I have been thoroughly sidetracked by my looting and burrito intake, back to the point. No one seemed to want Sobe. I loved it. It was a quasi energy drink / Gatorade. Since then they have tweaked their flavors and gone off into other worlds of beverages. With their Lifewater line I believe they have something that the masses will enjoy. It of course is in the vein of other vitamin enhanced water/sports drinks out there, but it has a bit more flavor. The more flavor it has the further it gets away from being a "water" drink in my eyes, but who am I to complain? Oh yeah, I am a professional drinkologist.

The orange tangerine flavor we have here unsurprisingly reminds me of Tang. This may be the future of space drinks. It's chock full of vitamins and minerals that every astronaut needs in his or her daily space life. I'd also like to point out that they did a good job of lowering the sugar, without compromising flavor by cutting it with erythritol. Now we just need a proper space BBQ shop and I can get a job on a space station and then loot it.