Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

Total disclaimer is that I did not want to drink this. I have been scared away from energy drinks because the last few I've drunk have made me real weird: just general nausea and spinning and stuff. I don't know what's up with me. Perhaps I'm dying from all the stuff I've been drinking since I've been doing this site. I also have no interest in extreme fighting. I don't have anything against it, let it be known, but it's not a selling point for me. Just something to keep in mind while I write and you read this review.

This drink is non-carbonated. I appreciate it because most energy drinks are carbonated and this is different. Likewise, this doesn't taste like concentrated candy like most energy drinks do. This basically just tastes like a diet raspberry juice and tea. If you didn't know better, that is what you would think this is. It has sucralose in it, which keeps it not awful for you, but it does translate during the aftertaste and should be mentioned. The flavor isn't that bad. It's fruity and the acai doesn't have that awful taste that I normally get where it's a little bitter, almost like a blackcurrant.

If you're short on energy and have some sort of cage match coming up, I actually recommend this. If you have an elbow that is just itching to go into some dude's back but just don't have the "get up and go" to bring yourself to do it, this is good for you. If you hate Red Bull and want a boost, to a lesser extent, this is for you.

Honey, why is all my stuff on the front yard? What?!? I would never try and poison you. Where is this coming from? What do you mean we're breaking up? We were looking at houses yesterday. I don't get it. Please! Slow down and tell me what's going on here. I see that my favorite fish vase is broken so you must mean business because you know how much that means to me. No, I promise you, my love, I didn't not try to poison you. Spider eggs? Where? In the drink? No, those weren't spider eggs. They were chia seeds. I saw that drink at the market and though you would like it. It's supposed to be good for you and I know how much you like blackberries. Didn't you read the ingredients? You just assumed that it was spider eggs and I was trying to kill you? No, that's crazy talk, baby. Do you have the bottle? It's in the garbage? Hold on a second. I'll get it.

Alright, right here, read this. It's chia seeds. It's chocked full of good stuff that is good for you. I thought you would appreciate it. It's low in calories and actually tastes good. It's lightly sweetened with a pretty good blackberry flavor and you get a nice lime aftertaste. Yes, you can taste the Stevia in the aftertaste, too, but it's hardly a make or break. It's just kind of reminding you that it's in there helping a sister out. Honey. Please. We've been through so much together. I can't believe you thought I would try to serve you spider eggs. I can't believe you thought that I thought that I would get away with it. Maybe we should break up. The trust level just isn't where I feel comfortable. Thanks for getting all my stuff out of the house. This actually makes it easier. That backfired on your part, didn't it? Nice knowing you sweetheart. I'll take that bottle of Chia Star since you're clearly not going to drink it.

I have had these drinks where you turn the cap one way and magic comes out and then you turn it the other way and the cap comes off. I like them. They are fun. Until now the color of the dust that comes out is the color that you would expect. Strawberry drink? Red or pink dust. Lemon lime drink? Green dust. I turned this expecting a dust and was given a dark brown liquid. I'm not saying it was gross but it was unexpected. You know when you're at home and sometimes you turn on the water and the water is a little yellow and you have to let it run for a bit to clear itself out? It's like that except this won't poison you like old pipes might. The nice thing about the liquid is that you barely have to shake it. I know there are a couple Elaine Benes' out there that hate shaking things so I feel the need to point it out. Give it one quick jiggle and you're done for the rest of your life. The taste is a little different than I expected, though. If you sold this to me as an apple juice, I might say, this is a pretty fruity apple juice. It's the same color as apple juice and tastes a bit like apple juice. The more you drink it the more convinced you are that it is kiwi strawberry. It's hard to say if this tastes like "real" kiwis and strawberries or if it's something with the aftertaste of the Stevia leaving it with a bitterness that I actually like. This drink is a regular enigma. I like it. Keep it up, 989.


