Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

First of all, good one Motto. You got me. I knew this was sparkling and I saw some stuff at the bottom. Let's call it "sludge" for the sake of conversation. I turned the bottle upside down and moved it around and that sludge wasn't going anywhere. I looked at the bottle and it said, "Please shake well and open carefully" so I did. I don't know how carefully you can open a pop top bottle but as expected, it fizzed up over the top. I let that guy do his business in the sink. I'm no dumb idiot. I'm not getting all sticky and green teaful. That's for the birds.

After that debacle, I drank it. First sip I was turned off. Second sip through the end kept pulling me in. I "got" it. It's a lightly sweetened, super bitter Matcha tea. It tastes like a really bitter green tea if you've never had matcha before. It has vinegar in it, which seems odd, and you could taste it but it wasn't offensive. I don't really know what that guy was doing in there but he's in there, doing his thing. This drink was sweetened with honey, which achieves such high marks in my book. I'm going to say that to all Thirsty Dudes, something sweetened with honey gets a big thumbs up. The sparkling just makes the drink a little different and might actually cut the flavor down a little bit. Between everything going on in this bottle, the reprieve is nice.

I hope they come out with some different flavors. Maybe different strands of tea or some fruit tea? I'm giving you some gold here, Motto. Use it.

In the summer as a child, you eat hundreds of freezie pops: three per day every day for the whole summer. Quality is no issue, as you have to beat the heat with whatever you and your friend's parent's have. That being said, I don't know if I've ever had a bad freezie pop. Why do I bring this up? Well, I tee'd this thing up pretty obviously but if you can't do the math, this thing tastes like a strawberry freezie pop.

It's pretty sweet like those old people strawberry wrapped candies that are wrapped to look like strawberries and when unwrapped still look like strawberries. Come on, you don't know what I'm talking about? Grandma's and grandpa's have these lining the halls of their homes. For every five Precious Moments dolls there is one glass candy dish filled with either Werthers Originals or those strawberry candies. Go visit your grandparents if you can. They put out that candy for you and trust me it's getting dusty. They don't eat candy. It would take out their dentures.

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.

Oh these drinks. I like 'em. I really do. They're different but this one I'm going to call their initial foray into this market because for the first time it tasted a little like crushed vitamins. Yes, this drink does in fact contain vitamins so it's not far from the imagination that it would but the previous flavors we reviewed do not have that taste. It doesn't make it undrinkable or even bad, but between the Reb A and the vitamins, it defiantly will turn some people off.

Because I am a great man and because we three Thirsty Dudes care about you, we can only draw such a picture with our carefully written words so I shot you a video of this drink in action to enjoy.



I don't want to hear any grief about it being in portrait versus landscape because we had a tight crop on a bottle, a portrait object by definition.

Back to the drink. It tasted like if you had a lemon lime juice and let a couple Flintstone vitamins marinate in it overnight and then drank it. As a kid I never hated the taste of them so this was fine to me. To Jay, disliker of lemon lime, he wouldn't drink this and it's no wonder why I had it and not him. I don't mind though. I hope they come out with a dozen more flavors so I can open up more of these bottles. Liquid good, people. Secret, liquid goods.

Dear Herbal Mist,
Do you know what yerba mate is? Are you adding so little that you know you can't taste it but you can still say that your tea is made with it? We've got a guy in this office called Dan and he read this, said Joe Nemechek's name and starting talking about some special NASCAR Language. Something about "Jumpin' Joe," and "Boogity, Boogity."

Look, this is a great iced tea but it's nothing that I haven't gotten at every restaurant I've ever been to. I thought that it would be a chance to really see what your yerba mate tea would have since there are no fruits or sugars getting in the way between me and m' tea. You know what? Since Dan had so much to say about Joe Nemechek, I'm going to let him close out this review but before I do, I would like to say that this is good as far as generic iced tea goes but nothing more. Joe, you may be a fantastic racecar driver but you might want to relay the message to Herbal Mist that you want more yerba mate in your tea. After all, your good name is on it. Alright, here's Dan to say a couple things.

Seriously, Joe? You're better than this. You are THE "Jumpin' Joe," or at least you were. You didn't just only turn left like the other dudes. You hopped and galloped your way around the bends of Daytona like a wild pony. This tea is probably more representative of you now: cruising the neighborhood in a Cadillac, judging your neighbors' unkempt lawns after a Sunday breakfast at Hardee's. Grow a pair, Joe. Get some. Act like it's you and The Intimidator (RIP Dale, Sr.) rounding turn three at Talladega, chasing the checkered. Bumpin' is racin'; Joe needs to get back to Jumpin'.

