Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

The long of it:
Order yourself a nice key lime pie to go. Then take a pit stop to Gotham and get yourself a scoop of that toxic sludge that transformed the Joker in Tim Burton's first Batman movie. Blend that together with your pie, and then set up some bunsen burners and a little torch to evaporate any liquid that might be left in the concoction you made. Take the crust that is left and crush it up into a fine powder to add to your drinks when you want to pretend that you will sleep.

The short(er) of it:
This tastes like liquid key lime pie that someone spilled toxic waste on, and it didn't work for me. I got home around 2am and immediately took this to ensure I would be able to fall asleep quickly (I know it says to drink a half hour before sleep). Come six am I was still awake. Gross and ineffective.

Does anyone else have second thoughts about drinking a beverage that pops when you twist off the cap and an eerie smoke pours out of the opening? I feel like I should be wearing a has mat suit with some thick gloves that you can handle uranium with. Essentially it makes me feel like this beverage should not exist outside of some lab somewhere.

Being as I am a scientist, specifically one with a degree in drinkology (no , not like some pretentious mixologist, I had to spend eight years in college to get my degree), I through caution of radioactivity to the wind an dove in head first. By that I mean I took a small tentative sip. I can safely say that this does not taste nuclear, and I have no fear of my pee coming out glowing later.

The strange thing about this beverage is that it is made with real orange juice (it's the second ingredient, but it's only 3% of the whole), yet it still tastes like Tang. Have they ever thought of marketing this as an energy drink for astronauts? I imagine that is exactly what space explorers do not need though. They're stuck up in orbit for months at a time with, what I expect is little to do for a good portion of their days. Why would they want to be all hopped up on energy drinks? I think I would like to sleep through as much as that experience as possible. So yeah, nix that idea.

As part of the recovery line this beverage is meant to give you energy as well as hydrate you. Think of it as Rockstar meets Gatorade with sexy results!!! Wait, that's not right. There is nothing sexy about this. It tastes like Gatorade made a Tang flavor and then they added a bit of an energy compound to it. It doesn't taste too much like chemicals, but it's there around the edges. Actually it's there in a way that makes it taste vaguely diet, even though it's sweetened with sucrose.

On a side note, while I do like the idea that it is in a resealable can, I have to say that about a third of the sips I took resulted in some sort of splash back that got on my clothes. Either they need to work on the design a bit, or I need to learn how to drink properly.

Companies send us a decent amount of products for review. When we got an email from a gentleman in our fair city that wanted to meet up so he could give us some samples of a beverage we had not tasted we were shocked that there was a product in Buffalo that we didn't know about. When we met up with him, we discovered that he was a part of the elaborate sales team for Vemma. He gave us the samples and then launched into a presentation to get us to become part of his team. It was unexpected, but we weren't upset by it. The man was just trying to secure a more comfortable station in life. We politely declined, as we are clearly not salesmen of any sort, and made our way to our second meeting of the day (a meeting of friends at a delicious Indian restaurant).

Somewhere during the speech we were given a little factoid jumped out at me, “the orange can tastes like Flintstones vitamins.” That is a statement that will always get my attention. As a child I probably nearly overdosed on vitamins a handful of times because I loved how they tasted and I would just keep eating them. Luckily for me my love of drinking fluids had already bloomed by that time, so the vitamins were diluted and quickly flushed out of my system.

Today I was finally in need of a little boost so I decided to take a one-way train to Children's Vitaminburg. That sounds way creepier than I meant it to. Anyways, I think a cow had wandered onto the tracks because I was certainly detoured to a different town, a town where childish things are put aside and people take grown up vitamins. Not for a second in drinking this did the taste of children's vitamins pass my lips. The base of this drink is mangosteen, which is great because it doesn't taste like a typical candied energy drink. It tastes of fruit and unfortunately the bad kind of vitamins. Their flavor is not as strong as I portray them to be, but it's still there. If this had a normal energy drink base with that added, it would be absolutely horrible, but the mangosteen course corrects it a bit. Also, even though I gently shook it, as recommended, the last gulp of the can was very chalky, and nothing that you want in your mouth.

This energy drink has its ups and it's downs. I was on the fence as to give it a two or a three bottle rating, but I decided that since it was an energy drink that didn't taste like it was made by the Wonka corporation I should give it the benefit of the doubt and so three it is.

