Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

Yesterday, after many months of looking, I got myself a spinning bike. I love riding bikes and in the time I can't go out and ride for one reason or another, I always wanted to ride in the privacy of my own house. I hauled that thing in the basement, put on a record, turned on the fan, and started pedaling away. I put in a good half hour before I started to get uncomfortable for I am not as fit as I once was. I watch what I eat but I still eat things I shouldn't, which brings us to today.

On this fitness thing, I've got to watch what I eat so I thought what better way to watch my caloric intake than to intake no calories? Queue Fruit Water. It's fruit punch and watermelon, sparkling, and zero calories. Win? Well, almost. Initially it tastes like a good gum but soon thereafter comes the rush of "the catch."

What catch? Well with anything diet, you're almost certain to get something disappointing. As the years go on, science is catching up and making good diet drinks. This one just went on it's own and did things the old fashioned way, with a terrible artificial sweetener. Sucralose is awful in every way, shape, and form. It kills a lot of otherwise good drinks. This initially had the promise of being good but, once again, sucralose killed it. Sucralose, you are the Hitler of artificial sweeteners.

I somehow remember this being better. I don't know what it was. Is there a non-nonfat version of this? This taste like that and less chocolaty than I remember. It's not bad, but the entire time I was drinking this I was thinking that I could do it better at home. Look, that's the way it is with a lot of things. Let's be honest ourselves. Half the time we say that it's not true. You cannot cook intricate meals that you get out and you know it. You say it because it's either a rip-off or it tastes like something your mom made. You don't make stuff that good. Just be honest with yourself.

This is fine. It's chocolate milk. Chocolate milk is fantastic. Oh I know it's terrible for you and this is no different but it's still good. I just tasted like they were a little stingy on the quantity of syrup they put into this batch. I drank it with no qualms but I just want them to know that I hope that it was an honest mistake and someone behind the scenes isn't peering through Venetian blinds thinking to themselves, "I put in half as much syrup and I'm taking the rest of the money and I'm buying myself a boat." because if they are, I am already on to them.

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.

Holy crap this tastes like apple pie. I couldn't believe it. I thought it was going to be partially gross but it was actually pretty good. You could taste cinnamon and apples and other pie related goodness. It tasted like a "pie filling" more than an actual pie with crust and all, but hey, it's darn close. It also, miraculously, didn't taste too sweet and was not just a sparkling apple juice. There was magic in that bottle.

Hey Melba!! I want to try some of your delicious pies in both liquid and solid form! Melba? Melba!!!!

You know, when people put their names on things, it can go one of two ways. In this case, I'm assuming against everyone's assumptions, it went swimmingly.

Look, Shaq seems like a well-rounded guy, a kid at heart. You know the man loves Superman, right, like an immense amount? Of course he would have a giant can of strawberry cream soda. Only a kid or a seven and a half foot tall man would think that a tallboy of pop is a great idea. Oh, look. It is a great idea because it tastes great but it's a great idea in a standard issue can. This is three people's worth of pop. I'm probably drinking two people's worth but it is really good. It's smooth and strawberry. I think those guys at Arizona are really up to something. Jay said that the blueberry was good for four sips and then he needed a break. I might be in the same boat but the cycle of four sips, break, repeat is quite reinviting. I kept coming back time and time again. There is honey in there but it was only there if you really thought about it.

After drinking this I just want to have sex with basketball players or Greeks.

You make coffee, hot, tea, espresso, and iced tea? Keurig. You've really done it. You also don't make garbage sweet tea. You can cram some real magic in those little cups. I feel like a giant holding a cup of yogurt when I handle those things. I'm a short giant, like twenty feet tall. Does that scale correctly? I would say that it's a third the size of a cup of yogurt so three times of what I am now would be between eighteen and twenty feet. I gave myself the benefit of the doubt and said an even twenty. Twenty feet sounds a lot bigger than eighteen feet for something reason. For the same reason that $10 sounds like a lot more than $9.99.

This tastes like a peach iced tea. Big whoop, right? It comes from a cup of dust so give it a break. It could have given you a lot less and you have gotten a lot less without the restriction of the ingredients being crammed into a tiny cup. If anything, my sole gripe would be that it's a bit too sweet. I really mean "a bit." It's enough to bump it down a rung.

