Energy Drinks Thread

I found a gross looking pop and decided it was time for

ILL-ADVISED ENERGY DRINK REVIEWS

Guest Starring Reyweld

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Spoiler

As I pour Barq’s Cream Soda into my fancy mug, a nice 5 centimeters (2 inches) of foam rise up and dissipate, escaping the capture of my readied camera. The elusive drink’s colour has also presumably vanished during the manufacturing process, leaving a colourless fluid that makes me feel that Barq didn’t even bother disguising the nasty syrup he created.

As the soda passes my lips and onto my tongue, my first thought is “this is wrong”. It doesn’t taste like cream soda, but I can’t quite place it. Another sip. Oh god.

It’s mixed berry yogurt.

My head is pounding after I take my first substantial gulp, and I wonder why I’m putting this fluid into my body. Despite not being a true Energy Drink per se, it’s 10:00 pm and I can feel the caffeine course through my buzzing tissues.

I’m about a third done when I get that tingling down my body, the sudden wave of sensation that sweeps from the bottom of your neck to the small of your back and makes you want to shiver. My legs have started to sweat a little despite being in a cool room and my right leg twitches twice, antsy to use up the forbidden energy it has been bestowed. I have always liked fruit-on-the-bottom better than the stirred yogurts this drink evokes.

Two more consecutive gulps and I don’t get the point. It’s not very fizzy, it’s not very sugary, it doesn’t even taste like cream soda. I take another small sip and swish it around in my mouth, trying to unlock its secrets. My mouth feels oddly dry.

My next sip unlocks another flavour layer--it tastes similar to children’s toothpaste. The kind that tastes sugary nasty (versus all-business mint) and teaches kids not to eat toothpaste while bearing the face of some cartoon creep or the yellow sponge himself. My eyes barely water but I blink it away as I shiver. I am not cold.

I think I’m beginning to understand why the drink was made colourless. I feel that, if coloured pink, it would have just tasted like pink. In grade 9, I was the subject of a psycology experiment where the “researchers” gave you four unknown samples of pop that you would later have to identify. They tasted, in order, like cola, root beer, orange soda, and another dark pop. The thing is, we learned later that the “orange soda” was actually water with food colouring and carbonation. By colouring the drink pink, they would have washed away the subtle displeasures brought forth by carefully considering the flavours Barq’s Cream Soda has to offer.

I near the end of my drink, a second-to-last tasting leaves my mug with a slurp of drink and my mind with a rush of possibly-a-headache-but-maybe-my-imagination buzz. My body feels another wave of sensation just before I take in the last of it. Maybe, just maybe, that last sip tasted of overripe pears. All of the overpowering sweetness without the gross texture accompanying. I have downed the full 355 milliliters and the bubblegum aftertaste of these three elements combined (yogurt, toothpaste, and pear) make me want to plunge my brain into a basin of fresh water.

RATING: 3/10 - I wouldn’t drink it again even if it was my sole option for hydration while stranded at a full-day family reunion hellscape with distant and vaguely judgemental relatives giving me the stink eye.

...

And yet, I can’t deny that I finished drinking it.