High Fructose Corn Syrup - 485 Reviews

Grab any kid who went to basement shows in Buffalo from 1999-2003 and ask them what their favorite drink from Frank's Mobil was at that time. You will probably here one of two things: Fikes Iced Tea or Arizona Arnold Palmer tall boy. The latter is what we'll be focusing on today. Granted I don't drink them as often now, but I would easily drink 1-2 a day back then. The lemonade and iced tea just mixed perfectly together for those sweaty basement show nights.

Given my love for Arnold Palmer's and my willingness to try any energy drink, you can imagine my excitement when I found this at a grocery store near Cincinnati. Good news for energy drink haters, it doesn't taste like an energy drink. In fact, I can only taste the lemonade and iced tea. And just like the original, it is delicious! While it's not the greatest half and half I've had, this is one of the best energy drinks I've had so far.

Keep up the good work Arizona! I'd love to see more flavors of this.

Inside of a round barn, it is fun to punish young children and have them go stand in the corner. In this round barn, it is fun to make root beer. I can only imagine the smell of that barn, all filled with the sweet smell of the nectar of the gods. Thing is, those gods are actual gods and, for good reasons, have the highest standards for root beer. It's their livelihood. That is what brings us to this root beer.

Yes, it is root beer and yes it tastes good. Problem is that is as far as it goes. It's not really exceptional in any regards. The root beer gods would drink this if they were, say, at a god of water's party; Perhaps a god of vengeance? This is because those gods don't know anything about root beer and just buy anything. This is not really dark or bold and doesn't have any of the goodness a high quality root beer has like anise or vanilla or licorice. It's just root beer. Take it or leave it.

The gods of root beer can hire the god of vengeance to do their bidding so do not cross them with sub par root beers. It is not wise.

I did some research, because I wanted to make sure, and I was correct; the origin story of this soda has nothing to do with Native Americans. It's just name and image appropriation for the purpose of branding. Someone years ago thought they were clever in naming their cherry soda “Cherikee Red.”

To add to the offensiveness of it all, the soda is less than average. It's on the low side of store brand soda. It's cherry, but the flavor is not bold, it's just kind of there. It's certainly no Cheerwine.

Normally I would say that a rebranding was in order, but since the taste is nothing to write home about perhaps this soda should fade away into the racist history of our wonderful country.

Sudz, Spuds MacKensie's little known brother, loved root beer. He was up for the beer commercials himself but in the interview process, drank so much that he gained too much weight to be suitable for the part. Depressed but still in need of something more in his life, he decided to start his own pop company.

They made fairly average pop that wasn't bad at all. The root beer, Sudz favorite and pride and joy, was good. It was safe but still good. It didn't have any of the licorice or anise that a high end one would have but it has everything a basic root beer would have. It's pretty comparable to other "store brand" root beers.

Sudz now has a long lasting legacy of pop where as his brother was just a temporary staple of a beer company. They fight at family reunions but who doesn't.

So as you probably don't know, Coca Cola no longer works with Nestea. They don't bottle it, they don't' distribute it, it's as if their partnership never existed. I wonder who plays the role of the jilted lover in this scenario? Coke needed to fill their iced tea slot, so they are now working with Fuze.

The thing is that I think there was some vats of Nestea's green tea and honey in some factory and they just slapped the Fuze label on it. As my ladyfriend pointed out, it tastes basically the same. It has that quasi bubble tea taste from the honey and the…€¦well green tea. It's really sweet, and if a true tea smith who used monkeys to gather their tea from the side of mountains tasted it they would sip and weep for how much of a bastardization it is from what green tea traditionally is. I say let them cry. I love real deal green tea, but this is gas station fodder and you can't hold it up to the same standards.

There is nothing Swiss about this. It's made by Dr. Pepper, a doctor that should know better. A doctor that has a certain responsibility to tell the truth no matter how grim, disgusting, morbid, or unsettling it may be. A doctor that spent years in college in order to learn policies, procedures, right and wrong, and how to use a needle to sew someone's arm back on to their body. A doctor that can write prescriptions for things like butt rashes, bad gas, and other things involving your butt. A doctor who has the unfortunate task of telling people that they have "Barnyard Cat" kids with too many fingers. This doctor is telling you that this drink is somehow Swiss, which is isn't.

