City Lights
Exotic beverage: Naughty Girl Energy Drink
This energy drink contains caffeine, carnitine, not much else. The more interesting of those two ingredients, carnitine, is a quarternary ammonium compound (whatever the hell that is) synthesised from amino acids. It's found in red meat and nuts, and is synthesised during pregnancy to aid in growth. It's listed on the can as a fat burning magical chemical of awesomeness, but I can't fathom the diagrams on Wikipedia well enough to explain whether this works or not. (It's in a sugar-laden aphrodisiac beverage. Methinks it does not.)
It's violently flourescent red. It's not just red, it's RED. Proper red. It's mildly carbonated. I'd expected it'd be pink, but at least it's not urine-coloured as I kinda suspected it would be.
It smells like window cleaner. The blue kind. (Not the red kind.) It's somewhat scary. One is tempted to include an appendix to this article detailing how well "Naughty Girl" polishes glassware.
Once you stick it in your mouth, it's far from pleasant. It's basically a canful of the flavour that all energy drinks try to disguise, the reeking unpleasantness of vitamin-B. The can describes the flavour as "raspberry", but it's about as close to raspberry as a glass of aerated water saturated in b-vitamins.
The best feature of this beverage is its complete lack of an aftertaste, it's a shame there's no other good points, because inhaling air has the same effect.
On a whole, It's fairly disgusting. I couldn't manage a glass. It's unpalatable because there's no real taste to it, just the underwhelmingly vitamin-B like flavour of blurgh. There's no aftertaste to speak of, and it made my face twitch uncontrollably.
I suppose I should hesitantly address the other "property" of this drink: aphrodisia. I believe it's aimed at women. It didn't excite me any. This may be because I'm not a woman. Should I ever find a woman who's willing to drink vitamin-B and window cleaner, then tell me how her loins are feeling, I'll be sure to post the results.
Exotic beverage review: Red Devil Energy Drink
It's all Red Bull's fault. "Red" has apparently become a convenient catch-all buzzword for energy drinks. Between Red Eye, which is pleasant, and Red Bull, which is bile in a can, it's a shame the term cannot be safely used to distinguish the palatable from the impalatable.
Red Devil is alarmingly tomato coloured. It kinda looks like someone has bled into it. It's not a comforting colour. I had anticipated it'd look somewhat like Red Bull, based entirely on the contents being similar. I'm almost disappointed.
It smells exactly the same as every other energy drink that tries to disguise the patently disgusting flavour of b-group vitamins with some kind of uberberry fruit deluxe syrupy flavour. It smells very much like someone's vomited some berries and added Berocca.
At the risk of offering a cheap-arse description of the flavour that'll be of no help to anyone, it tastes virtually identical to Red Eye Gold. It's got a strong medicinal flavour, buried beneath an unpleasant taste of partially digested berries, all of which are swimming on top of the unpleasant vegetable flavour of b-group vitamins, which still manage to poke their hideous heads through the masking agents to make this a vaguely unpleasant beverage. As flavours go, this one isn't too bad. I was afraid it'd taste like Red Bull, but thankfully it does not.
The only noticable aftertaste is that of the berry-like puke flavour, which -- as an aftertaste, at least -- isn't totally unpleasant.
It's not entirely bad. For something with all the ingredients of Red Bull, a name that begins with "Red", and a colour that looks like someone's been punched in the kidneys and taken a nice long piss, it's decidedly palatable and probably earns itself a place on the short list of energy drinks that don't make your soul depressed.
Cold Creek Manor: An exercise in common sense
This is a brief study in logic. Occam’s Razor postulates that of all available possibilities, whichever is the least ridiculous is probably the right one. Sherlock Holmes postulates that when everything impossible is removed from the scene, whatever’s still hanging around has got to be the truth. Schroedinger postulates that a cat can be a zombie. Today’s film of choice is a “psychological thriller” under the guise of Cold Creek Manor. I’ve come to the conclusion that a “psychological thriller” is in fact a horror movie with everything good removed from it.
CCM is the story of a frustrated family of New Yorkers, who, upon their young son being ploughed by an SUV in the city, decide to move to the country. Where SUVs are less prevalent. Or something.
