Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

A punch in the face: that's what I'm going to give you. You hit my brand new, 2001 Hyundai Accent and now I've got to get insurance involved...man. I just got out of the dealership. I know it's 2012, but it's new to me. Sure it's got 104,000 but that's just broken in. It's Korean and they make a quality product. So, to reiterate, I am going to make you black and blue.

No, you don't understand. I paid $800 for this car and sure it was a smoker's car and sure the transmission was a little wonky and sure it had a "Hatchet Man" vinyl graphic on the back hatch, but it was in great shape and the lady who sold it to me was so nice.

I'm sorry. Who did you say you were? You work for Sobe? Oh, your green tea is pretty sweet but a guilty pleasure of mine. Oh, that's right. You do make Lifewater. I've had some good ones of those. Black and Blue? No, I'm going to make you black and blue. Oh, you're going to give me a case of black and blue so that I don't punch your lights out. Alright, that's a fair trade. All this talking calmed me down anyway. Let's give it a go.

Well that's interesting. It's like blueberry when you sip it and when you swallow it tastes like a blackberry. That is real science there, Sobe man. There is a slight artificial sweetener taste, but it's just additional sweetness, not gross.

You know, this crash might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, I do have a pretty great kid and wife, and I've accomplished a great deal. This was going to be a field car anyhow so I guess I didn't need it. Well, don't worry about anything. We'll let our insurance take care of it. Have a nice day, Sobe man. Next time, remember to stop at stop signs.

You may ask yourself, "Why would they make a pop in the worst flavor candy they make?" The answer to that is, "What? Do I run the company? I don't make the decisions." If I had to give you an answer, it would be that kids probably love puckering their youthful cheeks and chug this stuff down like it's the water they should be drinking because they are only eight and already are on the fast track to tooth decay.

Honestly, it tastes like a carbonated version of the candy you may or may not love but remember regardless. Your mind knows that this is terrible for you and I would like to see an adult who can look me in the face, drink this entire bottle, and tell me that they still feel good about themselves.

Drink half this bottle and call it a day because although it doesn't have all the sugar you would expect, this drink slays your taste buds and you need those for dinner. If you can't taste your spaghetti because you drank a whole bottle of Jolly Rancher pop, your mommy is going to be so sore at you.

Living in Alaska is hard work. Sure, you've got a Between The Buried And Me record named after you, but aside from that it's snow. Year in. Year out. Day in. Day out. Snow. There is a little time you can see the green grass, but it's probably muddy. You never know the pleasure of not wearing a coat or shorts unless you have irresponsible parents. One thing that you "earn" is the ability to crave ice cream. Most people have warm weather that needs cool treats to make the temperature bearable. You have cold year round, so there is no better time than now for ice cream. Honestly, you might eat ice cream to warm you up on certain days.

If you live in the frigid parts of Canada and can identify with the previously mentioned sentiments, go to your local shoppe and buy this cool milkshake. French vanilla is an ice cream that I don't really care about unless there are fun fixins on it like fudge, jimmies, and a cherry. If you like the plain vanilla then this drink is right up your alley. Look, we can't get high quality milkshakes everywhere all the time. Sometimes we need to get off our high horse, or in your case, your average sized snowmobile that is probably pretty bitchin' and drink this "everyman's" milkshake. It's thick. It's sweet. It tastes remarkably like french vanilla. It's frothy and is nice to shake and shake and shake after every sip.

Alaska might be a nice place. I might like it. Northern Canada might be a nice place. I have dealt with enough cold to not have to subject myself to more of it. I recommend people in these two places take a little vacation to somewhere with sun where they can shed their coats, pants, and extra socks. Feel the sand between your pale, white toes. Let the sun hit your hatted head.

Yesterday's limeade is today's lemonade. To be different, you've got to go and sweeten with strange stuff, like agave, or that's what you like to let people think. See here's the thing. This is a strange drink that is full of lies. Agave is a natural sweetener. Going through the ingredients, you will notice that there is no agave in it. Oh, there's "natural flavor" but come on. What does that even mean. That's a copout. It would be like making a drink that is genuinely "all natural" and then for ingredients just putting down "natural flavors, natural sweeteners, natural preservatives" What a joke.

Lies aside, this is alright. It's lemonade and it tastes like lemonade but you miss out on a lot of the things that you love about lemonade. Pulp? I love pulp and it's gone. This lemonade would be like strained lemonade that's a little thicker. Not a bad thicker but noticeably thicker. There is yerba mate in there but it doesn't have the bitterness that comes with it. Don't really know why it's there.