This drink is a regular ol' cream soda. It's a fine cream soda but it's nothing spectacular. That's my review of this. My review of your choice of doctor is as follows; if you have Dr. Pepper as a doctor, politely leave his office before he does something ethically wrong.

In the life of a Thirsty Dude one drinks a lot of drinks. I mean a whole lot of drinks. There are gems and there are stinkers. One thing that has happened is that I have found myself drifting away from the old standards, you know the big guys that have been around forever. Instead I drink a lot more boutique beverages, which normally use natural sweeteners. I'm happy to do it, and so is my metabolism.

I couldn't tell you the last time I drank a Cherry Crush (one of the few brands who's flavor precedes their company name when people speak them). I can tell you that when I wore the clothes of an older man when I was a younger man (thrift stores, what can I say?) I really enjoyed this soda pop. Drinking it now, I'm borderline disgusted as to how thick it is. I feel like the syrup they used didn't have enough water added to it. I have no doubt that this is how it always was when I drank it before, but I was ignorant of the other ways soda could be sweetened. Seriously, the thickness paired with the fact that a lot of cold medicines are cherry flavored leaves me feeling as if I should be sick drinking this (Please don't drink this while you're ill, it won't help anything).

After all of that complaining, I have to say this is a textbook cherry pop. It was certainly the first one I ever had as a child. The majority of the populace of the United States would never think anything was wrong with this, as they are used to HFCS sweetened sodas. It's sweet, it's fake fruity, and you get exactly what you would expect from it. It's the standard, but sure the standard could use some updating.

How to the people at Brisk sleep at night, knowing the damage they have wrought to the world of iced tea? Brisk is to iced tea what sour apple flavoring is to apples. They are about as far removed as you can be from the original and still share a base name. It just gives iced tea a bad name for those out there who haven't (for some reason or another) tasted real, decent tea.

While I disagree with this line, I have to admit that this flavor is a little bit of alright. It is not amazing, it's not even really all that good, but I did have a one liter bottle of it, and over two sittings I drank the entire thing. None of it got dumped down the drain, like I had expected. White it definitely has their classic “iced tea” in there, the lemonade makes up for it. It gives it a nice balance, and on a nice hot day like today I will begrudgingly say it hits the spot.

I am concerned that the ingredient list reads: water, high fructose corn syrup…€¦. Seriously, the sweetener so high on the list? That's just kind of disgusting. Shockingly there are only 44g of sugar in this entire bottle. I expected it to be in the 60s, but that is still a lot.

Detroit is one hell of a town, and by that I mean it's kind of hell. It's a burnt out city (not unlike Buffalo), but it doesn't have the nature side to it that my hometown does. It's just endless neighborhoods that look like they should appear at the end of some apocalypse movie. I'm not one to generally feel unsafe in my surroundings, but I'm always looking for an escape route in any given situation in that city. On top of that it has the most torn up highway that I have ever experienced, but I guess that's most of Michigan and not just Detroit-centric.

A shining light through the dreariness that is the Motor City is that it is the home to Faygo. Now I know this company gets a lot of bad press outside of Michigan, because of the culture that has co-opted it, but let me tell you there are certainly some gems in their lineup ad Faygo Gold is one of them.

The company has a long running ginger ale in their repertoire, and it is not that bad. It's a general ginger ale like you would find in any generic brand. This though, this is something different. They don't even call it ginger ale. Instead it is “bubbly sweet ginger soda,” and I can think of no better description. It's not exactly a ginger ale, it has more of an actually ginger taste to it. It's also not a ginger beer because it's not intense. It has a subtle burn that it greatly appreciated, but it also has a very specific sweetness, that just does it for me. This is way sweeter than I normally like my soda, but something about the little bit of burn and the amount of sugar works perfectly. Faygo has done well in giving hope to the citizens of Detroit. Now we just need Robocop to clean up the city so civilization can begin anew.

