Canada - 143 Reviews

Will someone out there please lie to me and confirm the thought in my head that this line of energy drinks was created for or by the 90's rapper The Lady of Rage. I want so badly for the woman who rocked ruff and stuff with her afro puffs to have shifted her attention to a Canadian beverage company. If Snoop or Dre inspired shots show up on the market I will know that everything is right in the world. Until that point I will just avoid looking it up on the internet as to keep the dream alive.

This is a diet energy/electrolytes combination drink that has a general berry flavor that leans heavily on the strawberry for it's flavor. Actually it tastes a lot like the sugar free candies that my grandmother used to always have. I never liked them at first, but I would eat them because when your grandmother offers you candy, you accept it regardless of its sugar content. Eventually I grew to like those candies, and this is similar to what I remember them tasting like (It's been probably 20 years since I've had one). What I'm saying here is that this may be diet, sweetened with sucralose even, but it still tastes a little bit of alright.

The can is pink as you can see and it has the logo for the Breast Cancer Society of Canada on it, but it also makes no mention of any profits made from sales being donated. I will assume that it is the case as them using that imagery just to boost sales and not to share the wealth is pretty devious.

When I bought this drink I was pretty sure it was going to be great, but the longer I thought about it, the greater my suspicions. On one hand it's a green tea that was orange pineapple flavored and that sounds great to me. In addition to that it comes in a glass bottle, which most of the time is a sign of quality tea. What company is going to spend the extra money on glass with an inferior product? On the other hand this is a protein drink, which could leave it weirdly chalky. It is also sweetened with stevia, which isn't absolutely terrible, but it's still not my sweetener of choice. There was no doubt that there was going to be an element of gambling involved with this one.

My original thoughts were not quite on the money. Actually they were a bit further away from it than I would have liked. This is a very, very light tea to the extent that it almost tastes like tea-flavored water. The flavoring has a vague citrusness around it, but it's more like the weakest Tang that has ever been made than orange and pineapple. That's stevia coldness isn't helping matters either. If that had been the drink it wouldn't have been horrible, but nothing I would spend my money on again. Blu-Dot took things further though and added whey protein in order to make the drink functional.

On some levels adding the protein made this drink seem better, because I always give functional drinks a bit of a break in the flavor category, because you can't expect that stuff to taste great. Then on the opposite levels it just makes an already mediocre flavor go even more down hill.

To summarize this it tastes like a shot of green tea was dumped into the world's most watered down Tang and then a heap of whey protein was dropped in, which made it taste like it should be curdled. I am not a fan.

I could go for some nice tropical rhythms. It's getting cold here in Buffalo and I started to get ready for the inevitable winter. I put away all of the lawn furniture and I started putting plastic up on the windows I live in an old apartment and the windows don't do much for keeping out the cold drafts). I could use a nice little island retreat before I get into the icy slump of winter.

Unfortunately this drink didn't give me the feeling of hanging out in the sun with the waves crashing and some weird birds cawing. The title would leave one to believe that this is a nice mango juice from concentrate. One sip and I knew that there was some carrot in the mix. It's not strong, but it's a flavor that I have grown to notice in drinks. I have no problem with carrots being added to beverages, as the health boost is appreciated. I just like knowing that it's in there beforehand. I do dislike the use of HFCS. All of the other Grace products I've tried have used real sugar, and that is always preferred. The sweetener in this gives it a weird syrupy taste that I could do without. I understand high fructose corn syrup in soda to an extent, but adding it to juice just seems completely unnecessary.

Had this been sweetened with sugar, or had no added sweeteners, and been labeled mango carrot I can guarantee I would have had a more pleasant ride with it. Now someone bring me more blankets. I refuse to turn my heat on before Thanksgiving.

If such a thing as a old timey pop shop existed in my town, would anyone actually visit it on the regular? I don't even know if I would and I am a Thirsty Dude. Sure I would go on grand opening and have a nice root beer or some such thing, but I think it would have to offer me something more. You know what I just had a great idea. “Barcades” are all the rage these days. What if we took that a step further? Why not have an arcade that is also a pop shop during the day and then at 9 or 10PM all the youngin's get ushered out and the alcohol can flow for the older crowd? Seems like you're doubling your market with little extra work. (Mike, if you're reading this, you're welcome.)