Put more things in these mystery cups and let me make it myself. I want some different stuff like sweetened yerba mate with cinnamon in it or something. Experiment, science dudes and dudettes. That's why you got into that racket, isn't it? To make me a custom tailored drink that around twelve people will really enjoy?

Not often but sometimes companies contact us to review their drinks. Typically they have drinks that we just haven't seen and we welcome them with open arms. This one, though, just barely made it. We don't usually review hot tea. We have reviewed a few but for the most part, it's not really controlled and everyone brews their tea differently so it's a lot harder than just opening a bottle and drinking it. That being said, I was convinced to review this tea so I did it.

You've got green tea and you like it. It's nicely bitter with a nice, classic tea taste. It's been around for a trillian years. It's loved by most. Along comes good 'ol Texas and changes the game with their own bitter tea. Now we don't need to go overseas to get our beloved bitter leaves. This is right in between a green and a yerba mate in the taste. It's a strong tea but not something that was just found in the desert and turned into something. This feels almost native and recently "discovered" by the white man and sold back to the country. I don't think that's the case but it has such an earthy taste that it would take a push from someone to drink it instead of the previously mentioned teas.

I would say that I want to see more tea, iced, hot, sweet, et cetera made from this because I really like the taste. It's not for everyone because it is strong but to those that want a real tea and not a weak Earl Gray or something can have something now. I'm glad that I was convinced to drink this because it is just as good as advertised.

I should also be the big man and use my powers to let you know that this tea is made by a small company out of Texas and really believes in it. If you are a hot tea person, give this a try. I don't think you will be disappointed.

It's impossible to drink this without singing the well known bossa-nova tune from the sixty's The Girl From Ipanema. I was fine with that. I enjoy that song. More songs today should adapt that sound versus those garage/garbage sounds from a similar era. Not my cup of tea, that stuff. I'm a groove man.

I have had many bottles of this prior to review. Why didn't I review it before? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because I might want to enjoy a drink with a meal without having to remember how it taste to bring it home and write all about it. Sometimes I just enjoy drinking drinks. This though, it's worth drinking three times. It's got a great pomegranate taste and the erythritol does wonders to actually compliment the bitterness of a real pomegranate. It doesn't taste too sweet and the sweetener doesn't junk up the flavor. I really like it, can you tell? It's one of the best Bai drinks and an easy decision when it comes to buying a drink at the store with a meal since it's only ten calories per bottle.

Getting smarter, drink makers. Getting smarter. Keep it up, Bai. You're one of the good ones.

I do get excited when I see new drinks. Not to discredit them at all, but I do get a bit discouraged when they are store brand drinks. Target's Nature Market or whatever it's called has some pretty good stuff but I can't help but feel like it's just rebranded stuff from some other company that was nice enough to sell to Target. Target, you guys are alright. I spend a lot of time inside of you in the least gross way possible but in the most gross way possible, there are always horrifically gigantic turds in your toilet and you should maybe patrol them a bit more. To drinks!

I do enjoy blood orange and I do enjoy essence waters like Hint and Ayala's so when I saw this and it was colored, I was a bit skeptical. "Essence" implies...well...magic flavors are extracted and injected into the drink. Never have I seen one with color, which just makes me think that it's a "Vitamin Water" type drink. That's fine if it is, but don't call it an "essence" drink. Call it something else. There is an association between words in this language we use and when you call something a specific title, people think it's going to be something. End rant. Begin review again.

This was a good drink. I don't know if I have ever seen let alone eaten a blood orange but this is good in comparison to other blood orange drinks. It was light and was sweetened by both regular old man sugar and new jack Stevia derivative, which Jay scoffed at but I rather enjoyed. You didn't get it until the very end. It wasn't too heavily sweetened even with the team of sweeteners and fruity so I would say that it was a success. Target! Another success!