Did mango make some back door deal in order to blend so well with erythritol? While it is one of the least offensive zero calorie sweeteners on the market, it normally has a very distinct taste. When it's hanging around mango, it's not as apparent. Did they meet to exchange documents for cold hard cash in some dirty, dark parking garage? Did they use fake gruff voices until one of them inevitably coughed? Were Nixon masks worn? Was it all done to finance a surfing expedition? Find out the answers to all of this and more next week on the Adventures of Sneaky Pete (and Pete).

I have surprisingly been a fan of this line of beverages. The concept of oats, fruit juice and zero calorie sweeteners being mixed together didn't exactly produce a Pavlovian response from me. I guess that is because I haven't had the proper conditioning, which as it turns out simply means trying the drinks.

This tastes like a decent mango juice with a slight hint of erythritol, but as I said it's not all that bad. There is a very light oat taste to it as well. I originally expected some sort of texture, but it's as smooth as can be. The amount you taste the oats is similar to how any drink would taste if you drank it while hanging out in a horse barn. The association of the smell of that dwelling would impact your taste buds as much as the oats in this juice do.

Oh and the spoiler is that Pete is sneaky because he added oats to his drinks and you wouldn't know unless you were told. You should still watch the show though, from what I hear there will be “sexy results!!!”

There is so much flavor in each withered ball of produce that we call passion fruit. Such a hefty price for something so tiny seems ridiculous and unworthy, until you break that skin open and taste the flesh of the fruit within. The juice it contains is so strong that it is likened to a concentrate. While I don't recommend drinking a glass of Hawaiian Punch concentrate I do endorse eating as many of these little guys as you can get your hands on.

The intensity of the juice is where the “problem” exists. You see, it is great for flavoring other drinks. A passion fruit bubble tea is a beverage that is surely fit for royalty, but when you drink it in juice form it is almost too much. This may be the only juice that I would prefer to have slightly watered down, than in it's natural state. Compal doesn't dilute it quite enough to get it to where I would ideally want it, but they still make one heck of a juice. It's quite strong, and very sweet (I question the added sugar)

If you've never tasted a passion fruit before you are doing yourself a great disservice. Try it in any form. I have never had anything that was flavored with it that I have disliked.

Can we all agree that the beverage world has taken pomegranates and blueberries too far? It seems that nearly every company out there has that flavor in their line. Sure some of them add acai into the mix, but that's not really helping much. I understand the allure of antioxidants, but I'm just getting so tired of this flavor (orange mango is not that far behind). The thing is that these are flavors that I loved, and I was excited when they were more accessible in drink form, but enough is enough.

At least with this beverage V8 uses real juice, so it tastes like the fruit. They also mix in some other fruits (apples and white grapes) as well as some vegetables (sweet potatoes, purple carrots, tomatoes, and carrots), which give the drink a little something extra that makes it ticker and darker tasting. It's still primarily pomegranate and blueberry but you can certainly tell that there are some other flavors floating around in the mix.

If this were 5-10 years ago I probably been all over this drink, but it's too late in my beverage life to fully enjoy it the way that perhaps an eight year old would. Man, I wish I could enjoy this drink like he would. I also wish I could enjoy new music as much as he does. Looks like I'll be listening to R.E.M. for the millionth time and complain about how bands don't sound like this anymore. I'm old, it's my right.

I know I've complained about this before with the peach version of this drink, but “half and halfs” are supposed to be tea and lemonade, not tea and juice. In my book that is just a flavored tea. This tea doesn't make me think of professional golfers at all and it should with a name such as this.

All complaints aside this is a pretty decent tea. Tea's Tea (when did they drop the Ito En?) always uses high quality teas in its beverages. In fact if I were ever trying to explain the way a certain tea tastes I would give the person that version of Tea's Tea. They are the company that taught me that what Arizona calls green tea, is nothing more that a delicious bastardization of a perfect beverage.

In this bottle we have their perfect unsweetened green tea, with some acerola cherry juice mixed into it. It's more tea than cherry and I am okay with that. I do wish they had used a different type of cherry though. Acerolas are not what I'm used to and they have a slightly different flavor. The real disappointment in this drink (to me at least) is that they chose to sweeten it. Even though they didn't add too much sugar, I feel like it detracts from the taste of the green tea, and muddies all of the flavors a little. I am just nitpicking though. This is a beverage that I would happily drink again and again. I dream of the day that I see this companies products in every gas station across the country. As I get older the tall boy tea loses its allure. Sometimes you just want real tea that isn't made by Lipton.