"A Drink For The Tired Athlete" might not be the greatest line, Jim. I know we at NOS pride ourselves on cool packaging and potent energy drinks but the term "tired" is kind of insulting, don't you think? Yes, this is our first foray into the world of hydration but this isn't our first tagline and that one isn't going to push a lot of product. Jim, come on. Look, this isn't our finest drink, I know, but we aren't the type of company to phone it in. We can't be lazy, especially since there are other players already in the market. Let's take a look at what we've got here before we move any further.

We've got an energy drink. We've already proven ourselves a big fish in that market. Let's just move on. We've got a hydration drink. Yes, it's like Gatorade and Powerade but we're mixing other stuff in so it's different. Those other guys don't have caffeine in there and we do so we are going to stand out. The fruit punch flavor is really hard, or so I hear from the flavor scientists at the lab. They did an alright job with this. Right when you take a sip you get a good fruit punch flavor. That lasts about a second. What's strange is that when it sits on your tongue for any longer it starts to get more and more stingy. I don't know where that's coming from to be honest. Neither does the lab. You think they would since they carefully added each ingredient.

You know what, Jim? The more I think about it; maybe it's the lab guys that are the issue. It's easy not to release a bad item into the marketplace. You just don't do it. These guys said it was alright and pushed it out and it's not bad but it's got a certain "really diet energy drink" taste to it. It tastes like a really diet version of two otherwise fine things. That diet branch might have just allowed me to go on a purge of my own because I'm about to trim the fat all over this place, Jim. Get out of my office! I've got some firing to do!

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?

Coffee coffee coffee. Enough, alright? We get it. The Keurig is the invention of the decade. I'm not even arguing it. Swarms of people who previously couldn't make a decent cup of coffee to save their lives are now regular baristas. You know, just writing this makes me feel bad for actual baristas. I bet Starbuck's, Tim Horton's, and Dunkin' Donuts sales went down since the invention of that thing. I imagine that if you even breathe the word "Keurig" to someone who works at a coffee place they just shudder and their hand involuntarily turns into a fist.

I'm not taking bread out of anyone's mouth with this guy, though. Half iced tea and half lemonade lightly sweetened. It's lightly sweetened. Did you hear me? Real sugar sugared just enough to still be able to taste the tea and the lemony lemons. It was pretty good. I've had two or three of them and intend on drinking that whole, what do K-Cups come in, 24? 16? Whatever. I'll drink all of them.

Starbuck's et al; you will be fine. Something will come out that says that there is a high content of fecal matter in the cups and everyone will come crawling back for forgiveness. That's when you use your foam skills to spell something lewd to which they deserve.

As far as energy drinks go, this is good. As far as drinks go, this isn't fantastic. I don't really taste actual grape and I get a whole gallon of hurt. This drink hurts to drink. It tastes like I was drinking juice with needles in it. It felt prickely. What makes drinks sharp like this? Is it the sweetener? Is it something else? It's almost the same sting as you get when you drink Lipton Brisk. Oh, old Hug drinks. Those suckers stung.

Flavor town was fine. It's generically fruity more than it is explicitly grape. It's not offensive like when people stare at you because you've got tattoos or piercings. It's just not...quite...grape. Yes, I will hold it against them because they said it tasted like grape and it doesn't. Don't lie to me, cage fighters. You can beat me up fair and square but you can't feed me this and tell me it's grape. You should also know that I took many years of Tae Kwon Do so you might get hit by my delicate fist once or twice before you give me a bitchin' roundhouse.

Finally! After all these herbal mists, we finally found one that tastes like actual yerba mate. Yes, it's only for a limited time but for the limited time, it's great. After this limited time offer, you are given a nicely sweetened mango tea. Xylitol, a natural sweetener, and all its Stevia brethren have been in seemingly everything and it's nice to see this used well. It's not too sweet and doesn't taste fake. It has a good mango taste to boot so this whole bottle has got winning all over it.

If I could have a lot of this, it would be great. I don't love mangos anywhere near as much as Jay does but I think that even him, ever-incrementing hater of all things Stevia, would enjoy this drink.

Who doesn't need to drink more water? I know I do. I try. I really do. This constantly growing array of drink concentrates next to my desk certainly make it easier and since they're calorie-free, it's helps me feel alright about "cheat" drinking water.