EDIT:
We got this note from the company, so that explains the color:
"I just want to explain the reasoning behind the coloring on Kiwi Strawberry. Out of all of our flavor, Kiwi Strawberry color changes the fastest. All of our coloring are ALL NATURAL and hence they do tend to change colors after some time. If you try any of the other flavor, you will see that their colors are much more vibrant."

Think of every fruit you've ever eaten and then put it in a drink. Simple as that? No. I'm sure there are countless composition notebooks over at Ralph and Charlie's house filled with just the perfect ratio of all of them. Oh, you want a roll call? You got it, Chuck.

1. Banana
2. Orange
3. Apple
4. Lemon
5. Pineapple
6. Grape
7. Tangerine
8. Apricot
9. Peach
10. Passion Flower
11. Mango
12. Kiwi
13. Guava

Seriously. They're all in there. It's a great drink, too. It doesn't really have any star players which is a feat in itself. It's well sweetened and although I don't think I can drink any more, it's because it's a generous bottle, not because it's bad. It's pretty acidic but expected and welcomed. This is not a juice for wimps. If you want a serious juice, like juice with a tie on, this is for you. There is no messing around. Ralph and Charlie should be given gift cards to Jos. A. Bank since they are so fancy with their juices. Someone buy these guys a nice new pair of slacks because this just is oh so serious.

It took a lot of ground up baby lion cubs to make this drink. They should have waited for them to mature a little bit because this is one wildly strong drink. The thing about matured lions is that they kind of calm down and make better drinks. This is super tart. Super tart. Super tart. It sat on the back of my tongue for an uncomfortable amount of time. It's an energy drink. It's rough because it's so strong. Strong little cubs.

I don't hate the idea of working out but there are one hundred things I would rather be doing or have to do before I go work out. Therefore I never drink protein drinks because drinking them with no need for additional protein doesn't make much sense. No one is going to prefer the taste of a protein drink to a regular drink. No one. People that drink them have an understanding of the way they taste and that's fine. It's what they expect. This though, this kind of holds hands with both parties. It's not a bad drink as far as drinks go and although it has a lot of protein in it, it's only slightly dense. The flavors are good. There is a little bit of bitterness from the pomegranate and sweetness from both. It's got a bit of a tangy aftertaste that I am going to attribute to the protein but hey, 80% isn't that bad. It passed its math final. Now if it can only make sense of pro-nouns, adjectives, subjects, and predicates it can pass the language final.

This doesn't suck. It's just candy but it's good. You sniff it and it's watermelon and then at the tail end, it's pineapple. It's probably just half pineapple and half watermelon since I think they make both flavors. It's pretty sweet and is probably instant diabetes if you drink the whole thing but if you share this with some of your friends, you'll be fine.

Someone at the Faygo plant probably wanted to see what it was like so in the company break room and used the seemingly endless fountain drink machine to make it. Rumor has it that if you take a tour of the Faygo plant you can see but not touch the fountain drink machine. It's something like eighty flavors, most of which don't see the light of day: pickle, asparagus, triple cola, chocolate cake, steak and potatoes, and motor oil. It's Detroit. Motor oil runs in their blood. You have to work there to drink out of the fountain machine. If you apply and manage to make it to the interview process, you can fill one eight ounce cup. Other than that, no one can use the machine. Not even family, unless Faygo hires them. They can look but they can't touch it. Faygo will fire you if you try and smuggle out a flask of anything that isn't their regular line.

It is a bit audacious to call your company "Fave." It's just presumptive. That's not to say that this isn't going to be someone's favorite because it's not too bad. There are fruits and vegetables inside this little number and for the most part, it's pretty good. This drink is mostly fruity with only a touch of...strangeness. I know that makes it sound bad but it really isn't. It's a tangy juice with a little bit of lies inside of it. It's a white lie, which is globally acceptable for some reason. It's like there is an unspoken asterisk next to the phrase that means people don't get offended when you flat out lie to their face. Adultery, murder, and speeding don't get you in trouble if you explicit say it as a white lie.

