Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

I lived in an apartment with my girlfriend and we had downstairs neighbors. We lived adjacent each other for about a year before we said as much as one word to each other. Why? Well I can't tell you for sure but it didn't hurt that the dude downstairs always went to work wearing a nice shirt, slacks, and was always smiling. That in itself is enough to turn me off because, as you might guess, I am a salty jerk off.

One day I helped the girl downstairs get a mouse out of her bathroom and we made friends. Later that week was Halloween and we were outside with our dog dressed up as a lobster and they came out and sat on the porch. We instantly hit it off. I judged a book by its cover and missed out on a solid year of potential friendship. This drink is much like my relationship with my neighbors. I thought this was going to suck because it's in a tall can, has corn syrup, and just looks like it's going to suck. It is quite the opposite. It is a very good juice that doesn't at all reflect its outsides. It's sweet, not oversweet, and tastes like a good strawberry kiwi juice. Yeah, it's got a little bit of an aftertaste of something but it's easily masked by another sip.

No I am only on the surface comparing this can of juice to the solid friendship that I didn't know I had one story below me but now I've got a juice that I've judged wrongly and a friend that I have scammed, schemed and hinted at having sexuals with each other's partners for the past five years that I wouldn't trade for the world. I would push this can into a bus to save him and I would not do the opposite. This drink is better than I thought. I could have started and ended with that but now you learned a valuable lesson about life and friendship. Make a friend and share a tallboy with them. You won't regret it.

Earl loved celebrating…€¦too much. He was the guy at work that would somehow always find a reason for cake whether it be Sheryl in accounting, Sharon in accounts receivable, or Shannon in customer service. Cakes, assorted pies, and trays of cookies always seemed to be in tow when it came to Earl. On Halloween he came in and was very sad. Most of the people in the office were wearing at least some sort of hackneyed cat ears or devil horns. Sheila Larson from the front desk asked what was wrong and he told his sad story.

He was on his way to his car dressed to the nines in a zombie outfit. Full makeup, ripped shirt and shorts, colors contacts, and a well rehearsed limp. He was ten feet from the car and a car drove by and completely splashed him. It totally ruined his getup. His makeup was running, he was cold and wet, and genuinely was not in the mood to have any sort of party.

Lunchtime had come and everyone made their way to the company picnic where the office had decided to have a little Halloween party. Earl walked in and sat down and started to eat his sandwich. Just then, a handful of the women from the office brought him a cupcake with a Jack-o-lantern on it and a tiny can of pop. He looked up and smiled and said thanks. He ate the cupcake and was in a better mood but it wasn't until he drank that pop that he was back to his normal self. The pop they gave him was a Halloween exclusive flavored like a caramel apple. He had never seen anything like it. He loved to bring in candy and caramel apples to the girls at the office throughout fall so this little can was a treat. He took a couple sips and decided it tasted more like non-alcoholic apple cider with some caramel in it. That was close enough for him. He went outside and no one saw him for about ten minutes. Then, he came back in dressed as a janitor. All the ladies thought it was a great costume and wondered where he got it. Just then, Sam the janitor walked in wearing Earl's clothes that he just had on. It was a Halloween that Consolidated Cardboard won't soon forget.

Roberta Smith was new to town. She always dressed in black and her schoolmates used to call her “Wednesday Addams” because she wore black, collared dress almost every day. Her hair also looked like she had always freshly put something into a light socket. She always had her headphones on listening to the blackest of metal. When people would ask her what she was listening to, she would say that she was listening to “blood metal” which is not a real genre, but something to get the point across that it was very dark and often morbid. She had patches on her backpack for bands like Danzig, Type-O Negative, Necrophagist, and Cannibal Corpse and many more.

She came to school one day and say alone to eat lunch. She had a turkey sandwich, apple, Star Crunch, and a small can of pop. One of the bullies in the school came over and took the can from Wednesday. She demanded that he give it back to her. He refused and asked her what it was. She told him it was blood orange. He squealed like pig and practically threw the can back at her thinking it was made with real blood. Fed up with the abuse that she had taken, she chased the kid through the lunchroom and tackled him. She opened up the can of pop and started to pour some into his mouth. A teacher came in and broke up the scuffle and the students went on their way. The bully got up as Wednesday went back to the table with an arm full of sticky pop. He said, “This isn't blood! It just tastes like orange pop and grapefruit pop mixed together! It's actually pretty good. Thanks, Wednesday!” She smiled for the first time in front of her classmates.

After class, some students came up to her and told her that it was cool that she stood up to the bully and asked if she wanted to come over to their houses and play with dolls. She said, “Sure! Do you want to come over to my house, listen to Slayer and pull the wings off butterflies.” When the kids backed up in disgust, she would tell them, “Just kidding. We aren't going to be mean to butterflies but we are still listening to Slayer.”