Cheribundi continuously walks the line between being great and being amazing. They use real cherry juice that is not from a concentrate in all of their beverages, which is great because that means there are cherry drinks out there that don't taste like cough medicine. Who decided to call that flavor cherry anyway? The fruit tastes nothing like that sugary monstrosity that has usurped its name.

This is very similar to the Jasmine Tea version I had a little ways back, minus all traces of anything floral. It has a classic sweetened green tea base that is amplified by the cherry juice. That juice is just great. Anytime a drink has a taste to it that makes me think about eating fruit, I know I have a winner on my hands.

My only complaint is that I could do with a little less sugar, but I prefer unsweetened teas, so this will probably be just right for those of you who drink the sweetened stuff on the regular.

Diet fruit punch should not exist in any form.

Weight loss / muscle building drinks are all the rage these days. There are new products flooding the market all the time. The newest one to grab my attention is “bod-e” by Vemma. There are a lot of mixed feelings about the way the Vemma company is ran, but I'm not going to get into it. I'm not a businessman, I'm just some “dumb dummy” who like to try all sorts of beverages and then write poorly about them.

Bod-e doesn't really taste like any other “weight solution” beverage I have ever had before. It's fruity, lightly carbonated and it doesn't taste all that diet, even though it has sucralose in it accompanying the cane sugar. The first thing I noticed when I opened that can was that it has a milky orange color. I wasn't expecting that at all since it's carbonated and the coloring makes it look thicker than it actually is.

There is a whole mess of ingredients in here to help with weight loss (and to keep it off), There are a lot of the familiar vitamin faces that you know from energy drinks as well as protein, aloe vera and green tea. I'm not that kind of scientist, so I can't claim to know which ones works and which does not. I can tell you about tastes though, and this has a decent citrus taste thanks to the mangosteen. By the time you get towards the last quarter of the can you are able to taste the sucralose a bit more, but it wasn't enough to turn me off.

After a single can I have no idea how well this product actually works, but I can tell you that it tastes decent enough, and flavorwise it is much better than most of it's competitors.

I'm melting. I swear it was so hot in the print shop today that my skin felt like it was just going to melt off. I drank a half-gallon of unsweetened iced tea, and it still wasn't cutting it. I needed refreshment and I needed it instantly. My drink bin is running dangerously low, but luckily I had a single bottle of Gatorade in there. Not only was it meant to refresh and rehydrate, it also cam in a large quantity (32oz). I cracked open this cap and chugged about half the bottle. It's not how I generally drink a beverage for review, but I knew I had a lot left, and I felt I ha sweat out a dangerous amount of life sustaining fluids.

The enigma of this beverage is that even though the flavor is very light, it has a stronger flavor than other varieties of Gatorade. It's a grape flavor, but the “Gatorade-ness” of it isn't as prominent as with other flavors. I personally think it's one of the best in the companies arsenal.

After I drank this the room was still scalding hot, and I was still sweating like a maniac, but I felt much better. As an added bonus it also has a great taste. I win all the way around.

Viva Aloe! That is a statement I can get behind. I don't know how a plant that tastes so much like poison when found in nature can be transformed into such a tantalizing beverage, but some things you are just not meant to know. Other things that I didn't need to know include that there are more chickens on the planet than humans (the great poultry revolt will soon be upon us) and that the guy from Drew Carey did the voice of Batman in one of the cartoons (way to talk about taking you out of the awesomeness that is Batman).

This may be the first aloe drink that I have tasted that tasted fresh and not like it came from some mix. The bottle boasts, “no gelatin, no powder, no artificial color or flavors,” so it looks like I was somewhat correct. It's also make from real fruit juice, which is a nice change from the fake flavors these drinks normally have. This also has mammoth size aloe chunks in it, amongst the smaller ones. It's mostly smaller chunks that are the size they are in most aloe drinks, but every once in awhile you get a huge hunking one and it's wonderful.