So, Irritating Video Journalist Daddy packs up Sleeping With Colleague Mummy, Overdeveloped Teenage Daughter and Annoying Young Son and heads off to purchase a piece of prize real estate in the form of Cold Creek Manor.
Having moved in to their new home, IVJ Daddy and AY Son start snooping about and find a bundle of curious evidence about the previous owners, including a scrapbook created by the previous owner’s child, laden with dodgy imagery and even worse poetry about demons, and a bunch of polaroid photos of what I assume to have been the previous owner’s wife with her wobbly bits awobble.
To cut a long, tedious and stultifyingly boring story short, previous owner shows up, hangs around, proves himself to be as dodgy as everyone suspects, becomes bad guy, tries to kill everyone.
Now. Leaps of logic.
1. Kid convinced Daddy hit horse with car.
Father, drunk from trying to butter up the locals at the saloon, drives home. Previous house owner gives chase, Daddy winds up colliding with a deer. Previous owner retreats. Next morning, kiddies wake up to find Daddy’s car is damaged, and their pet horse is dead in the swimming pool, which is in the back yard of the house, clearly flanked by the house on one side and trees and gardens on the other.
OCCAM, SHERLOCK AND SHROEDINGER AGREE: Daddy did not hit the horse, as there are clearly no skidmarks on the ground, nor is there enough room in the entire yard for Daddy to gain enough speed to collide with a horse and fling it into a swimming pool! Daddy probably hit the deer that Daddy says he hit.
MOVIEMAKERS AGREE: Daddy did not hit a deer. Daddy hit the horse. Somewhere else. Then dragged the horse’s dead carcass back to the pool and dumped it in. At night. Without making a sound. Oh, and Daddy killed the horse with an impact that was only strong enough to damage one headlight and bend his front quarterpanel a tiny bit.
ANYHOW. Second leap of logic ahoy!
Cold Creek Manor is essentially The Ring with The Ring removed. Brief synopsis:
Ring: Chick hires video journalist to discover the meaning of a videotape about a kid who was killed by her parents and dumped down a well.
Manor: Video journalist buys house then discovers previous owner killed his kids and dumped them down a well.
I digress. Second leap.
2. Thin nylon rope can lift anything!
Spoilers ahoy. Upon learning that the previous owner probably disposed of his children in a well on the property, IVJ Daddy sends his waterproof handycam down the well on a bit of bright yellow nylon shoelace. He reels in the camera and discovers their remains on the tape.
Daddy goes to the car, as far as I can tell for the sole purpose of seeing whether the tyres had been slashed (what astounding clairvoyance!) while Mummy inexplicably remains near the top of the unguarded well waving a lantern about. Previous house owner leaps from the bushes and pushes Mummy into the hole. Then, uh, disappears. For no reason I can fathom.
ANYHOW. Daddy comes to the rescue and flings the bit of nylon shoelace down the hole for Mummy to climb up on.
OCCAM, SHERLOCK AND SHROEDINGER AGREE: Nylon shoelace will not hold the weight of Sharon Stone at a length of, eh, thirty feet, probably.
MOVIEMAKERS AGREE: Sure it will. However, she’s going to mostly climb up the REALLY OBVIOUS TREE ROOTS (or “vines”, as Dennis Quaid calls them) which could have supported her without the aid of the amazingly yellow string.
Also of note is Christopher Plummer as a senile old man. Not a huge leap, there. Sorry.
Exotic, uh, beverage? Sour Spray
It's been a while since I've written an Exotic Beverage Review, so here's one in a slightly different direction.
I picked this stuff up at my local video store. Immediately, I got the urge to buy two cans, because this stuff clearly cannot last. This is another entry in the gargantuan line of sour sweeties, which seem to function entirely on the concept that the more disgusting a confection tastes, the more likely children are to want it. "Sour Spray" guarantees kiddies will love it by adding the bonus gimmick of being delivered to the taste buds in much the same way as Raid is delivered to insects -- by aerosol.
My immediate reaction to this was "Holy arsegiblets, Batman! This'll make small children think it's okay to eat bug spray!". My secondary reaction was "I'll take two!".
