Quagmire's Cherry Pop

If any of us have learned one fact in life, it's that holding multiple sexual partners causes three problems:  a lack of energy, a great thirst, and the need for a great memory to remember people's birthdays.  Of course if you're not careful you can throw two more things on the list, but let's stay positive here.  We're not sure of anything out there that can help us remember birthdays, but thankfully a product has come along that takes care of the energy and thirst problems, and not only that, it's Family Guy themed!  How perfect!

So this is Quagmire's Cherry Pop (get it??) energy drink from Boston America Corp., which makes it sound like a bunch of dudes in an office decided "hey, let's make energy drinks...and maybe we could get some of those loveable characters from the hit TV animated comedy Family Guy to put on the cans."  Of course they would be saying this with charts and graphs behind them.

Anyway, one of those charts or graphs must have said "make it actually taste like a drink and not medicine" because it actually tastes like a drink and not medicine.  It's like a tart cherry soda, and that's a flavor you can't go wrong with.  Very minimal carbonation.  As for the energy part, I really can't say it did anything for me.  I'm not the best test subject for energy drink reactions.  But hey, at least I could tell you it tastes good.

Maybe my lack of response has to do with the lack of energy drink-style components.  You get 50% of your daily value of B6 and B12, and if you sort through the list of ingredients you'll see taurine, guarana extract, panax ginseng and a ton more chemicals that include our favorites, HFCS and sodium benzoate.

I suppose if you're going to have an energy drink, you're probably used to the chemicals by now.  You might not be used to the flavor though, so you might as well give this one a try and mix up that part of your routine a bit.  I'd also have to say that ... wait a second, it's the 14th?  I just remembered I have to make a phone call.  It did work!  Thanks Quagmire's Cherry Pop!*

-Mike

*Birthday remembering for entertainment value only.  We and those guys with charts do not claim that any product will help you remember birthdays.  Tiny print tiny print tiny print.  Nobody reads tiny print.  I could say anything down here.  Maybe it's subliminal.  Make our site your homepage...do it...make our site your homepage... 

Mary Jane's Relaxing Soda

We mentioned this one enough that we figured we'd finally try it.  The gimmick, as you may guess by the name, is the soda is supposed to be calming, thanks to kava, rather than stimulating with caffeine as most sodas are.

Along with the kava is passionflower extract, which we both think we can taste even though we're not exactly sure what it tastes like.  The non-relaxing ingredients are fairly positive and include cane sugar, caramel color, phosphoric acid, citric acid and "natural flavor."  So no HFCS and no sodium benzoate.  

The taste is easy to describe, it's very much like an RC Cola.  I felt it was lightly carbonated too, so very easy to drink.  Extremely tasty.  Don't go pounding these down, though, as there is a warning on the bottle to not have more than two per day.  But really, if you're drinking more than two sodas per day, you need to lay off.

We both felt we did get a little relaxed, but were both pretty tired, so we're not quite sure if it made us more tired or not.  

Either way we were relaxed and we were very happy with the taste and the ingredients and would easily drink more of this...just not more than two a day.

-Mike

Extenze Male Enhancement

So last year we decided to do a little “April Fools” thing and review something silly.  It wasn’t a joke in the sense that it was a fake review, we actually reviewed something, however what we reviewed was ridiculous.  Last year, it was Tab, the king of diet drinks and also somewhat of a joke now. 

Well, this year’s drink goes in the category of “oh, the things we do for you readers.”  Yeah, that’s a long title for a category.  Anyway, thanks to a co-worker, we bring you what is technically a soda:  Extenze.

You may have seen Extenze on TV.  In fact, it’s almost a guarantee.  If you don’t know what it is, you can look it up for details, but here’s the quick version:  it’s a male enhancement product.  Normally it’s sold in pill form, but why take one tiny pill when you can drink 8oz of carbonated liquid?

Maybe it tastes good.  All I know about the taste is that, according to one of the past infomercials, it does not taste like lighter fuel.  That’s always a positive. 

By the way, being a product that you should use at, you know…a certain time, you’d figure it’d give you some instructions on what time frame to use it.  Nope.

The ingredient list is crazy.  Here are some highlights:  HFCS, diarginine malata, GABA, betaine, rhodiola, panax ginseng, maca, yohimbe HCL.  You get the point…weird stuff.  It’s summed up as “male performance blend” on the ingredients.  1700mg of "male performance blend" per 8oz serving.  Here we go…

First of all it smells like Mello Yello (quite right) but appears to be clear.  Maybe it’s more lemon limey then.  At least this gets me a little positive about the drink.  The first sip is decent, it is like Mello Yello/Mountain Dew/off brand similar product. 