There are a lot of questions that I don't care if they get answered or not. I don't care where the agave is. I don't care where the pulp is. I'm completely apathetic. I don't care. It's good enough. It's above honorable mention but below a medal. Right smack dab in the middle.

Anyone can drink lemonade. Lemonade is old school. You drank it. Your mom drank it. Her mom drank it. Her mom drank it. That's four generations of the same thing. What about limes, dude? They're there, too. Sprite uses them so why can't anyone else? Sure, they're more bitter, less sweet, and aren't used as much, but that last thing is the reason why they should be. Be a little different. "Oh lemonade?" you say, "No thank you. I only drink limeade." Bam. You've got an instant cult following. "Limeade?! What's that?" they will all ask as you take a sip of this off-green drink, trying not to show your quivering cheeks as they begin to feel the punishment of the powerful limes within this drink.

You are now on top of the pack. Alpha. Pinnacle. Apex. You have discovered limes and have used them for good rather than just a garnish. This Calypso drink you have fallen in love with is simply described as lemonade with limes instead of lemons. It tastes like limes, looks like limeonade would, isn't called "limeonade", and is called "limeade." Congratulations friend, you have arrived.

Plums = Prunes. Like the Alamo, never forget. Also never forget that in the East, their prunes are smoked or something because everything plum/prune flavored tastes like you are eating their Western equivalent at a bonfire. Smokes. It's like chipotle fruit. Now allow me to read the ingredients to this drink because it should be the best drink I've ever had:
Water. Sugar. Hawthorn berry. Plum. Hibiscus flower. Licorice.

Could this drink sound any better? I mean, I don't know what hawthorn berry tastes like, but it's a berry. I get it. The plum/prune, I can say with most certainty, ruined this drink. I cannot taste anything but that. I love hibiscus drinks and love licorice and those are non-existent and that blows. It smells and to a lesser extent tastes like fruity beef jerky. Man. Editor Dan, the bequeather of this drink, was right. It sucks and should be better. If I could dissect this drink, I would do it in a heartbeat. Take all the plum/prune DNA out of it, add some water to put it back together, drink it again and love it.

Drats. This sucked.

More! I need more! Look, here's the problem. I only have a limited amount of juice box containers but I have a truckload of fruit. So, what I'm going to need you to do is put as much fruit in each juice box as possible because, and this may sound strange, I hate fruit. If there is one extra orange, I won't eat it. I will throw it in the garbage. Do you know what I hate more than fruit? Wasting fruit. Fruit is money. Time is money. Money is money. So what have you got for me, Sam?

Well boss, I've got this. I cannot fit any more juice and I feel there is a fair representation of all the fruits in there. Ready for the breakdown? Here goes. In each box, we've got half an orange, two-thirds of a banana, half an apple, half a mango, and an eighth of a pineapple. You didn't buy any grapes but I don't know if we could even fit grapes in here. Somehow we managed to make it taste like mango and orange exclusively even though there are so many other fruits in there. It's technically a smoothie, but it's not terribly thick and nicely sweet due to the apple probably. Do you want a taste?

Sam, let me ask you a question; do you want me to throw up on your already dirty Reeboks? I didn't think so. I trust you with this one so box 'em and ship 'em. We're ready for phase two; profit!

Grapes? Buddy. Friend. Grapes? What did I ask you to make for us? What did I ask you to make for Sandora? Pomegranate juice. That's right. What did you give me? Pomegranate-grape juice. Oh, it's good, but it's not what I asked for. I understand that pomegranates are expensive. I understand that pomegranate arils are not easy to get out. I understand it's a messy job. I don't care. Money was put aside and the money we are charging for this juice should have covered the production costs.

Now look. I understand that you didn't want the company to go under and for that I say "thank you," but if I asked for a blend, I would have asked you for a blend. I love grapes. I love red grapes and I love green grapes. Together would make a tremendous juice that I would love to drink with my toast and eggs in the morning. Honestly, buddy, the drink you have created is excellent, too. It's clearly got pomegranate juice in it. It tastes like pomegranates and is tart like a pomegranate should be, but then there are the cut corners you like to call "money saving." I can taste the grape juice in here. I like it. I will continue to sell it, but I want you to know that we can no longer sell the pomegranate juice that I wanted because we are making the "pomegranate" juice you thought I wanted.

