Canada - 143 Reviews

Is it wrong of me to assume that when something is organic that it is just going to be solely what it is labeled as? I feel like ten years back that was the case, but not so much these days. I wanted there to be nothing in this bottle except for juices that came from mangos and oranges. Oh it would have been so delicious, perhaps a perfect drink. That is not what I received. While it still is better than 90% of the juices available to the world, there are other elements at work in this beverage that lessen its quality. Sure there are orange and mango juice in here, but right along side them, and in greater quantity according to the ingredient list, are their friends apple and grape. It's like orange and orange arranged this wonderful little get away together and then their two overbearing friends invited themselves along and rearranged the entire trip to suit their own needs. Jerks. What would have been the vacation of a lifetime ends up being more of an apple juice that is orange and mango flavored (grape got food poisoning and spent the weekend in bed). As I said I do really enjoy the drink a lot, and it's fairly unique tasting, but it's not what I was expecting, nor what I really wanted. Knowing what it is I think I would enjoy it a lot more in the future.

I had a true taste comparison with this one. As I've previously mentioned Arizona was my gateway into green teas. It was the first I've ever had and for a longtime it was my benchmark. How stupid I was. Last night I went to a show with my friend Dave and he brought a can of the classic Arizona green tea and I brought this bottle of Urban Zen. We were both happily drinking our respective teas when he needed me to hold his for some reason. Being the sneaky so and so that I am I took a sip. Wow, the two drinks while having essentially similar makeups were light years apart. I had never realized how cheap Arizona tasted before. It's essentially a sweetener with some green tea flavoring in it. This on the other hand was the real deal. It's properly brewed whole leaf green tea that has been infused with jasmine flower. It has a real green tea taste, and it's mostly sweetened with honey, which gives it's own twist to the flavor. All in all this has only 10g of sugar in it, which is all you ever really need in a sweetened tea. I'm pretty sure that Arizona has about 4 times that. The comparison made me realize how much of a kids drink Arizona really is, and how this is a tea of a pseudo sophisticated adult. It's slightly bitter with a nice light floral taste. Jasmine tea, it's not just for fancy Asian restaurants anymore. Arizona, I don't know if I'll ever look at your green tea the same way again.

Nature, I just can't get enough of it. Well, I can't get enough of the awesome woods aspect of nature. I can do without the frozen tundra side of things. Sometimes I need to go out into the woods, like deep down need it to an extent that I know I won't be able to relax and settle down until I surrounded by the green (okay I'm reading Swamp Thing now, so that's a nod to classic Alan Moore with the phrasing). I have no doubt that when I get old I will live out in the country, preferably in the woods. The city is a young man's game and while I love it now, I know I won't want to be here in twenty years. So to the country I shall go.

It's late Fall now and it's getting cold and it's raining all the time. That means I'm going to be stuck inside for a few months without my precious green. I'll burn cut grass candles and pretend it's nice out but it simply won't work. This drink might help a bit though. It's a slightly sweetened yerba mate with the faintest hint of lemon in it. If you're not familiar with yerba mate it's a pseudo tea that has a bunch of caffeine in it. It tastes like everything in the woods was boiled down into a wonderful drink. If I ever had to describe what I think nature would taste like, I would hand the person a bottle of this. It's strong, herbal and wonderful. It's a Brazilian tradition by way of Canada. How does that even make sense? Oh well, here's to hoping we get a few more nice days in so I can go engulf myself in the forest. Then, hibernation.

You know what I hate? I hate when people get perfume in my pop. I absolutely hate it. I often leave open bottles of pop on the floor at grandmother's homes and you know how grandmas are. They spray that perfume on with a Super Soaker before raging at the Bingo parlor, just gallon after gallon of lavender and Chanel No. 5.

I must have accidentally left this bottle open at everyone's grandmother's house in Western New York before I drank it because this drink tastes like a slew of different old women. It was a lot like the Pakola Ice Cream pop that we drank many moons ago. It tastes nothing like you would expect and everything like you don't want. Not a strong sales approach.

