Alert Energy Gum

Whenever a big company decides they are finally jump on the caffeinated gum bandwagon everyone seems to make a big deal.  Caffeinated gum is nothing new - Many big-name energy drink companies have had their hand in making a gum, from Rockstar to Amp to Go Fast.  Many candy companies have also tried their hand at coming up with caffeinated concoctions, like Hershey's Mints and caffeinated Tootsie Pops.

For some reason, however, when Wrigleys announced they were coming out with Alert Energy Gum, their first caffeinated gum, it caused quite a media stir - enough so that they pulled the gum from the market completely - fortunately not before I could get my hands on a number of packs.  According to the officals at Mars,   a spokesman replied that "After discussions with the FDA, we have a greater appreciation for its concern about the proliferation of caffeine in the nation's food supply".  basically, rather than fight for a mediocre product, it is easier from a PR perspective to just pull the product line.  

The thing is, in terms of caffeine gum, it is really not the best out there.  It is not even one of the good ones.  It is not bad, but barely passable as an energy boost.  To get the same boost as a standard energy drink such as monster or rockstar you would need to eat at least four pieces of gum in a row - which would have you chewing for a good long time.

Packaging:7
I like that Alert tried something new with their design, slipping their little blister packs into a plastic sleeve, but it just does not work in theory.  One small squeeze and the plastic tube pops their foil strand of gum packets right out, and getting them back in and keeping their shape is a tall order.  It is easier to just take off the sleeve, throw it away, then stick the foil pack some place where it will not get crushed.

The foil pack is about what you would get from any caffeinated gum blister pack - a little chicklet in a little foil pouch.  The shape is a little different and the design is cool and spacey, but the concept is still the same.   I like the packaging, and they went a little overboard to be sure people GOT IT that it has caffeine - listing the caffeine content in three places.  They even managed to put on there a big "not for kids" warning and a little litter dude.  For being a small play on a standard package the design really has some merit.

Taste:5
Both their flavors are about the same - a little minty chicklet that is bitter on first chew but then mellows out once you chew all the caffeine out of it.  The flavor lasts about 30 seconds before fading, leaing you with a slightly minty slightly sweet flavor in your mouth for the next 2 or 3 minutes.  Either way, this is no Go Fast gum - with a flavor that lasts for a long while.   It would be easy chewing 2 or 3 of them within 10 minutes. If you ever had a caffeinated gum - this tastes just like all the rest; sweet shell, bitter caffeine, sweet gum that burns itself out in no time.  I was hoping that because this came from a gum manufacturer they might know more about what they were doing, but its about as plain as you can get.

Buzz: 4
The buzz was about what you would expect from a quick shot of 40 mg of caffeine-  in other words not much. Like most gum, it absorbed both in the saliva like anything you would drink, as well as a little bit directly from your bloodstream and under your tongue.  The thing to remember is this - 40mg is just a little more than you would find in a can of Diet Coke - not really a whole lot to get concerned about.   They cited kids and caffeine as the reason they pulled this from the market - but how many kids drink Super Big Gulps of Mountain Dew, which is loaded with way more caffeine than you could hope to find in some boring mint flavored gum.

In terms of health, forget about it.   I don't think there is one ingredient in here which did not get made in a lab or processed to the point where it might as well have been.  The ingredients list is almost all completely unpronounceable, including a bunch of different fake  sugars and chemicals and preservatives to help keep it all jelled together.  

I am bummed that a product got pulled from the shelves because of ignorance on the part of the consumer, but as for seeing this Alert Energy Gum go away, there really is no reason to mourn this ones sunset.

Runa Clean Energy

Runa energy drink has done something I have not heard of in my near thousand energy drink sampling hobby - a brand new caffeinated substance - made from a completely different plant than Yerba Mate, Tea, Coffee or Guarana.  Yes - an entirely new caffeinated plant - and one that can make a damn fine energy drink when mixed with the right combination of berries and sugars!

Runa is brewed with Amazonian guayusa tea ("gwhy-you-sa"). It turns out that guayusa has just about as much as caffeine as a cup of coffee. It has just a few ingredients, and a whole lot of natural happiness. Of course, there is a downside to the discovery of a new caffeinated product - just look at what happened to all those indigenous people who started producing guarana. In a short time it got so bad that the local population could not even afford to purchase any of what they were harvesting and exporting. Now, Guayusa is grown almost exclusively in the upper Amazonian region of Ecuador - and sustaining and growing the economy for the local folk there is one of their big selling points.

For me the biggest selling point is that it looks cool, tastes great, and is pretty powerful too.

Packaging:6
For a drink with so much originality, it is a real shame they did not really do something unique with the package.  Instead, this is a bare aluminum, and not a terribly well printed one either.  The original is on a bare aluminum can, with a little leaf pattern.  Same is true with the berry, except there is a little dot matrixed gradient coming off the leaf pattern.   Maybe this would be impressive if the printing quality was a bit higher, but the fuzziness of the text on the berry version and the and the plainness of the original  can really fails to impress.