On top of all of that this is the only watermelon flavored beverage…€¦actually any watermelon product that I have had that doesn't taste like a Jolly Rancher candy. This actually tastes like the fruit. It's subtle, but it's there and it doesn't taste overly watered down like I imagine straight watermelon juice would. I think this is a miracle of nature.

I also see that this company makes a honeydew variety and I must now hunt that down before I can die happy.

I like sparkling beverages and I love green tea. I also prefer lower calorie beverages when it's due to less sugar instead of zero calorie sweeteners. That is where Steaz went wrong. This would have been great with just a pinch of sugar, or better off no sweeteners at all. A sparkling unsweetened tea would be wonderful. Instead they used Erythritol, which is normally an okay choice for zero calorie sweeteners, but they seemed to have used ten times the recommended amount. The fluid in this can tastes more like sweetener than it does blood orange or tea for that matter. It would be bad enough, but still somehow acceptable if the diet taste was only there when you sipped it, but it leaves a long lasting diet aftertaste that lingers for minutes after each sip.

Steaz took a swing for the stars, and they unfortunately struck out. Actually the more I think about it I can hardly taste the blood orange at all. It's truly a shame.

I really, really wanted these to taste like something special. I wanted a ropey flavor, like you get with hemp iced tea. All I ended up with was a beverage that tasted very similar to diet Red Bull. That's not a bad thing at all. I actually prefer the diet version to the regular (an insane thing in my world with a hatred of all things artificially sweetened). It's just more of the same. Sure this has hemp seed extract in it, but it's not evident in the flavor.

I'm the very competitive world of energy drinks, where companies come and go all the time, this may have an edge with the pot leaf on the can. It will appeal to the stoners and kids out there who think they are getting away with something wrong by drinking it. It's just an image, but if that image helps them sell product, good for them.

Whilst reading about the great mythical creatures of ancient Greece the idea for Nu Aquos was born. You see all of the best monsters in history are nothing more than multiple creatures thrown together in some sort of pre-gene splicing experiment. Why couldn't what Minotaurs, Centaurs, Pegasus, Harpies and the like have done for animals be translated into the beverage world?

After months of experimenting Nu Aquos was born. Finally a beverage that could simultaneously rehydrate, restore and recover hit the market. The way it was achieved was by creating a hybrid of a protein drink, sports drink and well…€¦Vitamin Water. If you think about it you can actually taste each of those entities in the drink underneath a pomegranate, acai and blueberry flavor that is as strong as it is in any of its sum parts.

I'd like to see an ad campaign with the previously mentioned creatures all pounding these drinks to help them get through their tough days of fighting off warriors. Hilarity would ensue. Hilarity that even the gods would enjoy.

Everyone knows that when training for space travel potential astronauts need to prepare their bodies for zero gravity as well as G-LOC (well to avoid it). G-LOC is when the intense amounts of gravity moves the blood away from the brain, which can cause a loss of consciousness. In order to prevent this the future space travelers take a couple of rides in a high G-Force centrifuge. Essentially it spins them around at ridiculous speeds to mimic the effects of a space launch. I can only assume it is not a pretty picture. I assume it's like a Tilt-A-Whirl times a thousand.

Now in order to prepare for the training Gamma Labs has created this product that gives the user energy, focus and endurance. All of which are important when spinning a million miles and hour until you no longer have blood in your head and you pass out.

Remember in the 80's when you could buy freeze dried food and the tagline was something like, “Eat like the astronauts!,” well now you can drink like the astronauts trainees. Do you know what astronauts drinks taste like? Well I'll tell you they taste like concentrated sour diet sugar. I measured out the water perfectly, like an astronaut would, and I have to say this is extremely strong in a way that makes it a little difficult to drink. More water, or less m ix would have treated me much better. I don't understand how this can be so sour, yet taste so much like sucralose. It's a mystery for the cosmos.

ps. The only place that Gamma Labs products have any connection to astronauts is in my head, which is quite full of blood at the moment, so I have no fear of losing consciousness, especially since I just drank some energy powder that will probably have me up all night.