Since I don't watch Canadian television much I'm not sure if this has happened or not, but it really should. Picture this: a fade in with some synth bass and a drum machine playing in the background. The scene is young women's bedroom and she's laying in her bed wearing a ripped up shirt and way too much jewelry. As it pans in we realize that it's Madonna (well a 1986 Madonna look alike) and she's getting frustrated playing around with a keyboard and sheets of music and lyrics litter the room. She just can't seem to write her next big hit. She decides she needs to take a break so she goes over to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of juice. She takes a sip and inspiration hits her. Just like that. She runs over to her bed aka workstation with a big goofy grin and starts working feverishly. By the end she's playing along and singing with the song that has been playing in the background and just as it gets to the end of the chorus and she sings the line “True Blue baby I love you,” the camera zooms in on the now mostly finished bottle of juice on her nightstand. It doesn't get better than that ladies and gentlemen. You get one hell of a song, one hell of a drink and a nice 80's throwback that all the kids are raving about these days.

I know what you're thinking and yes I am available to write ads for you as well, just get a hold of my agent. Oh, that's not what you were thinking at all? You actually want to know what the juice tastes like? Well, it certainly tastes blue, with a little purple in the mix. You see True Blue went a bit out of their color spectrum and used grape juice as filler in this drink. You can really taste both the blue and blackberries in this, but the taste of grape is always lingering in the background. I have no problem with that uninvited little fruit. It's actually kind of nice. It's also not as sweet as you would expect it to be. There is still 29g of sugar in this, but it doesn't taste that sweet. It's always a nice treat to not have an overly sweetened juice. Oh and if you spill any of this on a carpet or a couch, forget about ever getting it out. This blue is true and is staining forever.

Rumor has it that it's been a rough year for apples. It was a blisteringly hot summer and that's not good for any sort of trees, plants, fruits, vegetables, and everything in-between. I assume the orchards aren't just throwing away bushels of lesser quality apples. I hope that there will be an influx of apple goods like apple cider, apple donuts, apple bread, something. I like apples. I like certain apples more than other but I like them all. Apple juice is good but companies as of late have been really nailing that apple flavor and not just apple flavoring things.

This pop is apple. Red apple. Not apple flavored. It says "natural and artificial flavors" but I'm thinking that's a misprint. It's a really good flavor. It's sweet but it's pop. If you've had Jones before they are a little guilty of over sweetening their pop. It's real sugar though so over sweetening with cane sugar versus artificial sweetener, in my opinion, is way more drinkable. I'm just saying they could cut back a bit.

Autumn, apples, cider, hoodies; it's all happening now, for a limited time. Fall is a short season because you take summer for every day but as soon as snow hits, it's mentally winter. That's the frigidly cold truth. I'm not telling lies over here, just truths.

Margaret had a problem with her neighbor. Well it really wasn't her neighbor that was the problem; she was a sweet old lady. Her problem was that there wasn't a fence between their houses and in her neighbor's backyard there was an old pear tree. Early in the season it was great. It was a lovely looking tree and the air around it always has a soft smell of pears. As late summer (and ultimately fall) set in is when things turned poor. You see the old lady neighbor didn't go out much because of her age and all of the pears would fall to the ground where they would begin to rot. The smell was kind of bad, but even though there was a slight scent of decay, the smell of the pears overwhelmed it. The true problem was that the rotting pears attracted armies of bees. You see Margaret had a small British looking boy that she liked to dress up as Charlie Brown to fulfill some sadistic need. When she would bring him out back to play, as soon as she looked way he always bee-lined (all puns intended) towards the tree. She always caught up to him in time, but she knew one day she wouldn't be fast enough and it would be sting city for her little comic character brought to life.