I had planned to make this a conventional Exotic Beverage Review, but the crap by nature defies the standard format of an EBR. It contains no truly exotic ingredients (apart from whatever the propellant in the aerosol is, evidently it's not hydrocarbon -- which cannot surely be a bad thing -- but the can divulges nothing as to what the gas actually is). The sugar content of the goo is not suprising, 10g in an 80ml serving.
The can is about the size of a handy deodorant can, the type women tend to carry in their purses. It's well sealed with a layer of shrink-wrapped cellophane plastic around the cap. The label on the can is also shrink-wrapped plastic, not enamelled painty crap like on most aerosol cans.
Click the jumpy jump to read more about this astounding aerosol --
The directions and precautions on the can are as follows, and I really wish I had made these up:
DIRECTIONS: open the can, spray candy directly into your mouth and SCREAM. Manufacturer assumes no responsibility for crazy outbursts, silliness and laughter you may experience. Do not mix with other whimpy candies. CAUTION: This candy does not cause boredom if used as directed.
So that's the joke warning panel. The real warning panel reads as follows:
WARNING: Contents under pressure. Do not puncture or incinerate. Exposure to high temperatures may cause bursting. Avoid spraying in eyes. Intentional disuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful. Store below 120F.
Fair enough, says I.
But wait..
DIRECTIONS: open the can, spray candy directly into your mouth and SCREAM.
..and..
Intentional disuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful.
I assume the screaming is due to the probably highly carcinogenic propellant you're not meant to inhale while the CAN IS SPRAYING INTO YOUR MOUTH HOLE speedily eroding your lungs and causing some kind of narcotic trip.
Or maybe I'm just too cynical.
A poorly translated Chinese paragraph on the side of the can suggests the can contains 28 feet of foamy goodness. Upon reading this, I immediately realised the potential for an..
UNAUTHORISED "HOW MUCH IS INSIDE"!
So, without further ado, I hereby rip off pay homage to Cockeyed.com:
Realising I needed a method to measure the output of the can, I quickly comandeered my kitchen bench and set up a high-tech measuring apparatus:
The plan was for the cling wrap to contain the overwhelming foamy madness, which would be distributed across its width in 12 inch sausages, as measured with pinpoint accuracy by my fluourescent green tape measure. It was a plan that could not fail!
Unfortunately, I'd failed to anticipate that the word "foam" is apparently a bad Chinese translation for the Chinese word that means "slightly damp snotty goo that turns to rancid fluid within seconds". So my nice foamy sausages speedily mutated into streams of unpleasant pink sticky matter. But one soldiers on, in true How Much Is Inside? tradition!
Here's the first ten feet of pink goop, which by now has congealed to a kind of Klingon blood-like substance. Thankfully, the cling wrap is containing it quite nicely, as the top left corner indicates. As hard as it's trying to escape, the surface tension of the Klingon haemoglobin is too strong to break the bounds of the plastic.
Here's a final photograph of the stuff as it begins to break through the gravitational boundaries of the cling wrap and starts to invade my kitchen bench. Ultimately, the final spray count got to 28 foot-long lines of pink crud, but the stuff was congealing and liquefacting and disintegrating and eating through my house so quickly I didn't have a chance to photograph it. I was too busy attempting to scoop up the plastic sheeting into a sort of bag-like formation before the stuff became a permanent part of my kitchen.
However, having proven the can did contain at least 28 feet of "foam", as per the label, I decided to get brave and sample a bit of the stuff.
I sampled the stuff. My tastebuds collapsed in upon themselves like a black hole, retreating from the seething pink goo I had so disdainfully thrust upon them. It felt like I'd sprayed rancid, carbonated vinegar onto my tongue. It's also worth mentioning that it's not at all possible to have any control over the direction and ferocity of the spray, so you might as well toss a handful of coins as to whether you want the "foam" to go into your mouth, down your throat or up your nose.
Curious as to how much crud remained in the can, I exhausted it into the makeshift cling-wrap bag:
I debated whether to drink the stuff, attempt to preserve it, or feed it to a homeless person and sit back and watch. After some deliberation, I decided the best fate for the red glowing bile was..