All of you guys have your fancy coffees in your fancy tiny cups. Ohhhhh you're soooo cool. Tiny cups for tiny cups of coffee. When is it my turn? Oh, it's my turn now? What do you mean they've had iced tea and regular tea for as long as they've had coffee? Why didn't anyone tell me? Yes, I do feel entitled to know these sorts of facts. I love tea and you guys should have told me. Yeah, I guess you are bad friends. Seriously, if I would have known about these options I would have gone a lot softer on you guys about the whole "tiny cups" thing. I guess it wasn't that hard on you guys. So what do I think? I like it. Even though it's not the primary sweetener, you can tell that there is something diety in there. What's in there? Uhhh...aspartame. Great. It's got a good lemon tea flavor but I would far rather have a bottle of this exact same tea from the store. I just think that it's better, that's why. You know, you're coming on pretty strong about this whole "tiny cups" thing. Are you really that offended? Yes? Really? Really. Well in that case maybe we shouldn't be friends any more. If things like that are going to break us apart than this friendship doesn't stand a chance. Good day, shopkeep.

Tiny jugs: my least favorite in both sexual and beverage terms. Sure, they're adorable, but sometimes it just doesn't cut it. In beverage terms, which I will speak of from here on out, jugs of any kind rarely imply a quality beverage. Glass is king. Plastic jugs both large and small often contain milk, orange juice, or borderline swill. This is a step above the latter but nothing you should drink more than once a month.

This is pure sugar and you can taste it. Append that to the fact that it's not real sugar and is corn syrup and has that sting that crap juice carries along with it. Flavor wise it is that of a tropical Starburst but in liquid form so you get too much of what you love. Yes, it is true. If you ate ten strawberry banana Starbursts, you might get the sensation of each sip of this drink; highly concentrated fruit juice.

If you drink this on the regular, expect a knock on the door after the large population of the CPS reads this post. I don't know why, but those guys love this website. Probably because it's a simple way to track the sales of specific drinks to bad parents. I like to think I'm helping some people out there. In this case, it's CPS and the kids who have teeth hanging on by a theoretical thread.

I'm going to say that I haven't had a peach in two decades. I never cared for them. I don't like any food that could potentially get me messy and peaches and plums are at the top of that list.

I have had peach candy in the last twenty years and this tastes like peach candy. It's a lingering taste but the taste isn't bad so you don't mind it staying around, like that one last dude at a party that won't stop talking about his annoying neighbor. It's fun to hear about it but you have cups and plates scattered throughout your house and want to clean up and go to bed.

This flavor is better than the blackberry one because that one is pretty diet. Pretty diet indeed. This exchanges the diet for long lasting, indistinguishable peach flavor. It's a good trade.

The level of concentration in this is pretty intense. You use one drop per ounce. Looking into an empty cup with ten drops is surprisingly flavorful. It's probably two or three times more concentrated than the other liquid flavor bottles out there. Maybe they could team up. I think everyone could benefit from that partnership.

"Tastes like lemonade," sounds like trickery to me. Telling someone that something tastes like something else seems like a not-so clever way of sneaking something into someone. If they would have said this was their interpretation of lemonade, I would have been fine. Them saying on the bottle that this "tastes like lemonade" tells me that this isn't lemonade and it's not trying to be lemonade but still tastes like it.

Does this taste like lemonade? Yes. It tastes like lemonade with those delightful little chia seeds in it. I like them. I don't know if I ever didn't but for the record, I like them. They've got a little crunch but you have to get through the smooth jelly exterior first. Although it sounds gross, I like it and if you don't actively chew the seeds, you might be able to care a little less with the fact that something you're drinking crunches.

The Stevia taste is there and I could tell right away. It's not too offensive but it's worth pointing out that this is a low calorie drink that tastes like a low calorie. An important point is that they're not trying to disguise it as not being diet. They also go on to point out what feels like a thousand times that this contains things that are good for you. Great right? Eh. It's good.

Who really likes white chocolate and if you were the crazy person who does, would you choose that over regular chocolate? Would you rather have some sort of dumb, super sweet chocolate or some fantastic, handcrafted dark chocolate? What is white chocolate anyhow? Vanilla? Sorry to be the one to tell you, but vanilla already exists. You lost the race.

This, though, whatever it is...she's good. I polished off all one liter of it in one sitting and if it was larger, it would be inside of me. It's got a good taste and yes I did wish it were milk or dark chocolate the entire time. What flavor is it? Honestly, I don't know what white chocolate tastes like. I've had it but it's just kind of it's own dumb flavor. We don't need it. This we could do with. It's got whatever chocolate has but filled with seltzer. I like it. I don't like white chocolate. I'm torn.