Update:
Hawiian Ola has updated their formula a bit by adding some pineapple juice in to the mix and it makes a world of a difference. Say “So long” to the harsh bitterness and cuddle up with some tropical fruit flavors. It's a shot, but I would have no problem drinking a full glass of this, well minus the dumb amount of energy I would receive with no outlet for it. Even though I'm sure it's not in any way true I will choose to believe that Mike's review of the original formulation, which can be read below, was directly responsible for the update. We have that kind of pull here at Thirsty Dudes, right?

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Jeez Louise. I have drunk some strong drinks in my day but this might push some unlucky contender out of the top five. Note to the weak tongued, this is one bitter drink. It's like a concentrate of yerba mate and green tea but tastes between a really bitter tea and, for reasons unbeknownst to me, an old coffee taste.

After a while when your amazement and tears subside, you get a little bit of a concentrated fruit taste. There is nothing you want in this drink but because it's a shot, it's like they just want to make it easier for you to get everything you need. I think if you took this tiny bottle and poured it into a proper pint glass and just filled it with water, this might be a pretty good drink. Alone it's pretty gnarly. Not bad, just overpowering of all good things.

To those who say "You can't have too much of a good thing." should drink this and will presumably say, "You know what? Fruit is good but they could have cut back a little bit. These good things were properly too much'd."

Come along with me, if you will. Travel with me back in time to an hour ago when I ordered this drink. I says to the lady I say, "I'll have a strawberry iced tea." to which she responds with, "It's unsweetened." and I responded with, "That's even better."

Cut to five minutes later and I'm sitting down and I take my first sip and think to myself, "What the heck just happened to this iced tea?" I take another sip and see what's going on. What they did is take the unsweetened tea and pour an allocated amount of strawberry puree into it. It is actually very good. The strawberry takes a bit out of the tea, if I'm being honest. I enjoy the taste of unsweetened tea so if they cut it down on the amount of puree and let the tea shine through a little bit more, this would absolutely be something I come back to time and time again.

A nice walk back to the office with a little of the ice melted cut down on the sweetness and turned the once good drink into a really good drink. Wendy and your squad of workers, you have done good by me today.

Coffee fans in the unreachable corners of the world rejoice! Now you can turn up your nose at the rest of the world like regular, fancy, city folk in the privacy of your own home. Go ahead. Grab all your computers and books and put them in one room and pretend to work while you sip your coffee and milk Starbucks iced coffee just like if you were in a real Starbucks. Listen to the latest Vampire Weekend out of your laptop speakers too loud while you blog about the people around you and how "lame" they are. While you drink this nicely sweetened, nicely flavored coffee drink, you can pretend you can close your eyes and imagine that you've got something better to do that what you're doing right now. You drink this cafe quality drink and shake your head at all your relatives that come in the door because what they are wearing is so last season.

As soon as the bottle is done, you can take one more coffee scented sigh and return to the life that you were living before that bottle of downtown life came into your possession. Maybe next time the boat drops off supplied to your tiny village they will have another case of them to fight over. In the mean time there is no shortage of coconuts and playing cards. Have fun.

If you ask any of us what the hardest thing to review is, we would pretty quickly and without question say "apple juice." I've had good apple juice and bad apple juice but it's all within a fraction of a point. We aim to drink it all but nonetheless; it doesn't make judging it any easier or harder.

I'm no apple connoisseur by any means but I've drunk like twenty different apple juices and they all taste very close to each other. Look, they're all great but, and I'm generalizing here, they're all just apple juice. I'm sorry to those that have really put a lot of effort into creating an organic apple juice but your apple juice is just as good as the guy that is filling his to the brim with good old fashioned arsenic and pig feet.

This tastes like apples. Congratulations. What more do you want from me?

Remember when you asked for that drink that was made from oats that has a real 80's Prince vibe? Well also remember when I said that they'd never make it? Well I was wrong. They made it and they made it well. Sure, the entire song I was singing, both aloud and in my head is the titular track of the drink. That made it go down smoother but without it wouldn't have penalized too much.

This was good. I was leery because, well...oats. It's really hard for me to spell "oats" without putting an "e" in there in an homage to my favorite moustached man from a similar time period. Oh, if this drink were called "Sneaky Pete's Raspberry Beret Oatestanding Beverage" it would probably make me comatose with excitement.