During the day I would hope that they would serve some nice high quality fountain drinks as well as a nice array of bottled fares. I would be remiss if Pop Shoppe was not served at my local pop shop. Their soda is always on the better side of normal/average. They aren't going out of their way to recreate the wheel, but they aren't cheaping out either. Well, I guess they are a little since they use high fructose corn syrup. This cola is fairly standard. I would say flavorwise it falls somewhere in between Coke and Pepsi, but it is light years better than generic brand. Also, the bottle would work well for a retro feel. If this idea doesn't come into fruition in Buffalo in the next two years…€¦well…€¦I'll be pretty bummed. I need somewhere to play Galaga and drink soda. It would also be the reason I need to go out to bars to hang out with friends.

Canada Dry, makers of the top-secret model of a ginger ale, now makes regular pop. That's pretty great, right? Sure. They're going against the "big guys" and making pop. Do they do it well? Meh. Yeah, you heard me. I gave it a "shaky hand" review. Black cherry is a rough pop and it is a lot harder to have a great black cherry than it is, say, a cola. This has a bit of a numbing feeling behind it like you would get from a cough drop. Is it bad? No, not really, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Is that harsh? Possibly. Probably. Actually. It's sweet and tastes like an average pop. Nothing mind blowing here. Just a black cherry pop to sit around on the shelf until you meet a person that has either never had black cherry pop or someone who forgot what it tasted like. You're alright to let this one get dusty. Don't worry. Someone will drink it.

Do you have a fetish that consists of drinking liquid plastic until you reach a state of relaxation? You do? Well I did not expect you to answer that in the affirmative, but good news for you is that this drink is probably just what you have been looking for; a way to sate your compulsion but without being poisoned by it.

This 100% tastes like the most diet berry drink anyone has ever dreamt of. That beverage was then kept in some sort of plastic container, and the flavor of the plastic somehow seeped into the drink. The result is ridiculously diet tasting plastic.

In addition to tasting like nothing I want to consume, this is also a relaxation drink that will keep you calm without making you feel drowsy, like Marley Mellow Moods. In order to achieve that they use a blend of lemon balm, hibiscus, l-theanine, green tea, passion flower and a few other things.

So there you have it. You're rare fetish can now be explored anytime you wish. You just may have to head to Canada to pick some up.

Oh I'm such a dumb dummy. I see this iced tea on the shelf in Ontario, Canada, blur through the ingredients, see "sugar" and jump to conclusions. Yeah, whatever. It's one dollar Canadian which at the time of review is ninety-seven cents American. Who cares, right? Right.

Well as bad as it could have been, which it wasn't, I managed to drink eighty percent of it. I should shut up now but what review would be complete without an actual review. Sure, we love reviewing things poorly, but poorly is better than non-existent. It tastes thicker than I like my tea. Dare I say the word, "unnatural" because Mother Nature's liquids aren't this thick? Ugh. Chalk that up on the "gross" board. No, I'm leaving it in there. The tea taste is fine but it is the "wrong" sweet. Good tea taste but bad sweet.

Also, "pure tea solids" is an ingredient in this and it sounds almost as gross as "Mother Nature's Liquids."

All of a sudden, two flavors are spending a lot of time together. If I didn't know better, I would call it "cahoots." When I worked for the state one summer, I learned the word "cahoots." For those who don't know, it means "partners" but for the people I worked with, it means "people teaming up to take our jobs away." The people I worked with there were some of the laziest employees I have ever worked with in my life: long breaks, long lunches, minimal effort, complaining, and everything in between. I am lucky that work ethic didn't wear off on me.

On the positive side of cahoots, we have cherry and pomegranate. Two buddies both red in color teaming up to save the world. One pretty sweet, the other pretty bitter, but together they cancel each other out leaving us with a cop comedy that ended seemingly before it began. This is not too sweet or too anything really. It is almost a watered down juice, which I like more than a "properly mixed" juice. You can taste more cherry than pomegranate but they are both in there doing their thing. Fighting for the good city of Fruitburg against the bank robbers, jewel thieves, cat burglars, and unlicensed beach peddlers. They never stop selling those seashell necklaces no matter how many times the cops come. They never will. That's why the beat don't stop. Cherry and pomegranate are always on the beat.