I sat down with the owner of this company. We had chicken wings at my favorite place. He said he wanted wings and I took him to my favorite place. Yes, I am usually a snob when it comes to food and tourism and indigenous stuff but in the case of wings, I'm a classic man. He took a quick glance of this legendary site and wanted to meet Jay and I. Jay was busy so I met him. Solo mission. Mano a mano, just like the Hall and Oates song.

He told me that he thought I was really going to like this. I think he things that I really hang out in the organic section of the store exclusively the way that he kept telling me this was all natural and was made with real sugar. Today I decided to see just how valid his statement was. Two words. "It was." You can taste everything. Green tea complete with bitterness. Honey and more bitter ginseng. It really makes you look back at Arizona and question why they can't make an all natural tea. They must just be killing it with that green tea but as I drink this, it makes me feel like Arizona is way too sweet and this is where it's at. This is a great tea. Fans of Arizona rejoice that you can break free of the chains and drink something natural. I guess I'll go get dreadlocks and start eating quinoa and tofu for all meals. It's been real, meat and preservatives. That dude had me pegged.

It's not often that you see concord and white grapes hanging out together. They're both grapes so you think they would be friends but no. I heard something happened at a family reunion where white grape brought a sexy banana to the barbecue and concord grape ended up making out with it behind the shed. Concord, you should never take you best friend's woman. Perry Farrell taught me that. White grape, you should be man enough to know that bananas will come and go and that that one was no good for you any way.

Maybe they made it up after a decade or so of a childish grudge and decided to collaborate again and come together on this little guy. The problem is that they wouldn't get out of the pool when they made this drink because it tastes watered down. The flavors are all there but it tastes weak. I like weak drinks but I think that with these two grapes together, a nice unaffected mix would have been nice since it is such a rarity.

These two are fine now but they lose a decade of their lives being angry at each other. We will ramp up to an uncut double grape juice but until then we have this, which is almost totally awesome.

I'm not wonderful with energy drinks, usually because I run myself on "E" a lot of the time. It's how I keep my slender figure. One thing you don't do is drink one on an empty stomach, which I idiotically did, and go and get the shakes like an idiot. I feel like my fingers typing this review are going faster than my brain wants to send down the commands for the words. It's probably bottlenecking in my stomach where the fantastic taco I just ate is residing temporarily.

Shakes aside, and let's be honest, that was my fault. This isn't a bad drink at all. It's fruity and is defiantly more "berry" than "lemonade" but I'm not really complaining. If you are on the "hater" side of the fence when it comes to Stevia and friends, you might and probably won't like this drink. It's not as bad as it could be but there is a prompt and abrupt interruption when you are enjoying the berry lemonade of it. The sparkling bit of it is a nice touch.

My history of sports is as follows; I grew up with friends who loved sports. We lived on a cul-de-sac and played football, hockey, and did it all the time. I was never good but loved playing with my friends. The older I got, the more I accepted the fact that I don't care about sports. Not that I didn't enjoy playing, but there were other things that I liked doing, like music. I started playing music in between plays on a drum machine that I still have. So from that point on, I felt that sports drinks just weren't for me. I would never get as much out of them as the rest of my friends did. Yeah, anyone can drink Gatorade but it's not made for me.

Fast-forward to fifteen years later and I still don't play sports but I work on a drink review site where I drink all sorts of drinks that "aren't for me." This drink would be enough to make most couch potatoes want to pick up a racket and sweat it out on the court. The mix between the cherry and the pomegranate are totally fantastic and I wish I had more. It's a water type drink that has a dark fruit taste. I've often got an issue with cherry where it tastes a bit medicinal but this has none of that. This drink is sixteen ounces of pleasure.

I don't hate sports. I don't play sports. I don't pay attention to sports. I was disappointed when our city's hockey team's goalie dropped his limited edition ice cream flavor. That's as passionate as I get with sports. I am missing out on the bond people have where they sit together and talk about this guy and that team and all that other stuff. I would rather sit down and play video games with friends and talk about bands no one cares about. I think I can say the same for Jay and Derek.

