Sobe - 30 Reviews

Ever since Vitamin Water came on the scene tons of companies have popped up with their own versions. They all refer to them as water drinks. Let's call them what they are people; they are sports/revitalization drinks. This is closer to a Gatorade than it is a glass of water. I feel like as soon as you add a sweetener to water that it no longer can be considered water. If this is a water drink than so is a bottle of Coke. Both are over 50% water, but really come on.

Now that I have that rant out of the way, the drink is pretty great. I don't know why they put erythritol in here along with normal sugar, but luckily you can't taste it at all. Maybe that is the secret that drinks need. There are only 9g of sugar in this, but it tastes just as strong as it's competitors. The main flavor is definitely grape, but there is some berry flavor mixed in there as well.

You've got your best suit on and you're ready to go. It's your big day. You've got an interview at a publishing house and this is your opportunity to get out of this town. You board the train into the city and when the snack cart rolls by, you are feeling thirsty and decide to grab something to drink. You scramble through your briefcase, which you bought just for this interview because, you know, big city people carry a suitcase. You scrounge enough money to buy a Sobe Lifewater and since you're aggressively trying to get a job, you decided on the black cherry dragonfruit. Dragons don't ask questions. Dragons are closers. Who gets to drink coffee? Coffee is for closers. A.B.C. Alec Baldwin is your new spirit guide for the rest of the long train ride into the city.

You drink this drink and it's good. It's light and has a bit of a bitter erytritol taste, but you're on your way to be an adult and you can deal with a little bitterness. For the first time with a dragonfruit drink, you can actually taste it, and that pleases you because you've only had one once at an exotic fruit taste test party at a rich friend's house. What a night. Kumquat, dragonfruit, pomegranate, and the like. A night you will not soon forget.

You take the last sip and when you throw the bottle in the garbage can, the cap comes loose and spills purple juice on your crisp white shirt. You can cover most of it in your suit coat so you decide that is all you can do and you go into the interview. You talk to the CEO of the company for over an hour and things are going great. As you stand to leave, you shake his hand and he takes one last look at you and sees the newly acquired stain. He asks you what it is and since you don't want to start off on a bad foot by lying to your potential boss, you tell him that you were enjoying a Sobe Lifewater and when you threw it out, the cap flew off, spilling some on your shirt. He laughed and took his jacket off. Under the jacket lied over a dozen stains. "This is mustard and this one is ketchup. Over here we've got both black and blue ink. On the back, you've got chocolate and here on my arm is pizza. You're going to fit in great. I'll see you next Monday. Congratulations."

An open letter to pears everywhere:

Dear pears,
I'm sorry that I crap on you all the time. No, not literally. That would be a sight to see, though, wouldn't it? Me sitting over a bushel of pears, letting them have it. No, I am sorry that I call you "crappy apples" all the time. I complain, but it's really my way of saying that I want you to be better. Creative criticism, if you will. I have just tried your collaboration with the apples of Fuji and now I've got to say, you two are great together. A dynamic duo, like Batman and Robin or any other superhero and sidekick. This drink is sweet and apple come out and pear comes out and everyone plays together in the flowered plains called my mouth. It's not too sweet and although this is technically a "diet" drink, the Erythritol isn't overpowering and leaves me with a cool sweetness, as it often does.

In closing, you have done a great job with your friend, Dr. Fuji Appleton. I am sorry for all the guff I give you. You do have many appreciative friends who enjoy you, and it's one of those "you can't win them all." scenarios. I am one man and am clearly outnumbered. I just wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt with this drink because you truly are amazing.

Sometimes when I'm in the presence of a certain and very specific smell of wood, I can only think of one thing. When I was a kid, for no reason or for hide-and-seek, I used to hide in this cabinet/shelf we had in the basement. I could go there now, 25 years later and it would smell the same. It reminds me of that. I don't know if it's pine or what, but I catch a smell of it and I'm right back there, in that cubby. I don't think there is any way that I could fit in there now, but I could put my head in there and relive my past over and over again.

This drink did not make me think of wood, but it has a smell that is reminiscent of something. You know when you're like "Oh, what does that smell like?" It drives you crazy, right? You can't place it but you've got such a familiar association with it, that it's like looking into your past. I want to say this tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher, but that's a cop out. If they ever made watermelon Freeze-e-pops, this is what it tastes like, but less syrupy and sweeter because of the Stevia.