Then the aftertaste kicks in.  I can’t identify what it is exactly, not like a typical energy drink aftertaste.  The scary part is I have to keep drinking this to figure out what the aftertaste is, and I’m drinking way more than what I planned to. 

The aftertaste isn’t as bad now.  It's just something that's there that's not necessarily awful, but unidentifiable.  I will say this is very carbonated, only a few sips in and I’m already belching.  Nothing more romantic than burps.

Someone, I’ll say Dan W., said it’d be great if it tasted like something that you could trick somebody into drinking this, and honestly you probably could.  Of course we here at TSJ do not condone that, but it is April Fools.

So we’ll leave it at that.  I’d love to stick around and tell you if anything else happens but I’ll leave that to another site.  We just review flavors here.

Verdict:  Buy a …

Addendum:  So I almost gave this a verdict of “Buy a bottle.”  Again, just for flavor.  But after the left side of my head went numb for about fifteen minutes, and I could feel my blood rushing through me, particularly in my back (and, uh, nowhere else), I’m going with …

Verdict:  Buyer Beware!

-Mike

Drank

I'm about to drink Drank. That was fun to say. This one was donated by one of our fans at work, and when he approached me with the concept of a reverse energy drink, I was a little scared. Being someone who works at night, sleep and drowsiness in general is something that you have to be careful with. Sometimes it's hard to get to sleep; sometimes you want to sleep constantly.

This drink, called Drank, is billed as an "extreme relaxation beverage." The website doesn't go into much detail, so I was worried when I saw Melatonin in it because it didn't say how much. While I do take melatonin (when I remember to), too much can be bad. This is 2mg per can, so less than I usually take in a day. That news made me feel a bit safer. Along with that are 200% of all B vitamins, valerian root and rose hips. The back of the can call it a "relaxed lifestyle beverage" that will "slow your roll." Oh, and there's a warning that it may cause drowsiness and not to drink more than two servings (one can) during a 24 hour period. So here we go.

First off it smells like melted rocket pops, you know, those red, white and blue popsicles? Wow, this is really sugary for a drink that is supposed to calm me down. It's pretty good, I really can't describe the flavor though. Kind of like Red Bull I guess, or other energy drinks in general, combined with a liquid rocket pop. I guess I'm surprised because I can't imagine an anti-energy drink would taste like this, let alone have any sugar in it, but it does. So yeah, this is tasty. But the bigger concern is what it'll do to me. This part will take time, so...time elapses...

30 minutes later: nothing.

45 minutes later: about half way done. I am drowsy, not relaxed, just tired.

90 minutes later: time for bed.

So I slept very deeply, dreamt (very nice dream too, don't know if that's attributed to the drink, but they could be on to something here. Am I still in parentheticals? Yes, it looks like I am. I think I asked myself that to say parentheticals. There I got to say it again. Now back to the review.), and woke up with a numb hand, meaning my body wanted to sleep more than roll over and have circulation reach my hand. It's tasty and it works...but I still look at it dangerously...

-Mike

Red Bull Cola

Alright, so I hadn't found any decent drinks to review until I was walking through the grocery store today and saw Red Bull Cola. Since I figure 50% of it's purpose is to energize you, instead of doing my normal recap of my opinion after I drank it, this will be written over the course of an evening.

It smells like cola syrup, like what you'd get at a pharmacy to calm your stomach. Now regular Red Bull tastes like bubble gum and fire, which isn't a bad thing, I actually enjoy Red Bull, so let's see what this is like...

This is decent, no bubble gum and no fire, maybe really far in the aftertaste but not instantly noticable. It's kind of got an RC thing going on.

Okay now that I've drank about a quarter can I am tasting the bubble gum flavour, again, not too bad.

I will say this about my little experiment, I desperatly want a nap right now, so I'm pretty tired. Let's see how energized this gets me.

Alright, it's been 3 hours since I started this. I'm going to say it's not really that powerful in regards to an energy boost. The taste is good, but being that it's Red Bull it's also expensive, $6 for a 4 pack.

Now a little update, over the last week I drank all 4 cans, two early in the morning after waking up and two late afternoon after coming home from work. It was more effective in the morning, however not as effective as a regular Red Bull. That and it's pretty awkward drinking soda first thing in the morning.

-Mike