Jay, generous man of the year, bought this for me. I drove to Toronto and he bought me an iced tea. What a man, right? When we are in Canada, we are on our game. We have to memorize everything we drink because once we get over the border our phone data is down. What? We're not millionaires and cannot afford to just tether eleven devices? No, sir or ma'am. We cannot do that. We Thirsty Dudes pinch pennies so when Jay spends two dollars and forty nine cents Canadian on a drink, that's awesome.

Protein drinks are rough. They are often thick and taste like you're trying to do something. Something functional. Something that should be subsidized with, you know, good old-fashioned exercise. This drink is different, though. Let's run through the flavor. Cranberry and pomegranate are two delicious but bitter buddies. When together in a lightly sweetened tea are a great team. The green tea is there but between the cranberry and the pomegranate, the bitterness of a green tea is easily thwarted.

I am happy to have the protein I probably didn't have in me prior inside of me. I figure I earned it since I did go through the whole trouble of drinking it. I like it, though. It tastes like a cranberry and pomegranate juice and then watering it down a bit. Sure, you're paying for a premium for an organic, all natural drink, but hey, you're worth it. Well, you're worth it if Jay decides you're worth it.

You know that a drink cannot surpass "three bottles" when with every sip you wonder if it has gone bad. I am half way through this bottle and, as aforementioned, I don't know if it's going to kill me or not. It could be the maple syrup that my palate is not used to but it's not like anything that I'm used to.

The strawberry though...that is real. It tastes like someone took an iced tea sweetened with maple syrup and just squished some strawberries into it. It tastes natural. I can honor that part of it. The maple syrup part of it...that's just odd. Call me an "ignorant American" Canada, but this kind of makes it taste funny.

Maple syrup. You're great on pancakes. Stick to pancakes. You're good on that.

The tropics must have been going through a storm when this drink was made. You know the type that I'm referring to, the kind that blows garbage all over your lawn. You always say you're going to cut down those hedges because all they do is collect garbage and take up your limited front yard but every time you go in the shed to get a saw, you remember that you don't want neighbor dogs defecating on your yard. Well that garbage filled yard is like what this drink taste like: a diet tropical garbage citrus storm.

Right off the bat the Stevia is bastardizing whatever is in this bottle so I cannot get a good read of any flavors without being rudely interrupted by your highness. There might be a mango or a pineapple in here but I wouldn't know because, much like Adam Levine's number one biggest and fattest fan pushing her way up to the front of the crowd, Stevia is shoving it's way all over your poor taste buds.

Sometimes you wonder why drinks are on sale and then you drink things like this and realize why. Questions and answers wrapped into one cheap, 473ml bottle of diet sweetener.

Everyone knows that koalas sit around in trees all day tripping their balls off from the eucalyptus leaves they eat. Guess what, everyone is wrong. While eucalyptus is a staple in the animals diet it does not have any mind-altering effects on them. They are just lazy animals, which don't eat a proper diet to keep moving throughout the day. Perhaps if they had more of a high-energy diet they would be swinging from the trees like a bunch of monkeys.

In my mind this beverage was whipped up in a lab to get these little guys moving. I'm not sure if there is caffeine in here, like most colas, but I have to believe that lemon and elderberry juice along with agave syrup would have to give them a little more pep than a couple of quasi toxic leaves. Speaking of which, why is there fruit juice in this cola? I actually don't know how this actually tastes like cola with the ingredients that are in it, but it does. It's a slightly fruity cola that has a much different sweetness than most people are used to. I fully support the use of agave to sweeten sodas, but it does have a drawback. When it is used in “brown” pop they never taste as dark as you would want them to. It's something I can overlook though as this gives a new twist to a classic beverage.

Remember when you were a kid and you would drop something, like ice cream on the street, and the next day you would walk down that very street and there would be a seemingly infinite amount of ants on it? I feel like if you spilled some of this on the ground, ants would come from all corners of the earth. Anyone who has a dog knows that you could be anywhere in the house and if you as much as touch a receptacle with food in it, the dog is right there, faithfully by your feet. Fruitopia is like that to ants.