They did cover the basics well enough, listing the caffeine content in big bold letters, as well as the rest of the minimal ingredients list.  They double faced the can and have the contact info, but the lid of the can was not really put on so it faces the consumer, the pull tab is colored, but not particularly cool or collectable, and the small can size is just not as popular as the larger sized drinks out there.  Even other organic, natural and health based energy drinks like Steaz, Guayaki and Guru are going for the larger size cans.   The market for natural energy drinks is definitely a big one - and coming out with a very plain small size can is not helping them any.

Taste:  Original:2   Berry:9

Runa Original got a bunch of mixed feelings from the crowd at my house.   My daughter's  trumpet tutor thought it tasted JUST like the smell of old garbage bags packed with mildewed leaves.  I thought it had the distinct flavor of that wet grass juice that comes dribbling off your lawnmower or weed whacker.  Either way, We were not big fans - AT ALL.  My wife liked it however - and said it reminded her of the tea she was told to drink lots of by the midwife when she was pregnant.  It has that earthy chalky plant flavor that I only find delicious when served to me lightly flavored in big glasses with lemon and sugar - like green tea.   But this is no green tea - it was something that tastes really not good - unless you happen to have fond memories of natural childbirth I guess.

Now that was not the case with their berry flavor - which it quite the bomb.  For as bad as the original flavor was, I thought his would go from tasting like ass to berry flavored ass, but that was not even the case.  Instead, Berry Runa tastes arrestingly good - something that is full flavored and earthy, but the sweet berry notes really calmed down that horrid chalky flavor to the point that this was a real pleasure to drink - and was dissapointed only in that it does not come ina bigger size so I could enjoy it more. While a regular Runa is about as appealing as a chewing on my yard shavings, the I would suck down two or three berry Runa in a sitting if I could.

Buzz:8
Runa is very cool for listing their full 120mg of caffeine right on the can, and you will feel it too.  This just goes to prove that you don't need all that taurine, inositol, Vitamin B silliness to feel the energy - Runa is just 4 or 5 ingredients, and does the job quite nicely without adding all that stuff.

Runa is just carbonated water, guayusa, natural flavors, and citric acid.  The original is sweetened with a natural sweeteners - and tastes a whole lot like fresh ground stevia - giving it a chalky plant flavor. The berry one has sugar in it - but just enough to make the drink super-tasty and not over-sweet.  I love the fact that they left out all that craziness and just went for a simple blend in a simple drink.  But besides all that it works like a charm too.

The caffeine in here is only 120mg, a little more than a small cup of coffee.  No matter though, because you can consume all 120mg in about 10 seconds, and then the rush comes on it one nice powerful wave.  The best way to drink Runa is to daisy chain two of them - slam one, and then in about 2 hours drink the other, and you can get a good 5-6 hour buzz of energy pumping through you, while not adding on the calories and preservatives.

I like Runa a whole lot - and the berry flavor gets very high marks for flavor too.  I hope this will help people catch onto guayusa, and maybe make a nice little cottage industry, like how Guayaki has done with their Yerba Mate drinks.

Just stay away from the original flavor, unless you have font birthing memories that is...

Mountain Dew Kickstart Orange Citrus

I like orange soda.  I also like orange juice.  But something is offensive when they try to mix together in an energy soda the juice and the soda - and it seems even worse that it is Mountain Dew who put this whole thing together.   Mountain Dew knows better. Not only do they know how to make a super-caffeinated soda, but they are also the ones behind the also delicious Amp Energy Juice - a great combination of healthy and energetic.  Kickstart can't make up its mind if it wants to be a juicy morning drink or a flat out soda, and ends up with basically an interesting marketing pitch around a slightly-higher-than-a-Mountain-Dew-caffeinated orange soda.

Thing is, there are plenty of orange energy sodas out there - and for that matter there are a bunch of energy juices out there too.  In such a saturated market of both categories, I don't get why Mountain Dew thought adding one more is such a fantastic idea - and not even bring anything new to the table.  Maybe they thought that by sticking their name on it people would be more tempted to buy it out of sheer brand loyalty.   Sorry Pepsi - I LOVE my Diet Mountain Dew, but this one is bound for the dollar store shelves very soon.

Packaging:6
I am guessing they were trying to mix the extreme-ness of Mountain Dew with the clean qualities of a morning drink.  I guess.  Either way, it ends up being a very flat and uninspired design - just their name in a very cheese futuristic font that looks like they stole it off the internet.  There is a good way to sell energy morning drink - look at what has been done with other great energy drink packages like Rumba.

They at least list the caffeine content - something that Pepsi products have gotten on the bandwagon doing and I certainly appreciate.  Functionally the can works OK, listing website and all energy ingredients clearly.   The can is double faced and easy to read, but the overall style leaves me unimpressed.