Here I am stuck out in the middle of nowhere. I decided to rent this cabin for a week because I ran across an ad that had a picture of the most wondrous looking cabin with flowers everywhere in the yard. Apparently that picture was taken in 1972 because this place is a dump. There are mice turds everywhere and the ceiling is caving in on one of the rooms. I guess I should have known better as it was only $100 for the week. Ugh. The ad boasted that you would have the cleanest mountain water to drink from the well on the property. I wanted to get back to nature, so I packed light…€¦I mean real light. I brought one change of clothes, a knife, a flashlight and some beans and rice to cook over a fire. The problem is that since this ad has been running since before I was a fetus, it didn't take into consideration that the well has run dry. Here I am in a dilapidated cabin…€¦okay, let's be fair this is a shack at best and I have no water and no means to cook the limited food that I brought.

I found a hatch in the floor of the shed that led to some sort of makeshift basement pantry. There were a bunch of canned fruits and vegetables down there. I thought I was saved, but upon opening them most were completely spoiled. The only thing that I could find to eat was a jar of mandarin oranges. Those lasted me all of two minutes. I have been nursing the syrupy juice that was keeping them fresh though. It's like drinking a mandarin orange juice, with a decent helping of sugar added to it. It's not that bad, and sometimes I get a little strand of orange in the juice. Finding this cellar and it's contents gave me a little hope, but I am now certain that I will die in these woods. If only I could survive I might try to market this juice. I would call it Sac Sac. Don't ask why, I am delirious in a state of hunger. What do you mean, “Why don't I just drive back to civilization?” I'll tell you why, I am in touch with the Earth and I'll be damned if I can't survive off of the land for a week. One measly week! Why am I talking to a jar of spoiled pickled eggs? More importantly why is it asking me questions. All hops is truly lost.

Health Guard is one pushy company. First they were telling everyone to “Be Happy” and now they have their megaphone out yelling “Be Skinny” to the world. I mean it's a bit presumptuous to think you know what is best for everyone and what people want.

I kid. I know Health Guard isn't a militant group forcing people to be skinny and happy, but the “Be” part of their product names conjures a great Gestapo type vision in my mind, and it makes me laugh.

The shtick of this shot is that you drink it about an hour before meals and it helps to suppress your appetite so that you won't gorge yourself, as many of us are prone to do. I believe it's supposed to trick your body into thinking you're full with a burst of pineapple and cranberry fluid.

Let us start with the flavor. It's a shot, so everything tastes concentrated, which is to be expected. The concentrated pineapple and cranberry flavors are about where you would expect them to be, strong and intense. It's a shot, so you're just supposed to down the whole thing in one go, and the function matters more than the flavor. The problem is in the fact that it tastes like it was made with hose water, and then since it was a shot the hose water taste was also concentrated. I know they didn't actually use hose water, but that is what it tastes like and any saving grace that might have been in the flavor is completely out the window at this point.

As far as functionality goes, I downed this shot, and then an hour later I proceeded to eat an entire loaf of French bread in one sitting. I think it's safe to say that it didn't work very well for me. If there would have been more food around I'm pretty sure I would have kept going. Christ, I am a glutton.

Do you remember when you were a kid and Strawberry Quik was one of the best things ever? Well, this is the soy version of that. Okay, you caught me. I am a liar. This wishes that it was the soy version of that. Actually I believe that at some point in its creation that is exactly what it might have been but then things went wonky. It tastes like they had two vats, one filled with soymilk and another filled with sweetened strawberry flavoring. I can only imagine that they meant to water down the soy vat to make it slightly less soy-y, but someone at the factory messed up and watered down the flavoring instead. The result was a beverage that tasted very strongly of soy and not as boldly of strawberry.

Instead of this tasting like nice strong strawberry milk it ended up tasting like the soymilk left over after a bowl of Frankenberry. I don't think anyone wants this.

Like sands through the hourglass, these are the Day's soda lines. Here we have the pride of Pennsylvania since 1946. That's 19 years previous to the release of Days of our Lives. It's rumored around the hills of Eastern PA that the show was created for a medium to run ads for the soda. Those people also think that a 14.4 dial up modem is modern technology, so I wouldn't put much stake to their claim.

Day's soda runs on the higher side of average sodas. They are similar to store brands, but they have a little extra something to them that make them a smidge better. For example, this bottle of cream soda is a bit smoother, and creamier than “generic” versions. It's obscenely sweet (90g of sugar in this bottle), but it's still very enjoyable. This is a soda that would be amazing in an ice cream float. Oh man, I wish I would have thought of that earlier when I had enough left in this bottle to make it a reality.