Sometimes you find a really great pop from a popular brand and you are surprised. "What is this company doing making that other crud when they clearly have the ability to make stuff like this?" you ask yourself when you find it. Well? This could not be further from that scenario.

This tastes like perfume cream soda and is pretty downright revolting. Normally "orange cream soda" tastes like a creamsicle but this tastes like a bottom of the barrel orange pop that's just kind of weak and flavorless.

It's a shame that this is such a large bottle and 70% after sharing will meet its demise with the kitchen sink. Sorry starving African kids I think of every time I put food in the garbage or drink in the sink, but not even you would enjoy this gross drink.

You've got Grapeheads, Lemonheads, Cherryheads formerly known as the racist Cherry Chan, and Melonheads and Appleheads, which I have never seen and Orangeheads. This drink, as you could probably guess, tasted like Lemonheads if you dipped them in limejuice. It was almost hard to convince myself this wasn't just 7-Up or other comparable lemon-lime drink. It's not bad and it might be more real lemon and lime flavored than "those other guys."

If you like your Sierra Mist, 7-Up, Sprite, and the like, this is a nice, cleaner tallboy of that group that you might like to sink your teeth into. That's figuratively speaking. Please don't bite into this can. Just the thought of you doing that makes me cringe. Who bites cans? What are you? A goat?

Okay class, let's get the giggling out of the way. Yes, this drink is called Bawls, but you are in seventh grade, and you should be mature enough to be able to handle this lecture as well as the one on V-Blast that I have planned for this afternoon. It's 2013, you all lost your virginity at 11 right? Ugh, that's a gross thought. Kids, the internet is ruining your childhoods. Go outside. Explore. Cause some mischief. If you do those things you'll have a much happier life. Don't be in such a hurry to be an adult. Look at your parents and your friend's parents; do any of them look happy? Of course not, being an adult sucks. Responsibilities suck. Stay a kid, the things you have to worry about are nothing compared to what you'll have to deal with when you're older.

Okay back to the lesson. In the beginning there was Jolt. It was cola with excessive amounts of caffeine in it, so that kids like you could stay up late, sneak out and cause trouble. It was something, but it was nothing compared to the Red Bull craze of the 2000s. In between the two Bawls rose to modest fame. It was/is an energy drink that is powered by guarana and caffeine. More important than what the drink was is the fact that it came in these rad glass bottles with little nubs on them. They feel interesting in your hand, and it's just fun. Eventually they expanded their line. One of the flavors they expanded with was cherry.

Most guarana flavored sodas have a bubble gum style flavor like kola champagne. Luckily with Bawls that is not the case. The flavor is there a hint, but it's not overly sweet and overpowering. This tastes like someone made a Shirley Temple with an the original Bawls instead of ginger ale. It has a more maraschino cherry flavor than a cherry soda flavor. The result of it all is that it is wonderful and will give you a little energy boost without all of the weird chemicals that most modern energy drinks have in them.

There's the bell. I will see you all after lunch when we will continue our history of beverages section of the curriculum.

I am in Jersey for a wedding. I was just at an Italian restaurant for three hours. Do you know how long that is? It's a long time. It's a long time to sit there. Three courses. That's an hour per course. One hour dedicated to a Caesar salad. One hour dedicated to a small amount of pasta. The food was fine at best but the dessert was a wonderful chocolate mousse cake. Don't tell anyone, but I ate some of the cake from the girl that sat next to me because she wasn't as crazy about it as I was. She got up and left and I ate some of her cake. I talked to her. She's in the wedding party. It's fine. Well, the girl who sat across from me needed some medicine so I walked out to a 7-11 and got some. Being who I am, I also stopped at the drink cooler and checked it out and was pleasantly surprised with what I saw and basically had to buy.