Taste:4
Most specialty Mountain Dew products like their Game Fuel and other unique flavors all have this little citrus special Mountain Dew favor which unites their drinks.   I opened this with the hope that it would be an orange-y version of a regular Mountain Dew, or something more unique and special that just an orange soda.    But no, it is just a plain regular orange soda.   There is supposed to be 3% juice, but you would not know or care - it tastes about as juicy and orangey as an Orange Crush, only slightly more caffeinated.  

What bums me out is that this really could have been special - something which would really bring something other than coffee to the breakfast table.   Pepsi has the budget and the marketing to pull of something interesting, but all it takes is one taste to see why that is not going to happen with Kickstart.   It is sweeter than your mouth can drink easily, overpoweringly fake and full of enough chemicals and preservatives to pre-embalm your living carcass.

Buzz:4
Breakfast now means for me something like fruit and protein, although in the past I would not have batted an eye at the idea of munching a couple cans of beer and  a handful of jellybeans, so I guess this is just as bad.  But, them calling this a breakfast drink is weird.  Being an energy drink is weird too  - it  should be packed with sweet sweet caffeine, but that is even held way back in their formula, bringing a sub-par mix of extra sugar and not-enough caffeine to really give a good boost of energy.  Truthfully, I am not sure how they could possibly call this anything but an orange soda, unless you are in the same crazy camp that thinks eating Nutella for breakfast is a good idea too.

In terms of healthy,forget it. There is a little bit of grape or orange juice - 5% along with all that high fructose corn syrup. Also lots of chemicals that are unpronouncable, such as sodium hexametaphosphate, gum arabic, potassium sorbate, asorbic acid, sodium citrate, acesulfame potassium, sucrose acetate isobutyrate, sucralose, glycerol ester of rosin, sodium benzoate, pyridoxine hydrochloride and tons of fake food dye - it's the breakfast of champions!

Team Realtree Orange Blaze energy drink

I don't understand a whole lot of things about hunting.  I don't mean I have a problem with it - although I do have a hard time thinking that hanging around i the mountains with your buddies getting plastered in a blind, occasionally popping over the edge to pop off some little furry thing is much of a sport.   Really, anything that you can get drunk while performing is not a sport - like bowling or golf, no matter if ESPN carries it or not.

Now things are different if you take hunting seriously, like people who hunt with knives or bows or hunt dangerous animals. There is a real difference between those who go out on their fall weekends and bug their neighbors, drive their shiny truck into them thar' hills, take out all their expensive new gear, line up a critter in their crosshairs and celebrate and those who go out to the woods, track and hunt down an animal, kill it and then take it home to butcher.  I don't see those kinds of people as the ones who would ever bother with buying Team Realtree's Orange Blaze energy drink.

Regardless of images, there are some good points to this drink.  They are in cool resealable bottles, and this really does not taste bad - if you can get into carbonated sugary Tang. The buzz is decent, and they certainly do have appeal for Team Realtree's brand following.

Packaging:7
Maybe I am just offended that they called me a City Boy.  I mean, I am a city boy, and the bottle clearly states "this is not for city boys", but I have spent enough time in the rural outposts of America to get offended by it too.  I have had many family members hunt - and my favorite kind of meat is a fresh elk.  That being said, orange and Camo DO NOT GO TOGETHER (unless you are trying to hide in a burning fire.  This color is so bright and shiny I'll bet it glows at night.  Its fine if you want to be sure everyone can see you drinking your energy drink, but then - why cover it is camo?

Other than that annoyance, the only other issue I have is that they don't list the caffeine content on the bottle.  Is is a cool 16 oz. metal resealable bottle, and the overall effect could be nice - but it would be much better if it lost the tree camo and listed their contents.

Taste:8
Making an orange energy drink is about the easiest thing you can do.   Fake orange flavor could be achieved by dumping just a little citrus flavor with a whole bunch of sugar and Voila!  That is pretty much what is going on here - no nuance or subtlety, just a strong citrusy orange flavor like an Orange Crush or Sunkist.  I know on their packaging they state that their "crisp orange flavor is paired with the perfect drinkability without being too surgary."  I wonder what they mean by Not Too Sugary - when compared to a pixie stick maybe?   Don't get me wrong - liked their orange flavor a whole lot, but it could take the place of syrup in a pinch too.

Buzz:6
I downed this all pretty quickly, mainly because the rink was cold and fizzy and sweet - and the largemouth bottle top made it very easy to guzzle.  I have a nice little energy rush going on, but nothing too over the top.  There was no listing of the caffeine, but I would be surprised if there was more than 180mg on the whole affair. TO help boost the energy, they add the usual Vitamin B overload and an undisclosed amount of taurine too.

Health-wise, this is about what you would expect from any soda - noting but calories and preservatives.It is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which is why is has that strong syrupy mouthfeel. There are all the preservatives and artiicial flavors and colors to give your insides that nice healthy orange glow too. There is enough Yellow #5 in here to dye your insides for a good long time. Overall, I am not sure I would take this thing in the mountains. If you are the kind of person who gets into Team Realtree's patterns and get into their camo bedsheets and towels and curtains, then maybe this is for you. This drink might not be for city boy, but I doubt it is for hunters either.