You are not fired, but I am going to have to be very descriptive when it comes to the next juice I want. Next time, only put in the fruits that I ask for. If I ask for a grapefruit juice, I had better not see pears or apples in the same room or you will be fired. That is all. Good day to you. We appreciate your hard work and dedication to Sandora.

Old-fashioned taste means different things to different people. There is a place around here that is legendary for "old fashioned" subs. I could go for one of those subs every day and as the years progress they only get better. New bread, new sauces, new ingredients, but at the heart, they are fantastic subs made fresh right before your eyes. I honestly believe that eighty years ago these subs would have tasted the same as they do today. I would do an awful lot to go back in time and try that theory out. I would order a turkey sub and have it with a Bennett's lemon cola and test the "old fashioned" waters. I'd sit down with my inevitable fancy pants, hat, shoes, and pocket watch and eat a sub and drink a pop.

You know what I would say? I would say that this sub is delicious and this pop leaves much to the imagination. It's kind of thick and the cola and lemon are a bit...abrasive. I would also wager a guess to say that in "old fashioned" times, they didn't use artificial sweeteners. Between this and a lemon Pepsi, I would take a Pepsi, but since I'm in old times, I'd have a soda jerk whip me up a genuine vanilla Coke.

Although this would never happen and I will always and forever be stuck in present day like a dumb dummy, I can imagine and know that things haven't changed for subs but have changed for Bennett's.

Calling something "clearly" anything, I feel, is a bit insulting. It's like using the word "obviously" as if to say, "You dumb dummy. It's obviously a 1981 MGB." I know, I know. It's called "clearly" because it's clear, but still...a titch too much for my liking. Speaking of "my liking" I liked this a handful more than the previous one I reviewed. This one still has a strange thickness to it, but it's totally drinkable and the grape flavor is pretty good. If I had a kid that didn't drink bottles who needed to be hydrated, I would let him have this.

We're half and half with this company and that's more than I can say for most companies so congratulations.

You know there are dragons in that water. It's true. In Colorado there are dragons that only come out at night, like in the Smashing Pumpkins song, that swim around in the water. Didn't you ever wonder why there was a "No swimming past sunset" rule statewide? Yeah, that'd be because of the dragons. Thing is, they are messy characters. It's alright though because when they shed their scales, they fall in the water, degrade, and are made of like a sweet, fruity powder. They all flow downstream to the bottling plant where we make this "dragonfruit" drink. It's a really clean process. Sure, poop gets in the mix, but that's what filters are for. It's like a saltwater fish tank. We've got mediums that the poop and dragon hair and cans and garbage goes through so that we are left with the cleanest, purest flavored water.

What do you mean you don't believe me?! Come over here and look at this footage. Tell me that's not a dragon playing with a beach ball in the lake. You can't do it. It's mesmerizing, I know. I had never seen anything like it until I came here. They don't like people and do, even though it's a stereotype, breathe fire. They will breathe fire right on you and you will die. It's no joke and happens all the time. Our filters find people all the time. Parts. Legs and stuff. They think they're so smart with their scientific equipment coming in trying to get them for zoos and stuff. Dragons win all the time.

This drink is a rarity that can't come from anywhere but here, and it's great. There are other dragonfruit drinks but they aren't as authentic as this. This drink is light, sweet, fruity, and very quenching. Colorado's finest. Plus, we've chocked it full of vitamins, antioxidants, and more so that it's even better than regular juice or Vitamin Water. Now that you know that you shouldn't mess around in the water at night, enjoy your stay in Colorado.

Oh man. How am I going to do a 500 word essay on the Emancipation Proclamation in...oh jeez. Fourteen minutes. First thing's first, I need something to drink. This high school is strange. I don't know who is stocking this cooler, but there is no Pepsi or Gatorade or anything I've ever heard of before, just this Cintron stuff. Toronja? I don't know what that is but I do enjoy a good iced tea.

Alright, pen to paper. Let's do this. Oh, this tea is good. It's lightly citrus'd but it is just sweetened tea. What?! Ten minutes? I've only put my name on this piece of paper. Ahhh! Alright, one more sip and I'm cracking down on this paper. This is good tea, man. It's very clean tasting. Not too sweet like a southern style sweet tea but it's got the same ingredients. Eight minutes?! Alright, alright. Let's start.