For those of you on a diet, I've got some advice for you. Number one: calm down. Just watch what you eat but if you slip up, don't worry about it. It will be fine. Stick to it and you'll do great. No need to get down on yourself for having a piece of pizza. Life is for living. Pizza is both life and living. Enjoy it. Number two: this is a good, flavorful way to pound water. It just tastes like grape Kool-Ade so if you can get down with that, you can start drinking the amount of water you need. I believe the rule of thumb is drink half your weight in ounces of water. It's tough and yes, you'll have to pee a lot at first, but soon you'll start feeling better. Now you can feel better about losing weight and drinking grape juice emotionlessly.

Thirsty Dudes. Helping out society one drink at a time.

What a garbage twenty-four hours. Last night, as many of you in the Northeast found out, it rained like nobody's business. It flooded the living daylights out of my basement promptly and I was bailing and checking the sump pump every thirty seconds to see if it was going to be a two-fer type of night. Later that night and into the early morning was a monsoon that woke me up multiple times. I had to go out and re-cover my motorcycle in my backyard at four in the morning. Lucky for me, my dog decided to help out. Moral support pup. This morning I was just beat and everyone was an awful driver and so on and so forth.

I needed to "do me" so I went and got one of these smoothies that look so good in both commercials and billboards. I made a good decision. This tastes wonderful and was a great thickness and consistency. It was perfectly fruity and actually tasted like pomegranates and blueberries. A novel idea, I know, but after reading the ingredients, it's all pretty natural which I commend McD's for.

This day has just begun and already blows but, like in the commercials, all was fine when I was drinking this smoothie. Now I've just got metal in my ear calming my nerves. I know it doesn't make sense. Neither does a thirty one year old listening to metal. Pick your battles, people.

Memorial Day. Yes, it is a day to remember those who have served our country over the years. It's also a day, weather permitting, to do yard work. All day we weeded, mulched, dug, planted, cleaned, got dirty, and everything else. Days like this require you to keep hydrated. Water is great. One step better than water is water with "essence" in it that makes it taste like really wet fruit. I mean that in the best possible way. I love stuff like this. Flavored water can go one of two ways and there are a fair amount of both. Ayala and Hint are awesome because it just somehow infuses the flavor and no calories or anything. I don't know how they do it. The other ones, basically anything that adds any sort of sugar, sweetener whether it be natural or artificial, is grotesque.

This will not be the last of this I drink. I promise. It's somehow naturally sweet and tastes like blackberries and is fantastically delicious. It is lightly flavored but is somehow just flavored enough that I don't want it to change at all. Magic. If this came in a larger container, like those sixty ounce Ito En tea bottles, I would buy it in a heartbeat. They have many new flavors that just came out so stay tuned for passion fruit and the others.

I'm standing in the aisle and a woman walks past me and says, "Too many choices." I promptly respond with, "Not enough choices." I swear, as soon as I pass the New York line, my fame and fortune is forgotten because if we were in New York and not New Jersey, I would have swarms of people surrounding me pondering what drink I will pick. That would obviously be followed by a loud cheer and sometimes but not always, confetti. I think there is a confetti brigade that follows me around but they are very stealth and I can never see them in the open.

I picked this tea because it was "not too sweet" which is what I needed because I have been eating like absolute garbage this whole trip. Not poorly, just in excess.

This tea was alright, though. Not too sweet but a little off. I couldn't place it but it's not like the sweet tea I am used to. It was black and sweet but didn't add up to "sweet tea." That lady should have picked my drink for me because I could have done better.

Oh I think I'll just take a little walk. I've got about five hours before I have to do anything. I'll take a walk, get something to eat, look for some cool cars, and look for some drinks. It will be fun. (opens door to go outside) Oh fantastic. It's windy, raining, and cold. One better is there are no sidewalks. I'll just walk on the side of the road like a bum.

Here I am at a Panera and I know what I want to eat. Clearly the cinnamon crunch bagel but what to drink? That giant sign advertising tropical hibiscus tea piques my interest. I'll have that. (sits down) There is a real lack of "cool" car's out. The weather sucks but still. No one wants to drive their Porsche 911 to get a bagel? This tea is worth the drive. It's got a great floral tea taste with just a touch of sweetness from, presumably, the tropics. I don't taste any pineapple or mango or passion fruit; just a nice hibiscus tea, which is fine by me. Sure, a pineapple hibiscus tea would probably reign supreme but I'm not working at the Panera Bread flavor center now, am I?

Now this bagel is done. Looks like I'll aimlessly walk around like a hooded creep who doesn't have a car and enjoys running into the end of sidewalks because Jersey doesn't care about tourists without cars.

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?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is an awesome design. The OnDemand system is a dual twist cap with a concentrated liquid, not a powder, in the cap. The first time I had one it all came out at once. Today when I drank this it was a more tranquil, slow drip that was almost therapeutic to watch. It lasted for a while and I could see it all spiral into the water.