Back to the drink and out of my dreams. It tasted like raspberry had a little bit of a thickness to it but not offensive, just thicker than, say, a water. Even though it was sweetened with Erythritol, you don't really get that. I thought it was cane sugar until I looked, actually.

Raspberry Maneater. I'm leaving you with that. Erotic One On One. Bonus.

'Tis a rainy day in the "City of Good Neighbors." All neighbors in this fine city are opening their doors and letting the tired and wet in their living rooms. Homes across the city are filled with the memories of wet strangers and not-so-coincidentally, stories of why said wet strangers were allowed to come into their homes.

Although it was raining regular rain, in one section of the world it rains grape rain. Yes it is sticky and yes it smells good but even something that smells good can get old very fast. The stickiness gets old as soon as you get the first drop on you. Stickiness always sucks. Anyhow in the section where it always rains, a company called "Grins" did what they always do when it rains; they lay out square miles of open bottles and fill up all the bottled and then one at a time, screw the tops on and fill up a truck.

When the bottles come in they are washed off and then off to the markets. Even in the wettest of weathers, we in West Coast, NY will still drink water. Flavored, sparkling, or still. This is great because it's light, has a nice candy grape taste, and isn't too sweet. It really goes down smooth and it's in a small bottle so you don't get carried away and drink a gallon of it, which I don't doubt I could drink.

Stay wet Buffalo. Internally and externally. It will help you grow.

You know I'm feening for some blue ice. I've got to go to the gym and daddy needs a little extra juice. I'm working on my deltoids or "delts" as I like to call them, and can't do it without a little extra "help" if you know what I mean. You know...the blue stuff? Yeah, it tastes like really sweet blue raspberry Kool Ade but there is stuff in there, man. Whatever is in there gets me going and allows me to pump more iron than I could if I was going in on just regular energy.

Diet? No, man. I carboload. I eat three plates of spaghetti a day. Fat? No, man. This is all muscle. Four hundred and twenty three pounds of muscle. Oh, you are asking if it tastes diet. No. Not really. It's surprising because of the sucralose but no, it's not really diet tasting.

I'm a self described gym rat and they know me. They know me coming in, pounding protein shakes, and eating spaghetti out of a Tupperware container to keep my delicate shape in check. I'm sorry. I have to cut this interview short. I've got some ten pound free weights in my sights that I am going to lift to a light burn and then have some ravioli that I have stashed behind the spinning bikes.

It just so happens that in this world not everyone is perfect. Sometimes you have a vision, but the way you execute it falls short. As you can read below, that was the case with Sneakz. They had the great idea of creating a beverage for kids that contained a whole mess of vegetables that they need in their diet, but wouldn't eat. People said that kids would never drink that, and that is when Sneakz said, “They will if we disguise it with chocolate!” So they did, but the flavor of the vegetables crept through and no one was happy.

Cut to a couple of years and a second chance later and Sneakz has sent us their reformulated shakes. I very distinctly remembered my last visit with “Bandit” and was not looking forward to it. The reason for that is that I am dumb and forgot that things can change. This is so much better than the old version. The chocolate flavor holds out and completely disguises the veggies. This is like dumping cheese on broccoli and brussel sprouts, except it is delicious and not as horrible for you. Seriously all I can taste is chocolate milk. They have cracked the code and they are exactly where they want to be (well except maybe with more sugar).


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OLD REVIEW
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Oh Bandit, you rascally fox. You are always trying to deceive kids by sneaking vegetables into places they don't belong. Those dumb kids. They will never suspect that there are vegetables inside their chocolate milk. That is, unless they are dumber than you think because it is quite apparent that something wrong is going on inside this juice box. Bandit, you have lost your touch with this one. You might be saving kids elsewhere in things like food but with this drink it is as if you are robbing a bank with no gun, mask, or charisma.

This drink for a split second tastes like a chocolate milk. One split second is all you get. Quickly your temporarily pleased palate is washed over clearly by some sort of tomfoolery. I cannot pinpoint it but it's between vegetable lies and protein drinky. Both of the latter being enemies of children.