Never again. Ever.
As an addendum, however, I returned to the kitchen to discover the cling wrap had at some point failed me, and the red crap had actually stained my bench:
Never. Again.
Spectacular lightning at Lightning Ridge
This was a nice little storm that passed over Lightinng Ridge in February, 2006. Among other less impressive photos, I managed to capture "Newtown Touchdown" and "Money Shot", the latter of which was printed on the front page of the Ridge News, and in an article in the Daily Telegraph. Newspaper articles can be found here!
A few more photos from the same evening:
Exotic beverage: Pepsi Samba
This stuff is mango and tamarind flavoured. Mango and tamarind. This does not sound pleasant. Mango is alright, I guess. Mango I can accept. Not sure about mango and Pepsi combined, but I'm okay with Mango. My only experience with tamarind, however, is an Asian "sweet" that consists of dried up balls of the fruit soaked in sugar and chili powder, producing a horrid, horrid, horrid burning mass of gross.
One of the few redeeming features of this drink is its television spot, a commercial featuring a pair of disembodied dancing legs, legs that belong to David Elsewhere, master illusionary dancer (there's a career none of us considered) and generally cool dude:
It's orange-er than regular Pepsi. Clearly there's some hint of tropical fruit about the colour.
There's almost no smell. It smells like regular Pepsi, really, with a very very vague hint of that Tropical Sunkist crap they put out a few years ago. I'm under the assumption this is the same syrup, mixed with Pepsi. And tamarind.
Oh, it's gross. It tastes like Pepsi with soap in it. For anyone familiar with these drink reviews, it has the "we're trying to mask the taste of vitamin-B by adding overpowering fruit flavours" taste. Which wouldn't be a problem, except THIS ISN'T AN ENERGY DRINK, AND HAS NO VITAMIN B ADDED TO IT.
The aftertaste is horrid. It's still soapy. I'm having a hard time telling whether it's due to the base of this drink being regular Pepsi, which is usually pretty grim in its own right. Also, for some odd reason, there's a hint of eucalyptus or mint or something.
Considering this is based on Pepsi to begin with, it's not that bad, I guess. It's soapy, but it's kind of fruity. Tropical Sunkist was far, far better.
Exotic beverage: Speed Chrome
I haven't opened this can yet. The name conjures some interesting possibilities, two of which are: It looks like chrome. This is unlikely, as I'm unaware of it having become legal to include actual metal in beverages. The other alternative is: It acts like chrome, meaning you can spray it into a rag and inhale it for happy fun time. I doubt both reasons, but bear in mind we are talking about an energy drink manufacturer who's modus operandi is "name it after something morally reprehensible".
It doesn't look like chrome. It looks like slightly greenish, carbonated wee.
When you open the can, there's an overwhelming stink of window cleaner. On sniffing the liquid itself, it smells like a relatively benign fruit drink. Whether or not it's actually benign, I'm as yet unsure.
It's...............interesting. It's slightly fruity. The other sensation it carries is quite similar to the "HOLY CRAP IS IT MILK OR IS IT SODA" effect the choc-orange Fanta Spider demonstrated. It's like there's a haze of awkward gaseous matter surrounding the real flavour, which, like most energy drinks, consists mostly of strong, sweet fruit flavours attempting to mask the overwhelming presence of Vitamin Berocca.
The flavour dissipates pretty quickly, leaving you with the horrid tang of vitamin B and the weird sensation of the "flavour haze" described above, which doesn't seem to go away, no matter how much other fluid you consume afterward.
It's not pleasant, but that's okay. Few of these drinks actually are. As they go, this one's pretty middle-of-the-road. It's got gross bits, it's got good bits. At least it's not liquid metal.
Update: I just took a huge swig, thinking "it's not that bad! You just typed out an essay saying so!", but...it is. It's horrid. It tastes like really nasty fruit drink with some methylated spirits in it, and possibly some pee. Blurgh.