She knew the neighbor really wasn't fit to do anything about it so Margaret decided to clean up the pears herself this year before they began to rot. She made some pies, canned a few, but there were still mountains left over. Eventually she decided to try and make some pear soda. Since she didn't really know what she was doing to she pleased with the way it turned out, even though it tasted a bit off, and not really like pears. She somehow managed to do to her pear soda what sour green apple candy flavoring has been doing to candy for years. It was sweet, yet slightly sour and only vaguely tasting of pears. It wasn't great, but it was better than expected. She made up a few cases (you seriously can't believe how many pears this tree produced) and saved them up for the holidays. You see her husband ran a soda company and his name was…€¦wait for the reveal…€¦Thomas Ezekiel Jones. DUM DUM DUM

Well this is something different. I don't drink hot coffee. I just don't. I get gimmicky drinks when I go to coffee shops as you can probably tell with my copious amount of Frappuccino and Coolatta reviews. This iced cappuccino is no different. It's a frothy, foamy, iced coffee drink. Also, the fact that it's chocolate mint screams, "not legitimate coffee." Back to something different. What's different is that I bought one today (pictured) and it is currently and by the time you read this, was disgusting. I will describe that in detail and then describe all the other ones that I've had.

I woke up, felt fine, but didn't have time for a proper breakfast so I got little doughnut holes AKA "timbits." While I was there, I thought it would be a good time to get a little drink for myself to review/enjoy. A nice woman with a not so nice crustache took my order and delivered to me the worst iced cappuccino I've ever had. I don't need to tell you that I don't drink so I am basing this off assumption but this drink tastes like someone pulled the old teaspoon/tablespoon mixup and put way too much creme de menthe in this because it tastes borderline alcoholic in it's concentrated mintitude (not a word).

All other ones that I have had are a nice blend of chocolate and mint and I don't need to drink from the top in hopes to avoid the mint disaster that is sleeping at the bottom. It's a good, refreshing drink that I enjoy getting on rare occasions. I also only get a small and I never get the "supreme" option, which is like the top trim of a car. Whipped cream and chocolate and caramel syrup. Oh, it looks great and nothing looked sadder than the drink that I received today, all naked in a clear cup, but I don't need/want those extra calories and it's honestly aesthetic unless you really have an affinity for whipped cream. I might save myself more extra calories by throwing this in, what the British call, "the bin."

I don't know if I can properly express Mike's disappointment in the Jones Dungeons & Dragons line. It crushed the man. He saw an ad that Jones was releasing this line, and he jumped on it. He ordered us the whole series, and spent a pretty penny doing it. In his mind the new flavors were out of this world and from an older time, some would say a simpler time. Others would say it sucked because you were always worried about dragons or orcs attacking you. One thing that no one would argue about was that the beverages back then were way different. The day finally came when the package arrived. Mike opened it up and said some expletive or another. You see the ad listed the flavors as things such as “Sneak Attack,” “Potion of Healing” and “Eldritch Blast.” What it didn't tell you was that these were just the normal Jones flavors with new wacky names (Cream Soda, Blackberry and Green Apple). Mike was so upset that after we divided the flavors between us it took him nearly six months to review even one, and that was under duress. I feel for him. No one likes disappointment, especially when it comes in the way of sodas you were super stoked on.

What is an Eldritch Blast anyways? I thought it was some sort of creature, as I have no idea what the being on the label is. I Googled it and eldritch just means strange or spooky. I guess that it makes sense as Jones was able to make a green apple soda that actually tastes like pop and not like someone put a handful of Jolly Ranchers in a cup and then microwaved them for two hours. Sure, it's sweet as hell, but underneath the sugar it actually tastes like a nice sour apple and not just candy. This is the first soda I've ever had that has done this properly. I hope that makes up for some of Mike's sadness. I know it won't but a man can dream. Actually if I'm dreaming I should probably be dreaming bigger, like say Mike won a contest when he ordered these lies of soda and he's getting one of those fancy cars that he loves and 25 pachinko machines to annoy his “live in” girlfriend. Now there's a dream.

Remember when Jones came out and you thought to yourself, "Green apple pop?! Woah!" Now, look, they've still got strange, fun flavors, those crazy Canadians, but you've got to pay the bills. Diet cola sells and people love the stuff. Even for a company that prides themselves on using pure cane sugar, they can't do that unless they make a super weak, odd tasting pop. Dry does it, but they're good at it and that's their thing.