Bandit, I don't want you to get in trouble with your boss Sneakz but I've got to fill out "sucks" on the comment card they gave me for you ability to deceive children with hiding goods inside of the bads. Better luck next time little fox. Now come over here and let me pet your little head. I've always wanted to pet a fox.

On this day, National Iced Tea day, I did intend on drinking only iced tea but promptly screwed that up. Who cares, right? It's just one day a year. I'm getting my iced tea in. You should be celebrating it stronger than us because we drink more than you. We don't like to drink old things and it is often hard to find new, specific drinks. Believe it or not, I only had this one iced tea at the office. Please allow me to review said drink now.

This is good. It's got a nice green tea taste and is substantially less sweet than Arizona although the taste is pretty close. I feel that they really hit the nail on the head with the quantity of honey because you can really taste it. I am no mathemagician but I can tell you it's about 50/50 sugar/honey up in hrrrrrrrr and I like it.

Now that you can add one more tea to your repertoire, find it and drink it. According to the Eastern time zone, you've got less than ten hours to celebrate!

On iced tea day, I intended on only drinking iced tea. That is until I saw a commercial for cold hot chocolate and had to switch things up a little bit. I'll get to you tea but as it is, I drink more iced tea per week than an entire family.

I went to Dunkin' Donuts and humiliatingly ordered "Midgees" which I guess was the old name for "Munchkins" and I think the cashier picked on me but I can't be sure so I have to let them get away with it. Then they didn't have anything but glazed ones anyhow so it really didn't matter what I called them. Nothing but problems with that place. Then I got this drink and I was ready to go.

Now this drink is simple, right? It's hot chocolate but cold. They "Icee" it up a little bit using their super crushed Coolata ice. I don't know how they do it but it's nice. It's nice for a limited time and then it just turns into a regular, flat drink. I drank about half this as something special and then the second half, as far as I am concerned, was just chocolate milk. As you can see in the picture, they just have chocolate syrup in there anyhow. It's not like they invented anything here. They just made something hot cold and blended it in a machine that they use to make other things in.

Sure, it's good. Sure I would get another. It's hardly breaking down any barriers. I know they're not trying to do that and I'm not trying to judge them too harshly. I don't know what I would do to improve that aside from things on my part. Number one would be to get a smaller drink so that I can enjoy it as it was intended in its entirety. Second would be to drink it faster and not care about the inevitable impending brain freeze or actually enjoying the drink. I think that the first option is the better one. Smaller. I didn't need all that I got anyhow. I think I ordered a small but they might have given me a medium. Maybe I got a medium. They probably just proved me right and just got my order wrong again.

Ahh, a bottle of vintage. I'll never forget those days, going to the grandparent's farmhouse during the hot summer months. Working with grandpa bailing hay, cutting dozens of acres of lawn, milking cows, and putting shoes on horses. The later was for fun. It wasn't actual horseshoes. It was my sister's shoes that she brought in case there was some sort of ho down at the town square that she needed to get all gussied up for. Imagine a pony wearing mid-sized heels. It's a treat to see. After a nice, moderate ten hour work day with pappy, he and I would go inside and talk about things like Bill Clinton, Atari, segregation in schools, apples, and the like. We would discuss these topical issues over a nice bowl of turkey caramels until it was time to go to sleep. Ahh those caramels. Nothing is quite as refreshing as sugar free turkey caramels. It just hits the spot after you have a nice turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and peas. You know how awful it is to eat a meal and then wash it down with something that doesn't taste like what you just ate. Oh, I hate it. If I just ate a hamburger, I wish there were some sort of hamburger ice cream that I could eat to keep my palate just where it was.



Pappy, if you're reading this, I don't miss those days and although my friends say that I was missing my youth, I thought that there is only one way to have such course, calloused hands and strong work ethic at ten. Those kids that were spending their youth playing football, having sleepovers, listening to pop music; those kids are soft. We, you and I, we are strong independent men who can take care of ourselves with the lay of the land. Animals? I'll milk 'em all of the day. We're men, pappy. All because of our talks and those delicious salty turkey caramel filled nights.