It's dark out there. You should come inside before a badger eats you. Here, I've got something for you to drink since you love being outside at night so much. No, it's not cola. No, it's not root beer. Just try it. I know it's quite opaque. I saw it at the store and instantly thought of you. You always wear a black shirt, that's why. You love black. Is it too much to ask for you to wear a white shirt every once in a while? I'm not even asking you to wear something with colors. Just white. Go ahead and drink it. Why would your mother poison you? Come on. I want to see if you like it.

Almost like lemonade? What's that supposed to mean. Take another sip. Really? Can I have some? Thanks. You know what? You're right. I can see that there is some sort of lemonade in here but it almost seems like someone put black water into a glass that had like a quarter of the glass of lemonade in it. It's got Stevia in it, too so you don't have to worry about calories. You know what, though? The Stevia taste isn't so bad. Some of that stuff out there is pretty gross. This one is a bit bitter but it doesn't taste like those drinks I used to drink. Remember all those diet drinks I used to drink that you would take sips out of and would almost spit it out? Yes, I know. There was that one time you spit it out and we had to have the rug shampoo'd.

So what do you think? Yes or no? Eh? That's your review? That's a pretty lame, albeit teenage response. It tastes like it's supposed to taste but is black as the night. I thought you'd like it. Welp…€¦ better luck next time, son. Did you do your homework yet? No? Well get on upstairs. You can take your new goth lemonade with you.

Sammy was planning a party in his backyard. He had burgers and hot dogs. He had chips and potato salad. He had beer and pop. He was missing something though. He could feel it. He looked through his stash. Burgers and dogs both vegetarian and non; check. Chips; two bags. Potato salad; German; check. Beer; domestic and international. Pop; cola, diet cola...uh oh. He was missing the most important ingredient of the party. He was missing grape pop. Oh no. People were going to be here any minute. There was not a lot of time. He needed to run across the street to the only place close enough to get there and back; the bodega.

Sammy ran in and yelled, "Where is the grape pop!?" The associate said that it was in the second aisle. He saw that they only had it in small glass bottles. He thought that it was the best he was going to get so he grabbed ten bottles, put them in a handcart, paid, and ran back home to put them in the fridge.

The party started and people were having a great time. They were talking and playing games and telling jokes. It was a great time for all. Sammy looked in the fridge and noticed there was only one bottle left. He grabbed it and took a bit sip. He knew why there were no bottles left. It was a great grape pop. It was sweet and had a good candy taste and even though it was made with corn syrup, it was done well. Fruit should be sweet and taste like candy.

After everyone left, some of the people came up to ask him where he got that pop. He told them across the street and actually watched people leave his house and go right to the store. Success.

"It tastes like drinking an orange." Jerome said. "That's because it's just a juiced orange." Paul said. "You could just call it orange juice." he added. "You know what? I will. Now and forever, this shall be called orange juice!" exclaimed Jerome.

Carlos was a man who knew his juice. He drank it all the time. He never drank pop and probably drank more juice than water. He drank more juice than he ate fruit. He likes the good stuff, though. He didn't drink run of the mill "drink" type juices. He went for the higher end stuff.

One day he was in a lull of drinks. There was nothing new and nothing interesting. All of a sudden he came across a bottle of Body Armor. He was attracted to the nice packaging. He read the ingredients and saw that it was gluten free which was a plus, and it was filled with not only orange and mango juice but also vitamins and minerals turning this into the "Super Drink" it said that it was.

He bought it without hesitation, cracked it open, and took a sip. He was pleased. Not only did he get a good tasting orange juice but also the mango kick was a good pair. There was also a ten percent bonus coconut water in there, too.

He felt good. He didn't feel like it was too sweet and actually the coconut water gave it a little bit of a different dimension with bite. He had found a new drink that made him a happy man.

Someday I will find a hazelnut and eat it. Will it taste like chocolate? Probably not. Will it taste like a nut? Probably. It will probably come in a shell that I cannot crack so I will end up putting it on the ground and stepping on it or hitting it with a rock like some sort of caveman. These actions will most defiantly crush the insides and I will have to climb a tree to get another one. Do they come from trees? Probably, right? I am hordiculturally an idiot.

Does this drink taste like Nutella? You know you're asking because anytime I read "hazelnut" I think of Nutella and why wouldn't I? It's a wonderful thing. So does it? Eh, not really. There is enough coffee taste in there that it's not like a liquefied spread. If you want to think of this as a mocha, you would be pretty much right. I might be able to tell the difference if I had them side by side but since I'm not made of money nor do I feel the need to drink two Frappuccinos back to back like some sort of ignorant college student who's cramming for an eight o'clock economics 101 final. For that reason I will say that this tastes like a chocolaty, caramelly, coffee drink that is very cold. It's like an adult Slurpee. Starbucks, if you want to use that internally, you can. All I ask is that you give me some sort of royalties. A drink a week? You can afford that. I can call the shots here. I'm in the driver seat and I know what I'm doing.