This, and you shouldn't be surprised, just tastes like a diet cola. It has an alright cola taste but is still diet. I might say that this is a titch (scientific term) better than diet Pepsi. I'm not hating; just doing a poor comparison. I'm not a hater. I'm cynical, but I'm no hater. 'Nuff respect, Pepsi. Let these guys do what they do.

Sometimes you find yourself taking a picture of some animal that is either a donkey or a antler-less moose standing in water at dusk. I think it's safe to say that if you ever find yourself in that position, things are going pretty good for you. Things are also going pretty good for you if you're sipping on a bottle of this soda.

Jones has so many flavors that I don't even know about. I had no idea they even made an orange cola until it showed up (with the lemon lime) at our local Big Lots. I was intrigued as the only orange cola I have previously had is Mezzo Mix, and I love the stuff.

The Jones version doesn't have as much orange as Mezzo Mix, but I'm okay with that. IT tastes like they took their normal cola (which leaves a little to be desired) and added just a bit of orange. You can definitely taste the orange, but the cola is the main force here. I like it. I love it. I want more of it.

This little guy has been staring me in the eye every time I open my cupboard for about a year now. It's like he's just been daring me to taste his awfulness. I don't even remember where he came from, Mike probably…€¦the bastard. I'd like to imagine that he was summoned forth like some sort of drink demon to ruin my day. You may say, “Hey it's just soda pop in a cute little bottle.” If you utter those words to me I will tell you that A. Cream soda should not be green. B. No soda should be green. It just means that added food coloring to make it wacky. C. Soda that comes in such a small container can be nothing but overly sweetened to the point where It will instantly erode your teeth and give you a terrible stomach ache.

I'm sick of looking at this. I'm sick of being afraid. Today I face my fears and try the dreaded “Chubby” (phrasing).

Oh my god it may be worse than expected. I opened up the bottle and it smelled like a nice pleasant cream soda. I thought to myself, “Hey maybe this actually won't be so bad. Maybe you've just been paranoid.” Then I took a sip and realized the demon had tricked me into taking a large gulp of his poison. It tastes solely like sweetener, with the faintest, faintest hint of vanilla. It has sugar and/or glucose fructose plus sucralose. You can taste it all battling out inside of your mouth, and no matter who the victor is it will not be your taste buds. Damn you Chubby!

Being a Hype Man is no easy job, but what can you do? I was born a Hype Man and I'll die a Hype Man. My mother tells me she met my father at a concert in the 80s. When I was younger she always led me to believe that my father was Grandmaster Flash, but years later it came out that while she was aiming for The Flash, she settled for Creole, the original Hype Man. Once I learned the true identity of my dad I became obsessed with becoming a Hype Man myself. I went so far as to pitch a reality show to VH1 that would star Flavor Flav, just so I could get a chance to meet him and ask him to mentor me. Needless to say, it worked. I spent years learning the tricks of the trade from “the clocked one.”

Finally after two decades of grueling dedication I am the prime Hype Man for a rapper. For legal reasons I can't divulge whom in fact I'm hyping until I make my stage debut, but you would be shocked and awed. We've run through the routine a million times, but I still get nervous. When I called Flav for some words of encouragement he hipped me to this drink. It really is shocking that for how he is obsessed with organic food, even though he put just about every drug into his system. He won't even drink a Red Bull now. He claims this drink gives Hype Men the energy they need in a healthier way and it tastes rather unique. I have to agree with him. It tastes like someone liquefied a whole mess of Double Bubble Gum and mixed it with some apple juice (and a little bit of that energy drink flavor). It may sound gross, but it's actually quite delicious. If this was the first energy drink I ever tried I would probably initially think it was gross, but being well versed in the flavor this is a great change of pace. It doesn't taste very chemical, and when it's ice cold it's a nice shock to your taste buds. Best of all is it doesn't have that chemical energy drinkness to it.

The crowd is getting restless. They need me. Me! I must go out and pump them up and add my little exclamations and interjections to my boss's raps. The world isn't ready for me with the little extra Hype I got from this energy drink.