Emancipation Proclamation, by Mitch Fandis.
Slavery is bad. The president, Abraham Lincoln did not like it. He wanted slavery to be abolished. Not everyone hated slavery, though. The south enjoyed slavery. They used slaves on their plantations. Cider House Rules was a movie about slavery.

There. That's about...less than 50 words? Oh man. I don't know what else to say about it. I can re-write this, double space it, and write larger. That will get me to a whole page. Ahh, the tricks of a tenth grader.

Death Valley gets a bad wrap. Whomever named it should go back to marketing school, assuming they didn't graduate, and try again because they forever blackened the name of that place. Look, sure, things happened, it's hot, it doesn't have a quenching water park, and there isn't a nice suburb filled with crap like Applebee's, TGI Friday's, and Joe's Crab Shack for families to go to on the weekend. I am no city planner but I can tell you that you don't need those things to make things happen. I do know you can't have a place called "Death Valley" and have it give off the "fun" vibe.

Here is a start. Everyone that crosses the border from outside to inside Death Valley gets a complimentary bottle of their root beer. This root beer has a fantastic, real vanilla taste that is with you on every sip and a nice, dark flavor throughout. Dark like Death Valley at night but cool, unlike Death Valley, like...ever.

This might have to be limited to one bottle per car as we are trying to fix the image of Death Valley, not bankrupt them. Limit one per car, please share. Don't forget to stop at the Death Valley memorial on your way in and out for great prices on sweatshirts you would have to be crazy to wear anywhere within 250 miles of Death Valley.

What's the matter boy? Ahh. Scurvy. Twas a terrible disease when we were at sea. There was all that water with no citrus to keep us from getting sick. We lost many men to that dreadful disease. I'll tell you, being a fisherman is not as glamorous as it sounds. Sure, you get to spend all day fishing, but have you ever eaten fish every day for sixty-two days? It gets old kid. Real old. Real fast. Especially when you run out of those McCormick spices. Paprika fish is great until it is no more. You end up marinating fish in other fish to try and get something different. Then you start mixing fish and potatoes or fish and old socks. I'm telling you. It gets bad.

So yes, vitamin C deficiency is no joke. Everyone's wives told them to bring these little packets of True Orange but they thought that they would be picked on for having flavor packets so they traded them for "tough guy" stuff like razors, cigarettes, and fingerless gloves. Me? I brought it and no one made fun of me. It was fine, too. It tastes like if you split a glass of orange juice between ten people and watered it down to make it work. It's lightly sweetened and still, somehow, 25% of your daily vitamin C intake.

I know you like the sea, lad, but please don't worry about what the other guys tell you. There is nothing cool about a dead guy wearing fingerless gloves because as cool as they were when he was alive, you certainly aren't going to take them off his cold, dead hands and call them your own. Well, unless you're Zeke. That dude is crazy.

I like green apples better than red apples. I think it's a matter of crispness and crunch. Red apples just don't have the same pizzazz to me as green apples. I just saw an apple on the can and assumed that it was apple juice. Just regular old apple juice. Nothing special. Apple juice. You know, apples go great with cinnamon and honey. I think it's a Jewish delicacy. I seem to remember wearing nice clothes eating bread and apples and cinnamon and honey. Wouldn't you love to be able to drink an apple and cinnamon juice sweetened with honey? Oh. I'm so excited. I hope this exists.

I was pleasantly surprised that this was green apple, which I didn't know until my first sip. Thing is, initial sips lead me to a delicious, green apple-dom. Aftertaste is a bit bitter and I am on the fence if I like it or not. For all I know, this could be the exact same sensation that happens when I eat a real green apple but without the chewing and the apple skin and the whole experience, I might miss the strange aftertaste that Snapple is telling me belongs there.

This is a nice way to kick off a week. It's different, it's juice, and it might actually be good for you. I look forward to finding more of these 100% Juiced drinks somewhere.

You're fading fast. You've had a long day at the office. You know, "the grind", and it's time you let loose. Take that tie off and put it around your head because nothing says "loose" like a tie on your head. Your boss rides you really hard but he's not here. You just relax; there aren't any co-workers in here. Go crazy. Stay out past ten. Drink some of that great looking grape punch. Gah! What happened to the punch?! Did someone spike the punch? What is this, a John Hughes film? Spiking the punch. Really? What did they spike it with? Did they spike it with an energy drink and some sort of liquor? What's happening?