If a company thinks that we might have gotten a bad bottle, or they change their formula, and they want to send us some samples to re-review it, we will. There is no guarantee that our review will improve, but we're willing to give it a shot.

I think Core Power was right to send us more of these. When Mike reviewed this he said that it was nice and chocolaty, but that it had a definite diet undertone. While I do notice the taste of stevia a bit, I feel it is far outshined by the chocolate. This is in fact the most accurately chocolate diet drink that I have ever tried. Even better is that it is a protein drink without the chalkiness. If you search it out you can taste the diet but it's certainly not punching you in the face. I really think this may be as good as it gets with diet.

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Old Review:

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Oh she's far down the list, she is, but thar she blows. Stevia. This is very chocolaty. It's just what you want, but with those four little letters, D.I.E.T. it changes the whole game. This tastes diet. It doesn't taste terrible like poison diet, but there is no beating around the bush. This is diet. I am typically on the fence when it comes to protein drinks but I think that it lends itself well to chocolate because chocolate shakes are eternally wonderful. You don't get any of that sandy stuff in this, which is a great thing.

All in all, this is a blatantly diet chocolate protein drink that is actually a tolerable attempt at being both diet and protein. Success? Yes. Success.

New Orleans, I would one day like to be inside of you. The love for Cajun spiced food runs deep in my veins. I also hear that you make fantastic sweet tea. You know what you don't make well? Pineapple pop. This, without any sort of hesitation, is the worst pineapple pop I have ever had. I think I know why you don't make good pineapple pop. It's because you don't know anything about pineapples.

Look, I'm from New York. What do we know about pineapple? Nothing. You can say that right back at me and I have to agree with you. We are in this together, The South.

Now that you know that we know about each other's strong suits, I'm really going to hammer it home. This is awful. It is a dense, thick, syrupy abomination of a drink. I don't know how this left the test bed. It's so bad. Maybe it's the tester's fault. Perhaps all that Cajun spice has dulled your taste buds like when you stupidly use a knife to cut things like rocks and stuff. Dull. Flat. Terrible. Your spices and your crawdads? You've got that nailed, buddy. This though, leave it in the dust. It blows.

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."

Hank went on a cruise. Hank loved cruises. He would go anywhere that the boat told him to go. He was like a lemming when it came to sight seeing. The people at the docks would say, "Sir. Do you want to go to swim with the dolphins?" and he would almost never not do it. The only time he would say no would be when he saw a souvenir shop in a country that he hadn't been to and just needed to get a key chain to add to his collection.

Hank loved going to shore as much as he loved going on the ship but when he was on the ship, he would eat a copious amount of fruit. One day, he came from the shore with a coconut. He knew that he would have to use it before he got back to the States because they couldn't bring it back into the country. He decided to have some fun with it.

He went to the cafeteria at night and got a bowl full of fruit. He got cherries, apples, pineapples, and oranges. He brought them to the kids pool which was now empty as the kids were asleep. He hated getting sticky so he went into the pool with all the fruit. He started mushing up all the fruit into a cup; one fruit at a time into the cup. Finally, when all the fruit was properly mushed up, he put some of the coconut juice into the cup. He took one sip and regretted not doing it sooner. It tastes like a fruit punch that was properly sweetened not with corn syrup but with the natural sugar from the fruit as well as some raw sugar packets from the cafeteria. It was slightly chalky because of the coconut water but still very drinkable.

Just as he finished his drink, some of the deckhands saw him and chased him out of the kid's pool. He ran away holding his cup but dropping a trail of squished fruit and seeds along the way. The security aboard the ship found his room easily and just told him not to make a mess in the pool anymore. He obliged and sat quietly in his room and drank what was left of his concoction.

Mango nectar. Should that be it? Should that be the entire review? Do you like mangos? Then why do you have a carton of mango juice? Look at the ingredients. The number one ingredient is mango. Did you think that it was going to taste like strawberries? Come on, dude. It's going to taste like mango. I don't know how I got to review it because Jay is the mangoman and he must have forgotten how to read when I got to pull this out of the collective pile. Hey Jay! This was wonderful. It tasted like genuine mango juice. Wonderfully sweetened mango juice. Jay, you missed out. You drank the passion fruit one and you liked it, but I drank the mango one and it was good. It wasn't pulpy but it was thicker than a regular juice.

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.