Doing my most careful attempt at not spilling any in fear that ants would inhabit my body as a home for themselves, I drank this perhaps faster than I needed to. It was good, though, so it wasn't like I had to choke it down. It was, quite literally, a strawberry juice with passion fruit in it. Not an inventive review, I know, but there are no clever branding techniques or misinterpreted messages. Strawberries and passion fruit: Done and done. Check and check.

I finished the can at night and did an attempt to take a picture on a building ledge but was unsatisfied so I left it in my car to take a picture of today with the fear that I would open my door and a frightening mass of ants would just fall out like the world's most awful prank.

"Well this is something," says someone who drank this. I, professional drinker and skeptic of most things, agreed. This is a tangy, sweet drink. Tangy. Jesus Christmas. Limes and grapefruit? You needed to put the two tartest fruits imaginable together in one drink? Are you trying to turn me into a reverse Dizzy Gillespie? Suck in my cheeks to look like a malnourished, third world child? Who can drink this for pleasure? You want to know what Kiwi is doing while those other two are stealing the show? Well I'll tell you that he is not carrying his weight. That or between the lime and the grapefruit he simply compete.


This isn't bad. If you like Squirt and Limca, put them together into a container that is too large for one or even two servings and call it a day.

The Buddha meditates under trees for long periods of time. He always starts the morning in the shade, but as the sun rises the sun ends up blaring on him and it gets hot, very hot. Let's face it he's also a big guy, so he sweats a lot. The Buddha knows it's important to keep hydrated, so he always keeps a cooler of coconut water with him, so he doesn't dry out and shrivel up.

He prefers to drink straight up coconut water with nothing added to it, but sometimes when he's not meditating into nothingness/everything he wants a little more and goes for some with a little mango juice in it. There's not a whole ton of juice added to it, but it's enough to give it a little flavor. The problem is the company he's sponsored by also adds some sugar to it. The Buddha knows it's unnecessary, but they don't put too much in, so it's not like it's sugar water masquerading as coconut water. It's simply mildly sweetened, lightly flavored coconut water that is a little chalky, but that's what you get with all decent coconut waters. It refreshes him like only coconut water and enlightenment can.

The stories and teachings have it all wrong. The tree that Gautama sat under that led him to become the Buddha was not a Bodhi tree as it was taught. In fact, the fat man was sitting under a coconut tree when he reached enlightenment. It's a good thing too, since reaching enlightenment can be truly dehydrating. Lucky for him the most hydrating beverage in the world hung directly over his head. So there you go: from enlightened to shaking a tree and dodging the fruits that descended towards his head within a couple of moments.

Several thousand years have passed since the glorious event and a company called Thirsty Buddha has arisen for a grand celebration in liquid form. All that is contained in this can is 100% all natural coconut water. There are no added sweeteners or preservatives, simply because they are not needed. This is delicious and refreshing; everything the Buddha needed on the day of his enlightenment. There are a lot of companies out there nowadays selling their versions of this "holy" drink, but most of them add extraneous ingredients that take away from the purity of what they create. They made mistakes, Thirsty Buddha did not.

To further offend the followers of Buddhism I shall leave you with the following perversion of faith an pop culture. Imagine the chorus of Destiny's Child's hit single Bootylicious with the lyrics changed to, "I don't think you're ready for this belly, cause his body's too Buddhalicious for ya babe."

If the marketing team at Red Rain has a single brain cell in their collective heads I would hope that they have contacted Peter Gabriel to use his song that is the same name as their company. Just imagine that chorus playing as slow motion shots of sports teams winning the big game and spraying each other with cans of energy drink. It would be like they were announcing that the sun has set on Gatorade in the energy drink age. It would be triumphant, and it's a great song on top of that.

I don't know if that's the market they are looking to sell their beverages to, but it's not the scenario that is important, it's the song. It really is a great song, and I'm gonna say this is a fairly great energy drink at that. Cranberry should be used more in energy drinks. It covers up the typical candy flavor nicely. This has a predominately cranberry flavor with a nice citrus touch around the edges. It's certainly not a typical flavor for an energy drink, which is nice.