I had to wait for another hour and a half to drink this, and I offered it to a nice girl in the elevator who politely declined, but here I am, sitting on my hotel bed watching an awesome episode of Seinfeld, drinking this rather awkward drink. Awkward? Yes. I said awkward. It's got chocolate, that for truth. Bosco, another Seinfeld reference, is chocolate syrup they used. The fudge I think they might be grouping into the chocolate. I don't know if there is an additional ingredient. The float? There might be an element of cream in there. It's got an almost sparkling chocolate seltzer taste to it. It's not bad.

I like that this is another Brooklyn treat and I am so close to enjoy it. Now if only that nice elevator girl would have enjoyed it, too. She missed out. Not on much, but she missed out regardless. I take a little offense that people don't drink my drinks when I offer them up. Don't you people know who I am?

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have been wrong for far too long. As we have recently learned the song should actually go, “You put the lime in the mango and you drink it all up.” You see mangos and limes go together far better than coconut could ever dream. We have sent a cease and desist to the Harry Nilsson estate and we have been assured that with the magic of technology his song will be digitally altered so that he sings mango instead of coconut at every instance. It's was really shocking how quickly the executar of his estate agreed to it. I guess she must be a huge mango supporter, but who wouldn't be?

To celebrate the change in the song Arizona has released this version of their Rickey line. It is some version of mango and lime juice mixed together and injected into carbonated water. In any world this is really just an interesting flavor of soda that comes in an oversized can, but we'll play the game and refer to it as a sparkling beverage.

Mangos and limes work so well together that I can't believe it's not a more common experience. This actually tastes more of lime than mango, and that might be the secret right there. Lime is normally a secondary character in the beverage world, but it has a co-starring role with Arizona, and the reviews all say that it performed amazingly. Now if only it came in smaller cans and with less sugar it and I could be BFFs.

There was a point in my life where I thought that Mistic would eclipse the rest of the beverage world. It was nicely carbonated, it tasted completely amazing and exotic to my ten year old taste buds in the late 80's. Best of all they looked like wine coolers, so being the dumb kids we were we could act like adults (or older teenage girls of the time) after a long day of skating. Then they all just disappeared without a trace. I was dumbfounded as to what could have happened to my beloved drink. I pounded them whenever I could, so obviously the rest of the world was doing the same. Something must have been amiss. Perhaps it was a government conspiracy.

Probably a decade later Mistic reentered my world. The bottles looked similar, but they were no longer carbonated. My heart was broken. It just wasn't the same. It still had a great fruit flavor, but without it's bubbles, it sank into the scenery as companies like Sobe took center stage.

Now more than another decade has passed and I've encountered the beast again. The bottle has changed, and perhaps that is for the better. The old bottle always left me hoping in vain that it would be sparkling. With the new bottles my former dreams have been decimated, so I can enjoy it for the fake juice that it is.

What we have here is a “juice drink” that only has 3% juice in it, yet it really tastes like mango...strongly. It's ridiculously sweet and not very good for you with 56g of sugar in this 16 oz bottle, but what it lacks in health is surely there in flavor. Let's face it mango juice is not readily available in a lot of areas. Especially in the more inner city bodegas, which are the only places I ever seem to find Mistic drinks. Sometimes you just crave the mango taste, and this is a decent tasting substitute for when the real juice is not at hand.

I would now like to take the time to plead with the Mistic folks (who seem to have no internet presence) to please bring back your sparkling line, and make it exactly as you did when I was a child. I will buy a truckload. Actually how about you send me a truckload for free, for making you millions by reminding you how awesome you once were.

Friggin' hot dogs, man. I love those guys. Jay and I used to have fantastic barbecues that would fill our entire front yard with punk kids who just wanted to have a good time. We lived in a nice, family neighborhood and these kids that were with us did not blend in. Nicest kids in the world, but not something you would expect to see in that place.

At the barbecue we would have hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie and non and an array of drinks. This is pre-Thirsty Dude so we didn't have the greatest stuff. Usually boxes of Gregory's, the straight edge box wine. One thing we did was get orange pop. Hot dogs are properly washed down with orange pop. I don't know what it is. It's probably the same thing that makes Papaya King make so much sense. This would have been a fantastic accoutrement…€Ž to those parties because it's a good orange. It's a standard orange but it's pretty crisp and not too sweet.