I had a lot of little things on my “To-Do” list that involved things I could do, sitting at a computer (color separations for screen printing) or just sitting around (cutting pants into shorts), so I decided to curl up on the couch with Temple of Doom and a nice frosty bottle of Doctor Jones. Now that is a winning pair if I've ever heard of one. Speaking of pairing do you think a high quality Dr Pepper knock off would go better with Snake Surprise, Black Beetles, Eyeball Soup or Chilled Monkey Brains? Yeah, you're probably right, a nice Doctor Jones/Monkey Brain float sounds just wonderful.

Jones really did a great job with this soda. Normally knock offs of this variety have something a little off about them that let's you know that they didn't get the recipe quite right. This on the other hand is so similar to Dublin Dr. Pepper that I don't know if I could taste the difference in a blind taste test. Remember those? Do any companies still do them? If so please get a hold of Mike and I because we would love to participate.

Here's a little insight into my psyche for you. When I was a pre-teen I was obsessed with Indiana Jones. I bought my mom's boyfriend a hat like the one Indy wears without even a thought as to whether or not he liked the movies (of course he did, he's not a communist). I also took a summer archeology class. It wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be. I think they should have buried bottles of this soda out in a field and had us go dig them up, carefully as to not break the glass. I would have been more pumped about the class then. I'm more of a field agent instead of a classroom snoozer.

One final thought. Two of my biggest heroes (Indiana Jones and Peter Venkman) are both doctors. I really need to sign up for one of those online fake colleges where you can get real degrees that no one takes seriously. That way I can legally get Dr. Jason Draper put on my license. How sweet would that be? I could also carry around a sweet whip and a proton pack. Even sweeter.


ppppps. It would be criminal if I didn't say this. "No time for love Doctor Jones."

Drinking this on July 1st may have been a bit of a mistake. It's nearly the furthest one can get away from Christmas, and this is certainly a winter/Christmas soda if ever there was one. It smells and tastes like liquid gingerbread cookies. Actually it tastes like the gingerbread equivalent of vanilla extract. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the essence that came in a little glass bottle that was added to cookies to make them taste like gingerbread. It's a bit much. I did enjoy the taste, but it was so strong that I couldn't get through half of the bottle, and I ended up sharing the rest with everyone.

On a separate note, do you think they got the picture on the label submitted to them before they had the idea for this flavor? Did the picture inspire the flavor? I'd like to think so.

The Canadian government has recently shipped hundreds of koalas into their country. Originally they wanted to give the country a make over. People were getting tired of being associated with moose and beavers. They wanted a cuter image. Unfortunately the koalas tried to wage war on the beavers, and even though they were tired of the image, beavers are still are a sacred creature up north, so they couldn't allow the war to happen. As a result they moved the koalas to warehouse buildings where tropical fruit was grown under unnatural conditions. The koalas were trained to pick the fruit and to prepare it for juicing. This didn't work as well as the officials had hoped since the animals spend a majority of their day sleeping. There was not nearly enough fruit prepared to make a straight up juice, so a brainstorming session took place and it was decided to use the fruit they had to make flavored sparkling water.

Now I certainly would have preferred juice to flavored sparkling water, but I can't blame koalas for doing what comes natural. I can blame them for adding too much sugar and this tasting more like cheap soda than a sparkling water. It does have a guava/raspberry taste, but the added sugar takes away from it and leaves you knowing that if you spilled it all over the place you would have one hell of a sticky mess on your hands. Since this couldn't be juice I wish it had been subtler. As it stands I can't get through more than a couple of sips a sitting.

The Italian community in Montreal had had enough of the sodas that were available to them. They did not represent their tastes and needs. As a result Brio was born. This is really just the Canadian take on the San Pellegrino drinks. Sure the can lists: Milano, London, New York, Paris an d Tokyo, but the only place I have ever seen this drink on the shelves is in Canada. An internet search comes up with little to no information as well. There is much that we don't know about the Brio company, and by much I mean we pretty much know nothing. For all I know they could have been an extremist movement who used the cans to smuggle contraband. I doubt that, but hey anything is a possibility.