Our buddy Donnie over at Buffalo Eats gave us this little number. He thought he was going to get us something gross and to most people he would have succeeded but we're not most people. We've been around the block. Yeah, this is laden with chunks but you know what, son? Nata de coco has a pleasant chewiness to it and the flavor isn't too bad either. Apple lemon? That's new. That's different. It tastes like kind of a cruddy apple juice with some cruddy lemonade in there but together mixed with la chunks (French) it somehow comes together in a nice and chunky way. I love this chunky drinks category.

Ben, look at those annuals over there. Can we get a couple of those hanging baskets? No, the yellow ones and the blue ones. Yeah those will look nice in the front. Should we do mulch? I know it's a lot of work but you only need to do it once. I know you need to kick the mulch in every once in a while but those are the things you need to do to keep a nice looking yard. No, roses are too much work. They look great for about three weeks out of the year and then they just get wily. Do you want to do any vegetables in the back? We've got the space and it's not like we are not going to eat them. It's fun to go back there and say, "Oh hello tomato."

I love it back here in the garden department, Ben. I wish that I could just bottle it up and keep it with me. The smell of soil, dirt, flowers, trees, mulch and so on. I love it. I want it. What Ben? You have heard of a drink that is like that? Wait, a drink? You drink it? When I said, "bottle it up" I meant just so I could open it up and it smells like this garden center. I don't want to drink the smell. That implies that I am drinking molecules of manure, dirt, and thistles. I don't think that I want that. Is that what it tastes like? Oh, thank God. What does it taste like? Lemon lime? Eh, I don't know if I would have gone that route. Now that we are talking about this I want to try it. You have it in the car? Oh, great. Let's get those hanging baskets, some of these packs of vegetable seeds, and cash out.

This is the drink? It's in a nice bottle. I'll try some. Ooooh man...that smell. Remember when I said that I wanted to bottle up the garden center, I might have just immediately regretted saying that. The garden center should be a treat unto itself. You shouldn't be able to harness the smell of anything because there is a time and a place and that time and place is exclusively limited to the time you are inside of the garden center. The taste isn't so bad but it's thicker than regular juice or any of those waters. It's probably the chia seeds all ground up and hidden. Really, Ben? This is a chia seed drink? They really must have ground them up good because I don't taste any of them. All I taste is lemon lime genericness and the smell of a plastic garden center. Ben, I like you, I like our future garden. I do not like this drink. Let's go get our hands dirty and do some mulch.

I like good chocolate milk. Who doesn't? It's chocolate milk. It's kid stuff that just follows you through the years that wonderfully never leaves. You reach adulthood and then you realize there is a world of different products out there including the beloved chocolate milk. Some of them are good and some of them are bad and some of them are the same products that have been out for twenty years that are just fine as they are. This falls into the "bad" category. It's a "natural chocolate shake" but it is more like a protein drink that tastes like a diet protein drink because it's filled with an array of different sweeteners that just makes it feel like chalk and low grade chocolate. What else is there to say? No thanks. If you're on a diet and can't find any other chocolate milk, fine, go with it, but if you can find even a local gas station chocolate milk, steer towards that. Just don't do it with your car. Buffalo is becoming synonymous with people driving through stores and restaurants.

Carrots? Really rabbits? Just carrots? You're not very civilized now, are you? Bugs Bunny can dress up in all the fancy suits and dresses he wants. All the wigs and all the hats and all the lipstick in the world won't bring him up to the caliber needed for this drink. Four ingredients; carrots, apple, ginger, and lemon. Done. Bugs, you are a legend, but you stick to carrots. You can't handle the subtle heat that the ginger brings and aren't ready for the subtle sweet and sour of the apple and lemon. You could only handle twenty five percent of this drink and it simply doesn't warrant buying it.