Are you feeling alright? You're feeling energized? That's awesome. You've feeling like you've been alcoholized? Well that's not what you want. You wanted to have a good time and now look at you. You're in rougher shape than before you came to this non-work related party. You don't even drink and now you're a wreck. You've got to get to the bottom of this. "Who did this?" you ask, "Who dumped this stuff in the juice? My first glass was great and then subsequent glasses were less than great. Who's the wise guy?" Less than ten seconds later a kid said that he poured some Monster in there because he wanted to pump the party up. He was bored and now you're suffering the consequences. Thanks kid.

Jeez. You know how you've got real strawberries, right? Strawberries are an actual fruit and they're pretty good as-is. If you covered them in sugar, you would have the candy version of strawberries. Take that same rock-solid methodology to pineapples, some of the best fruit that ever touched this earth, and you've got this drink. Holy crap it is sweet. It tastes like candied pineapples, like pineapple candy. I had some pineapples for lunch, alright, one off of someone's plate, and I can say for certainly that it didn't taste like this. It would have had I poured a packet of sugar on it, but who would do that? Idiots and kids, that's who.

Don't mess with a good thing, India the beverage company not the country. Pineapples are great. If you want to make pineapple pop, just add carbonated water to pineapple juice. No sugar. You'll go and ruin it and no one likes a ruiner. The third album "Ruiner" from A Wilhelm Scream, on the other hand, everyone should like, as it's gold.

We made it. Never in our wildest dreams would we think that we would make it to two thousand reviews. Did you know that there were two thousand drinks out there that weren't alcoholic? You might have, but come on it's still impressive. In order to celebrate, we drank this Champayno and it wasn't bad. It tastes like a fine dry ginger ale. If I had to drink non-alcoholic champagne, and the sparkling fruit juice stuff wasn't available, or I was at a lawyers party for some reason, like I was trying to get on the board, or was dating one of the members of the boards' daughter and she brought me to the party, I could drink this and not look like so much of a child. Not overly sweet and different than most ginger ale you have had.

Anyhow, thank you for your support over these past two thousand plus reviews. We've got plenty more in store for you so keep tuned in.

Pineapples out of a can are fine. I'm not a "silver spoon" kind of kid. I have eaten all sorts of disgusting things to get by. Plus, they are actually just plain fine. Who has a problem besides, say, Hawaiians who have the ability to just eat them all day long? Buffalo? We get two months of edible pineapples. Oh, we can buy them more months out of the year than that but they taste like garbage. If I can eat consistently good pineapples that taste a little like the can they come in, I'll take it.

This drink tastes like pineapples out of a can with less of a sting. How did I get this far in the review without even mentioning papaya? Well it's simple. I didn't taste it. Anyone who ingests more papaya than I may have been able to find it somewhere in the mix of tin and pineapple, but I didn't get it. I didn't care that I didn't get it as I was totally fine with a fresh can of pineapple juice.

Jumex from Texas and not from Mexico where I thought you would be from, you're great.

I have been sick. Sick as a dog even though I have never seen a dog with anything other than a runny nose and, unfortunately, worms. Ugh, that was a day. Looked like someone spilled a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti on the rug. I didn't want you to think that I quit and went and worked for some other website reviewing things like slacks. I have had and am slowly conquering strep throat. Accompanying strep throat, if you've never been privileged enough to have it, is a headache that is murderous and the inability to breathe due to a sinus infection. Breathing out of your mouth for like four days straight does a couple things. One, and most frustrating is that it oxidizes your teeth and you get white spots on your teeth that only time will heal but make it look like you don't give a rip about dental hygiene. It also dries out your mouth like crazy but due to the inability to swallow, it makes it hard to drink to fix it.

I might have made an exception if I had this at my bedside table. This has a wonderful blueberry taste, possibly the best blueberry taste I've ever had in a tea. There is also a fantastic sweet black tea taste behind that. I really get a sense that Rob, the mad scientist that he is, has trucks of blueberries coming to the HQ and he's crushing them using just handfuls of mallets. He just grabs like four to six mallets and crushes hundreds of pounds of blueberries, punches out, and then goes home purple, sticky, and smelling rather good to bees. Rob has forearms of steel due to his hours of fruit crushing. He makes it hard to wear shirts because he's also busting through sleeves. Lots of tank tops and sleeveless T-'s for Rob. He's a nice dude who makes great tea but wears an uncomfortable amount of tank tops due to his comically large biceps.