This here is their blood orange flavor. As I said this is basically another version of the San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa. It's very light tasting, but not dry at all. It's kind of like a nondescript soda with small waves of blood orange flavor. It's nice and it seems like it would be a nice healthy alternative to other sodas. That is until you look at the ingredients and see that there are 42g of sugar in here. I believe that might actually be more sugar than a can of Coke. Well, that was completely unexpected. I like the drink, but I think it could have done with less sugar.

To come up with some dumb story about this drink would just be too easy, and obvious. Yes the 16 year old that lives inside of me giggled a bit when I saw this can in the store and no I am not ashamed. I just hope someone was trying to make a joke and started a fake argument, which they were planning on escalating to a fake fight in which they would taunt the other person in juvenile ways and then pull out this can as the punch line. I would also hope that jokester would get punched in the face, because that is cheesy and not funny.

This is made by the Jones company and it definitely has that specific Jones sweetness to it. All of there sodas have it, so why wouldn't their energy drink. It actually tastes like they took a raspberry/pomegranate soda and mixed in the extra ingredients that would make it an energy drink. I'm not too crazy about the flavor, but it's not horrendous.

I remember when this used to be a joke drink. There was a caricature on the can, and it was supposed to be funny. It seems Jones decided to give their look an overhaul and the iron cross looks like they are trying to appeal to the biker crowd. I would put my money on the idea that they were trying to appeal to the MMA crowd, but just got it wrong, and now it just catches the eye of grizzled bikers. Hey, everyone needs energy sometimes.

Look, I'm not fantastic with boats. I'm apparently alright with cruise ships but that's no different than riding atop a floatable skyscraper. I'm fine on those. Lil' boats destroy me. I know all the tricks; ginger ale, looking at the horizon, not taking Dramamine. They don't always work and I get nauseous and either want to hurl or sleep.

Jessika, Max, and I were going to go aboard my boss' daddy's boat and we were getting supplies. We went to K-Mart to get Max a baby sized rash-guard. K-Mart in the city is rough. Rough. Jessika's mom gets us gift cards for there and we always tell her that we never go because it's pretty depressing. One positive thing about it is that there is a dude there that looks just like Prince and he's there just enough that it's a real treat when our schedules match. He was there on the day we bought this drink and the baby shirt so I knew everything was going to alright.

We boarded the ship, rode for a few hours, Max got restless, and we got off. Sickness free. I was so distracted by Max that I didn't drink this until we went home. I didn't know what to expect because between energy, cherry, and limeade my palate didn't know what to expect. What did this deliver? Everything is in a pretty decent package. It was cherry limeade with a little bit of candy taste to it. All of the flavors actually worked well together. So well, in fact that I'm surprised that I hadn't seen this drink anywhere else before. I think that if more energy drinks tasted like this, I wouldn't always think that they sucked so badly. Some companies know what time it is and you can add this one to it. Good job, Canada. You win this round.

No matter how cool of a name dragon fruit is, and no matter how insane and awesome the outside of the fruit looks, once you cut it open it's off putting. It looks like a bleached strawberry. I'd like to rephrase that. It looks like an albino strawberry. If I were the lying sort I would tell you that like other albinos when a dragon fruit it cut open and exposed to sunlight it ignites…€¦just like any other albino.

I'd like to think the folks at Flavur also thought that dragon fruit looked like a pigmentless version of a strawberry and decided to mix in some real red ones and see how it tastes. The answer is it tastes delicious of course. There are two delicious fruits intermingling in a single bottle with a little help from ginseng (luckily his dirt flavor is nowhere to be found), what else could you want? Okay so there is a bit more in here. There are also apple, elderberry and lemon juice involved. Normally I'm not a fan of lemons being introduced into beverages unless it's lemonade, but I will happily admit that it does something to bring out the flavors of the other fruits. All together it's sweet and fruity in all the right ways.

I always find myself jealous of the Canadian public for their awesome beverages. They always seem to have very unique juices to offer. It's also exciting when they are sweetened with beet syrup like this drink is. Now I must go and try to get “Killer Tofu” out of my head.