I grew up on you and your hijinks. Your friends and foes got me through a lot of hard times but this carrot just is, as Madness said, one step beyond.

I think that the chronology of it happens like this:

1. Thirsty Dudes is created.


2. Some dudes read the reviews and decide they know the key to our hearts.


3. Joia is created solely to please us.


4. We find Joia drinks and review them all highly.

All of these drinks are wonderfully handcrafted and include a fantastic blend of ingredients that no other companies let happen. Allspice in a drink? That's crazy. Well, lame drink companies, it's not crazy. It's fantastic. Even if it is crazy, it's done with a logical base and really delivers. You get a little ginger, more flavor that spice, but it's there. The apricot really blasts through but the allspice hangs out with you like the faithful friend. Beginning to end the drink keeps on delivering.

Joia, we know that you used us as a cheat sheet to make "the perfect drinks" but we don't care. Keep up the good work. If this was math class, we would lean over and let you cheat off our paper and sorry about our poor penmanship. If all else fails, answer "C."

I have had a turmeric drink before and it tasted like water strained through a handful of Indian food. I really like Indian food. Jay and myself frequent Indian restaurants a lot but I'll tell you right here and now, I don't want to drink it. This drink, as Jay has mentioned every drink that cannot be reiterated enough is that this drink is not for everyone. It's spicy and does have a rather peculiar taste. That's taking into consideration that every ingredient under the sun inside of it. Spicy ones. Exotic ones. Fresh ones. Look at the bottle. There are ten or so ingredients that you wouldn't put into a drink yourself but they did.

What do I think of it? Well I'll tell you. You have a drink that is a good dinner drink because it is spicy and is almost a meal in itself. It's not think or chunky but you sip it so it takes a while to get through it. It's also not really sweet, regardless of the honey, so I don't know if you would spend time mulling over this drink. Well, maybe you would. I think that you and a friend could sit down and watch some fancy foreign film and split this with a friend. I could not drink this whole thing myself. I know Jay can't either because I went to his house and he gave me some of a drink that he reviewed a day before.

This is one of the strangest drinks we have had on Thirsty Dudes only because it's so complex. I welcome more drinks like this onto our not-award-winning-in-a-long-time website.

I've got a soft spot for Nesquik. It's great. I love the stuff. My grocery store across the street from where I live is pretty good at stocking it. This one I had never seen before so I needed to buy it. I probably went across the street for something like peas or the like, got distracted, and bought chocolate milk.

This is good. I might prefer the regular variety of chocolate milk but this is good. It's not too much and the mad scientists somehow managed to cram even more delicious chocolate into an already pretty chocolaty drink. Great job scientists. None of this is bad but I think it might be one of the "new take on an old classic" things that I just prefer the old to the new. I'm typically not stubborn about thing, and I'm hardly holding a grudge, but this is just a titch less great than the original.

I will be the first person to tell you that I don't eat enough vegetables. I eat more than probably the average amount; probably because I have a kid and don't want him to be a diabetic chunk by the time he is old enough to ride a bike. At the same time, I am pretty opposed to "hiding" vegetables into other foods like "this ravioli secretly has a serving of vegetables in it." and sold that way. Just give your kids vegetables like my parent's did me and don't take "no" for an answer. You're the parent. You make the rules. Don't let your turd kids tell you what's what. That's your job and you suck at it so now companies have to make up for you inability to be a good parent by injecting vegetables into your kid's junk food tricking them so they don't get antique diseases or just fall apart at the seams. Kids. Eat some corn. Not all vegetables are great but corn is. Peas are fine.

This drink is carrots and mangos and tastes like 90% mangos. It's not going to make up for your lack of health food but it's better than pop and one step closer to something like a V8 which is both delicious and healthy minus the sodium. This is a good juice all together. It's one of the better mango drinks I've had. It's nicely sweetened with sugar and still manages to keep everything represented. I like it. You should like it. Find it. Like it.