I do not think that it was a good representation of pomegranate and/or blueberry. It's alright but I think it's a bit skewed by the Stevia. It's not bad and it's still fruity but something about it tastes artificial, like if all the crops in the world were destroyed and someone salted the earth so nothing could grow and someone artificially created all fruit flavors. Maybe not to that extreme, but you feel me. I like it a lot though. It's like a fruitier, strong apple juice.

If you are an alien and you're reading this, number one, congratulations on deciphering our language. I have heard it is very hard to learn. Secondly, please don't destroy our crops. I know from space we don't look like much but we make a fine ear of corn. Just take some of it. I'm sure someone would give you enough to last you a long time. We've also got quite a lot of seeds that you can use to grow your own environment permitting. I think that fast food could last in space and we have too much of that. Take that. I'm not going to look down on you if you eat a Whopper.

Glaceau and the team over at Vitamin Water have "borrowed" kids from all countries of the earth, flown them out to their headquarters in the coldest parts of mother Russia, fed them a diet of crackers and water and the occasional Flintstone vitamin and had them create the most "kid like" lemonade taste buds have ever tasted.

The kids worked day and night for almost a month and actually did it. Glaceau's resident scientists have drunk too many drinks in their lives so they taste buds have been skewed. A child's palate is more novice and can really have an open mind when it comes to drinks. Together, these kids made good lemonade that's a "lowest common denominator" type drink. No offensive pulp. Lightly tart. Moderately sweetened. Overall good lemonade.

Once the kid's sole task was complete, Glaceau gave them an envelope with $1000, a note to give to their parent's that said, "We're sorry but we needed help. You will receive a case of Squeezed as soon as production is complete. Sincerely, Glaceau." and a box set of Jake and the Neverland Pirates to watch when they get home. I'd say that's fair.

I don't know what it's like to not be able to live without coffee. I always attribute it to an addiction. I suppose it's not hard to not be addicted to coffee when you don't particularly enjoy coffee. Saying that is like saying, "Yeah, I could be addicted to crystal meth but I don't like crystal meth so I don't do it." This isn't something even a coffee fiend could get addicted to, though. I don't know a lot about coffee but I feel that this is a bit too acidic and too sweet for even the most budding of coffee addicts. It is sweet and it is smooth and it doesn't taste like an energy drink which, insultingly so, is the mark for a good energy drink. It's a tad diet tasting due to the sucrose but it's not terrible. It does have a lingering sub-par coffee taste which isn't too offensive.

Honestly though, I don't know if this is technically an energy drink or a coffee drink. Isn't coffee an energy drink in itself? This could be the two mixed together for all I know and who needs coffee, and energy drink, and an energy drink? You need to calm down, buddy. Get some sleep. You need sleep more than you need energy. You might also need some water. Cleanse your body a little bit. Now that I'm looking at you, you could stand to get some exercise, too. I know, it's mean, but we're friends, right? I'm being honest.

Stephen loved to run. His mom went to the grocery store to buy him some Powerade before he ran a marathon. She saw the Powerade Zero Drops, thought it was a drink, and bought it. When she got to the race, Stephen was getting ready to go to the starting line. She handed him the drink and he told her that it was a concentrate. She was overly apologetic because she knew that this race was important. He told her that every so often there were people that handed him water that he could add it to so it was alright. He stood at the line and the man shot the pistol and Stephen took off.

Five, ten, fifteen miles. He was doing well but getting thirsty. Where were all the people with the water? Wasn't there supposed to be people out here handing cups of water? It was getting hot, too. Stephen was slowing down and sweating. Just then, it started to rain. Hard. Downpour. As soon as Stephen hit mile eighteen it was torrential down pouring. Just then, he remembered the Powerade Drops that his mom gave him. He squirted a little in his mouth and opened his mouth and took in the rain. It mixed up nicely and tasted like a vitamin C pill or a watered down orange Vitamin Water. He's got electrolytes and is cranking through the wettest race of his career. Mile twenty he's still running and it's still raining. He's soaking from head to toe but it was hot outside so although hindering and increasingly heavy, refreshing. Every mile or so he'd squirt a little bit in his mouth and drink some water. He was happy that it wasn't gross and actually didn't taste diet at all.

Stephen saw the finish line and ran hard with whatever energy he had left. He finished in the first group of runners and was psyched with the results. He found his mom and told her that he drank rain water and mixed it with the Powerade and it was good. They both went home happy because they did well. Stephen always carried a bottle of this when he raced and thanks his mom for introducing him to it.