Blue Ox - Exotic Beverage Review
These are a handful of energy drinks I found in Albury, on the New South Wales/Victorian border. They're kinda nice, in that they're very obviously a knock off of Red Bull in that they've borrowed the "Coloured Bovine" approach to naming drinks.
They also have the spectacular consumption warning of “Consume no more than 5 cans a day.” Yes. Five. Five. FIVE. That's terrifying on so many levels.
Also, the can art is a label. It's not printed directly onto the aluminium. Such is the price you pay for a spectacular range of flavours, I guess.
I reviewed these rather speedily on location, and I took notes to allow me to finish the reviews properly after the fact. I've included scans of my original notes for your edification, should you like that kind of thing. If you don't, that's cool too. I'm easy about things like that.
First up, the blue one. It's the "original" flavour, which means not a jot to me, as I'm not familiar with whatever originality Blue Ox has going for it. It's quite unpleasant. It shares the same characteristic of slightly aged plastic as Go Fast, which ain't saying much. Make it go away. Please.
Blue Ox Orange: It's orange. Kind of. It's verging on brown, with kind of a luminescent yellow tinge to it. If it was seeping out of a wall at say, Chernobyl, you wouldn't think it was out of place. It looks like something's been oxidising inside of it.
It smells like really strong orange cordial with vitamin C tablets dissolved in it. En masse.
There's a type of cold medicine called "Actifed". This tastes very much like it. If it were seeped in rotting celery for several months. This drink could possibly be a cure for the common cold. Or a carrier for cholera.
Blue Ox Cherry: It's called "Black Cherry". It's dark and vaguely resembles cherry. So far, so good.
It actually smells like cherry. Which would be a good sign, if cherry didn't smell like medicine.
It's......crunchy. Hard to describe. There's an odd powdery texture to it that clings to your teeth afterwards. That said, it's by far the best of the three Blue Ox flavours I've been privy to. Which isn't saying much.
If you have a choice of Blue Ox (rather than, say, Blue Ox Russian Roulette), pick this one. And hold your nose.
The Blue Ox collection isn't the worst thing, all things considered, that I've ever stuck in my mouth. It's certainly not the best, though. All three flavours suffer from bizarre powderiness, overpowering vitamin-B flavours, and peculiar textures.
Since this review was written in 2005, I have since come across Blue Ox in another form, a similarly coloured set of drinks labelled "BLOX" (you can see the cans in this article), with little cube men on the front rather than the characteristic blue cow. I'm not sure if this is a result of Red Bull going "Hang on..blue ox? Red bull? HOW COINCIDENTAL", or the marketing team at Blue Ox simply branching out into more geometric demographics. Who knows. I never drank the BLOX drinks, largely under the assumption that they'd taste like crap, too.
Video game movies are DOOMed
Over the recent weekend, I had the opportunity to meet with Yahtzee from fullyramblomatic.com, and to watch the epic masterpiece of celluloid theater that masquerades as Doom. Movies based on video games are rarely decent. Lets explore.
Super Mario Brothers. The general concensus on the Super Mario Brothers movie is that it stands alone as a passable fantasy film, with unnecessary allusions to the Super Mario Brothers video games thrown in for no reason whatsoever. With the possible exception of “He’s got a Bob-omb!”, none of the video game references have even the slightest bearing on the plot. Grade: C+.
Mortal Kombat. I liked Mortal Kombat. For a few reasons. Bridgette Wilson in short shorts is one of them. Of all the video-game inspired movies to date, this one’s probably the most accurate to the game, which is both a benefit and a downfall. Luckily, the backstory behind the Mortal Kombat games had a bit of beef to it, so there was actually something to build on, script-wise. Also, this movie features virtually every major character from the game, has a reasonable sense of humour, and doesn’t appear too cheesy. Also, CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT. Grade: A-.
Street Fighter. Oh, Christ no. Grade: D-.
Resident Evil / Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Again, the redeeming quality of this movie is that you get to see Milla Jovovich’s genitalia. Leaving the game connection out, it’s a pretty ordinary zombie episode. Grade: B.
House Of The Dead. Oh, Christ. It has clips from the game in it. Possibly the worst movie ever made. Also, it’s worth nothing that Uwe Boll is also in the process of cinematically destroying Alone In The Dark and Postal, too. Sigh. Grade: Q.