I would love to ask the new residents of that apartment if we could have a little cookout for old-time sake but I don't think they would like all those bikes in the front yard and Depeche Mode blaring on the stereo. I would though, brother. I would.

Follow this path of information. Arizona is from Long Island, and they are co-opting a beverage from Brooklyn. Okay, that wasn't too bad was it? They started at the end of last summer when they released their Cherry Lime Rickey, which I believe was their first trek into the world of carbonation. It was a drink I enjoyed. It was pretty crazy, and ridiculously sweet, but on a nice hot day, it was enjoyable. Recently they have released three new flavors into their Rickey line, and they are what they are.

While it may only constitute 10% of the beverage these Rickeys are flavored with real juice. I don't believe there was ever a time in nature when grapes and limes commingled. They certainly are a strange pair when put together, but it's kind of enjoyable. I started drinking this last night at band practice, and it was a bit much to handle. Upon taking one sip I knew there was no way I was going to drink this entire can in one sitting. The label says it's three servings, but Arizona knows as well as we do that we are a country of gluttons and 99% of their customers drink them don't divvy up the portions. They separated the sweetener into HFCS and sucralose to keep the calories down, but it still makes it way sweeter than it needs to be. It is also harshly carbonated, so be aware of that when you go into one of these. Sometimes I really like that kind of carbonation, but last night was not one of them. The grape lime flavor was very interesting though, so it helped me get through half the can. The rest I put in my fridge so that I could review it later.

Here I am, the next afternoon, and now the beverage is lightly carbonated. Without the harsh bubbles, the flavor shines through a lot more. You can definitely taste the grape and lime juices, of course it's through a haze of sweetener, but that is what the majority of the Arizona customer base wants. Unless the temperature is over 85 degrees I probably will not purchase another one of these, but I am still excited to try the other two new flavors.

I've been around for thirty years and I still don't remember when it gets warm. We in Western New York get spoiled once in January with a fifty-degree day and a little bit in May with near tropical temperatures then it drops back down. To psych myself out and make my dumb body feel like it's summertime, I cracked this bottle of vintage open. Vintage because it's been over a year since I've had this on me and have been, well, dreading drinking it. It gets a little more credit than I've given it though because it's not too bad. It's not too bad for a melted Popsicle, if I were twelve. I'm thirty. This takes me back to a lot of fun times as a kid and just being dumb. If you want to get dumb again, drink some of this with some friends you went to junior high with and play some street hockey, listen to Michael Jackson "Dangerous," and live it up. When this drink is done, you have to get in your sedan and get back to your desk job. The last fifteen years have sucked in hindsight, right?

Here we have one of the originals of the Arizona line. It's not very common nowadays. I was actually asked if it was a new flavor when I pulled it out to parch my thirst at band practice last night. I'm pretty sure the reason this flavor never became more popular is that I don't believe that it was ever released as a tall boy can; I've only ever seen it in glass and plastic bottles. It's a shame because this is way better than you would expect. Even though it is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, you can actually taste the real brewed tea, instead of just sugar water. Sure, there is a decent amount of sugar in this drink, but it tastes like mass produced sweetened iced tea should. I'm looking at you with disappointment Brisk. That's right, you're getting the “dad face” while Arizona gets a proud arm around it's shoulder.

I have drank too much garbage whilst doing Thirsty Dudes to really be "nice" anymore. I see companies, typically small, doing really good things but then there are larger companies probably making just absolute garbage. This is candy. Kids will love this. It's almost completely devoid of anything fruit related and completely candy-esque. That being said, if they had a black cherry candy that tasted like this I would like it. As a pop it's simply too much. It's super dark, which is a selling point in root beer but not in something that's just too syrupy. No rewards given for a bad mix. That goes for live music as much as it goes for drinks. A bad mix kills everything.