This pales in comparison to the black cherry because it's a bit too candy. Watermelon seems to be a tough flavor to get to not be like candy, that's what it's so awesome to find something "grape" flavored that doesn't taste like what the world has accepted as "grape", you know what I mean? Grape PEZ doesn't taste anything like any grapes I've ever had, and neither has anything watermelon flavored. Get on that, world; you've got the skills.

Something inside of me needed to buy this. I was at the store, shopping for deck chairs and I walked by and all of a sudden there were two in my cart. Blink of an eye. Two of 'em. No discussion. No thought. Is that what my life has become? Oh, there's something I haven't drank, better get that before someone else comes in underneath me and buys one hundred flavored waters. What, am I crazy? Probably. Jay actually told me the other day that he misses buying new drinks. I mean, come on. What person misses buying drinks? Shoes, clothes, video games, and cars are all things that you can miss buying. Drinks? There's a big difference between spending $50 on a game, $50,000 on a car, and $300 on a pair of shoes and buying $1.29 worth of a tea you've never had. We have all become quite accustomed to having no money since, well; none of us have any money so it is the little things that make us happy.

So Sobe. It's been a while. Look, I used to drink that green tea that came out a decade ago all the time before I realized that it's like the worst drink on the shelves for you. I've snuck on in here and there since that doesn't mean they're any less delicious. They're released a million different flavors and sub-brands since then and this one, I've got to say is delicious. This drink is easy to review, too. It tastes like a non-syrupy, adequately sweetened, flat black cherry pop. Done. It's good. The flavor was there, too. It was crisp and clean and right out of the fridge this cat was tops. It's not a civilized beverage by any means. I bought it for one American dollar. How good can it be? Answer? Pretty darn good.

Macintosh Apple and cherry sounds like a good combination to me? What do you say? Yes? Si? Some of us at Thirsty Dudes can pretend to be bilingual. Remember that review that I did where I counted in Korean? Trilingual. Seriously, I took a couple years of Spanish in high school and some in college. I am awful at it now. I wish I were better. I live in a heavily Puerto Rican populated neighborhood and sometimes I wish I could talk to them in their native tongue.

This drink has a half candy, half alcohol smell to it. You think that it's going to burn when you drink it, but it's fairly calm to the taste. You get a little bit of apple but I would say the cherry is more prominent. It's not a bad diet taste, either. It is sweetened with Erythitol but doesn't have that gnarly uber-sweet taste. I think this might be one of the better Lifewaters I have tried.

Not the worst. That's saying something because when it comes to that yumberry one I've had in the past. It smells a bit like pear, according to my friend Mike. The taste isn't too strong and for that reason, it wins. It's a melon-y, watered down lemonade taste. It's not bad. It's probably a great diet drink because, after all, it has 0 calories.

This seems to be my go to drink lately. Despite the name, this is far from water, even farther from water than Vitamin Water. It's lighter than juice, but more flavorful than water. This drink goes down really smooth and really quenched my thirst at work yesterday out in the hot sun. I've tried other flavors of Sobe Lifewater before, and none compare to this one. While the pomegranate flavor isn't that noticeable, yumberry definitely lives up to its name. The bottle was so full of flavor it was like a party in my mouth.

I just don't think of Sobe as an energy drink. It's probably because it's not in a can. It just seems like a juice drink to me, even though it has ginseng, guarana and taurine. It also doesn't taste like an energy drink at all. It has a nice orange and lemon citrus flavor. There is a weird other taste to it, but it's still not an energy drink flavor. Hopefully I won't crash in a few hours from this.

When Sobe first hit the market I worked at a grocery store, and I would drink them on my break. I thought they were great, and had such strange flavors (keep in mind I was 17 and hadn't ventured much outside of standard beverages). My infatuation quickly faded, and I don't think I've had one in at least ten years. I bought this bottle because it was yumberry flavored. I've been seeing this in a lot of drinks lately and I wanted to check it out. For those of you from Western New York, I will say that my thoughts after the first sip was that it reminded me a lot of loganberry. Although the lack of high-fructose corn syrup, definitely gave it a thinner consistency then that local favorite. It was very sweet, and it didn't have the tartness that I've come to expect from pomegranate (and from yumberry as I learned online). I guess it is just way over sweetened. I still enjoyed it. I'll have to try some more of these new Sobe flavors. Look for some new reviews soon.