Doom. The plot of Doom, the video game, basically consisted of “there’re demons from hell on a space station, so marines go and kill them”. Sadly, the plot of Doom, the movie, is the same. I’m vaguely tempted to write a scene-by-scene description of it, but seeing as ABSOLUTELY NO PLOT DEVELOPS, there’s no point to doing so. However, here’re a few notes:
- The Bio-Forge Gun. The BFG. It’s introduced into the film with all the subtlety of a housebrick. That’d be okay, perhaps, if it wasn’t for The Rock’s emotionless delivery of the line, “Big…fucking…gun”. I want to stab the screenwriter.
- Dexter Fletcher. In another attempt at crow-barring a well-known reference into the flick, Dexter (from Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, among other things) is Pinky. Pinky lost his bottom half in a bizarre transportation accident, and now has his anus miraculously welded to a Segway Scooter. WIthout giving away any massive plot spoilers, he mutates and becomes the pinky demon. Whee.
- Gun Cam. The last 15 minutes of the film consist of purely random gun-cam violence. After our dopey marine hero is injected with antivenom..or venom..or whatever the hell it was, he’s overcome by a violent rage that can only be assuaged by strapping the film camera to his gun and shooting everything in sight. It’s so House Of The Dead it’s unbearable.
Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Platinum
Note, circa 2013: This review from 2005 is interesting, as Red Eye Platinum is my current favourite among energy drinks. It's almost exclusively available at supermarkets only, warm from the "lifestyle drinks" shelves. I have occasionally found it in truck stops and convenience stores, but it's strangely rare for a drink that's got non-exclusive supermarket distribution. Now, back to 2005:
It looks pretty much the same as all the other "mild" types of Red Eye. This particular bottle was slightly warmer than the optimal drinking temperature, resulting in the usual spray of tiny bubbles manifesting themselves as massive bubbles instead.
It smells strongly chemical, even to the extent of reminding me of a cleaning product. Like most Red Eye variations, there's a strong scent of sweetness, but it's hard to put a finger (or nostril) on what the actual smell is.
It's sweet, and slightly fruity. Again, I can't define the actual fruit, but there's a definite fruitiness to it. Possibly peach or apricot, but without the furriness usually associated therewith. It should be noted that this stuff tastes quite vile when it's warm, quite akin to lawn clippings.
Very little aftertaste. It has the same chemical-like residue that Red Eye Extreme displayed, but otherwise it's not totally unpleasant. It should be kept cold, however, as the taste it assumes when it warms up is quite sickening. At least it only tastes this way when it's warm, though. Most energy drinks taste like shredded lawn from the get-go.
Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Power
Red Eye has a fairly good reputation for energy drinks, as far as I'm concerned. All of their drinks are, more or less, entirely drinkable, and Red Eye Power follows suit. It does, unfortunately, suffer from the familiar problem of being absolutely identical to virtually every drink that comes in a 250ml can, with only a scant few exceptions (V, Jugular, Hype, for example).
It smells of sickly-sweet bile, vitamin-B and evil. So, not to put too fine a point on it, it smells like every single other energy drink on the planet. I swear there's a gigantic factory in the jungle somewhere that churns out Red Bull in blank silver cans and farms it off to any company willing to put their catchy title on it.
It doesn't have the weird, immediate "OH DEAR GOD IT'S VOMIT WITH SOAP IN IT" flavour and sensation of Red Bull. It does, however, have the weird chemical flavour. I've never been able to adequately describe the flavour. It's almost like drinking soap, but not as unpleasant. Man, it's hard to come up with a new and exciting description for the SAME FLAVOUR every time. I'd say this one would be, after some consideration, probably 30% on the better side of Red Bull, my benchmark.
The aftertaste is slightly oily, and quite floral. Or (everyone get ready for it).. exactly the same as all the other drinks. The differences between these drinks (if they're even different at all) are so subtle I don't believe it'd be possible to accurately gauge them unless one was to sample them all in sequence. And hell if I'm gonna do that, my stomach lining is questionable enough as it is without adding vast litrage of caffeine and Christ-knows-what into the equation.