Think about it; Peter Gabriel and an unusual tasting energy drink. Then think about all of the toonies pouring in, much like that self same red rain.

This is going to be half review, half reminiscence, and half celebrators since this is our 3000th review. Since all of them have to happen at the same time, let's just start with the Thirsty Dudes ode to new drinks. Jay and I went to Toronto and stopped periodically at multiple shops. Our love for Thirsty Dudes is international. We travel beyond both state and country lines just in order to get drinks. This is a juice. I had to present my passport to get juice. Come on. Would you do that? You might? We do. When we are on vacation, we do it big. I went to Brooklyn this past weekend on an impromptu "vacation" and number one thing on my list was to get local root beer. Come on. What a waste of time but we love it. We're in Canada and there is a Whole Foods. We bought a ton of stuff, like forty drinks each, and yes, like this one, some of them were "house brand" but things need to get done. Drinks need to get drank. Sure, it took me well over two months to drink it but hey, we've got a cache of drinks. This, finally, was pretty good. It's about time that I get a nice, high quality juice. It's got a good blueberry taste but is dense. It's flavorful and bold. It's not cut with anything. I could have stretched this out probably 25% just by watering it down and it still would have been good.

In hindsight, this is not my favorite juice. It never was, but I'm summing it all up. Wrapping it up in a little package. It's good, I mean look, I gave it a four out of five. That's good, but this is the 3000th review. This should have been reserved for something epic like a cherry flavored slime with sparkles in it. I would have loved to reserve that for ol' Bernie Mac but we can't wait too long or we're not going to have reviews.

You know us. We don't only review good stuff. We review good stuff poorly and bad stuff well. We make up stories, tall tales, fish tales, and reflect on our past. We bring our family, friends, past relationships, and dreams into our reviews. You get to see inside our deranged minds with a lot of reviews and it gives you an insight into our lives and the people we are. We're three dudes that are friends that are creative idiots that like to drink stuff because it gives us something to talk about.

We talked about what we were going to do and the only thing we could think about was having a pizza party at a place that has been closed for probably twenty years that we each went to when we were eight and playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game and then talking about the advantages of each specific turtle. We're immature kids. We're dumb idiots. We love what we do. Thanks for letting us get to 3000. Tell your friends.

Back story time. There is a little beverage center here in Buffalo that sells little glass bottles of soda for like $.30 each. It's not mind blowing, but it's better than most “normal” pop. They usually came in Pop Shoppe bottles, so we thought that was what it was, until we discovered that it was actually made by a company called College Club from Rochester, NY. They just bought up reusable bottles from old companies who no longer used them. Later on we were on a trip to Canada and I came across some soda that was made by the real Pop Shoppe. In reality it wasn't much different than the Pop Shoppe stuff, but that means that it was still good. It came in glass bottles so that was a plus, even if it was about 5x more expensive (still only $1.50).

Now you're caught up to the time when my band was doing a Canadian weekend a little while back and I came across Pop Shoppe skinny cans in a grocery store. I bought a couple of four packs because they were on sale for $1.50 each. Sadly this Groovin' Grape did not measure up to their bottled sodas. It tastes like they were trying to go for a more actual grape taste than grape soda normally does. The problem is that they didn't get it quite right. There is no grape juice in this, and while I can taste where they were trying to go, they missed their mark. It's not horrible, but it's not great. I don't know if I would even call it good. It's just kind of there. I could drink it if it were served to me, but never would I purchase it again myself.

Blueberry grape? Who has heard of such a thing? Blueberry is always paired with pomegranate and these two just shouldn't blend. Jones, the insane Canadians that they are, decided that they can do whatever they want. They put those guys together in one bottle and came up with...wait for it...a strange drink. It smells good and it invites you in. When you drink it, you get some blueberry and some grape juice but there is something else in there, something that I didn't like. I don't want to say bitter but it had a bit of that acai taste to it even though that wasn't an ingredient. I think it's actually the vegetable juice that they use for color that kind of snuck in some flavor. I've had this before with those drinks that are fruit flavored but have a days worth of vegetable intake in them. I'm fine with that, but know that it also delivers this strange aftertaste. If you know this stuff, you will be fine. I am the informer. Snow and I, we are informers.