Well, it's an energy drink. There's nothing at all wrong with it. It tastes plenty good. However, it doesn't win any originality points, because it's clearly another out-churning of the standard recipe. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Exotic beverage review: Wild NRG
There are so many things wrong with this drink. For a start, it's the only "energy drink" I've yet encountered that comes in a plastic bottle. Secondly, despite being "100% Australian owned, made in Australia with Australian and imported ingredients", the tagline for the drink still uses the Americanis(z?)ed spelling of "Energize" and not "Energise" as the Queen's English would have us former convicts use. And we haven't even considered the taste, yet.
If beer were beige, it'd look like this stuff. Like most energy drinks, it holds its carbonation for about a nanosecond, then goes totally flat.
It smells......interesting. It smells like a bizarre bastardisation of Red Bull and cheap chocolate. The flaky, powdery kind of chocolate. Bad chocolate.
Holy crap, it's tart. Really tart. It hits you like the biggest tart thing that could ever be hurled at you. Oddly the chocolate sensed nasally recurrs to freak out your taste buds, only briefly before the whole affair is engorged in some kind of super-powered fruity tsunami. Also, there's some weird flavour going on on top of all of this that I cannot describe as anything other than the taste of pastry. I'm as afraid as you are. Probably more, as this crap is now inside me.
It settles down fairly nicely to leave you with only the flavour of SUPERFRUIT(tm), which continues to swill around your now-dry mouth, stimulating your saliva glands into dry reaching and ineffectually swelling your cheeks up.
This is another energy drink that falls into the category of "not that bad". That said, it's not fucking great, either, and I don't think I'll be drinking this whole bottle just to prove it.
Exotic beverage review: Red Eye Plus
Yellow, much like its label.
It's astonishingly yellow. Not to put to fine a point on it, it looks like pee. It's got the traditional Red Eye trait of instantly losing all carbonation as soon as the bottle is opened, also.
It smells quite refreshing, actually. There's a vague aroma I can only describe as "dairy", and a hint of vitamin B.
It's not unpleasant. If it were possible to have managed to get energy drinks right, I'd have to say Red Eye are the ones who've succeeded at it. You can taste the unmaskable vitamin B, which shares a flavour with rotten celery, and the dairy smell somehow manifests itself in a taste which is actually kind of chocolate-like.
There's a noticable aftertaste of vitamin B, although it's more of a chemical flavour than the aforementioned tang of rotten celery.
Again, it's not unpleasant. It's not great, all energy drinks that make a big deal out of including vitamin B either suffer from a deplorable taste of rotten celery or from being overly fruity to try to mask the horrid vitamin. This one's kind of a half-way house between the two flavours.
Exotic beverage: Schweppes Pink Lemonade
Schweppes released "Traditional Pink Lemonade" some time around 1994. This isn't the same stuff, unfortunately, but it counts as exotic and thus gets a review. I searched Google Image Search pretty frantically, hoping to find a photograph of the original bottles TPL was sold in, but I've failed miserably. If anyone can get their hands on an image of the original packaging, or better yet, an actual bottle, please let me know.
It tells no lies, indeed it is pink. It's also slightly milky.
It smells kind of sickly sweet, actually. The strawberry component smells more like strawberry yoghurt.
When you drink it, it's pink lemonade, precisely. It tastes like Schweppes Traditional Lemonade (i.e. basically Solo or Lift) with a hint of strawberry. The only downside to this is that strawberry's earned itself a reputation as being a dairy flavouring, like chocolate. You see strawberry ice cream and strawberry milk, but rarely strawberry soft drinks or jellies. So there's a slight sensation of dairyness to it. Still, palatable in the extreme. The strawberry flavour takes on a slightly plastic taste after a while. It's nothing unusual, though.
Schweppes has definitely changed the recipe at some point, as this stuff does not taste like the original "Traditional Pink Lemonade" they manufactured about ten years ago. To wit, this stuff is called simply "Pink Lemonade"; there's no tradition about it. The original was a much paler beverage, also, and tasted less manufactured.