XS energy tropical blast

XS has drinks for just about everyone. Don't like cola? There is a dozen other flavors. Want something more functional? They have you covered with XS gold. This variety is for your kids - so they don't have to be left out of the energy craze too. This is a caffeine free energy drink - there to give the drinker a dose of vitamins and minerals, without giving the caffeine sensitive person all the jitters.

Taste:4
I am not sure what flavor a tropical blast is supposed to be. When I think of tropical blasts, I think of hurricanes and cyclones, which I imagine taste like brine, sea water and rotting fish.
Seeing as I doubt XS is making that flavor, my second idea it is a bunch of tropical fruits, like pineapples, guavas, mangos breadfruits (the plant that the H.M.S. Bounty was carrying in the South Pacific when its crew mutinied).
But nope, no flavors of plantains, passionfriut or tamarind. It seems that by tropical they mean Hawaiian and by blast they mean Punch. Except for the carbonation, this is a sugar free version of the fruitless fruit drink in little cans. What they lacked in real friut flavor, they made up in fake sweetness, enough that my 10 year old took a sip and BLAAARGHed his was to the fridge for something to kill the taste.
II know they were going for the same flavor as their original caffeinated Tropical Blast. But if a 10 year old can't drink a caffeine free energy drink, you got problems.

Nutrition/Buzz: 2
I could see the dilemma in the lab, trying to come up with an energy drink without any caffeine, herbs or simple carbs. There are lots of other things that fit that category you could use to give you energy, but psychostimulants are a little hard to sell in an Amway catalog. Caffeine-free XS Street Alley flavored energy with Methamphetamines might be a hard seller.
So what XS did was rip out the caffeine, but make sure there was enough B vitamins in here to get make men start lactating. They also put some Vitamin C in here and some amino acids, trying to do the impossible task of providing caffeine-less cocaine-less energy.

I worry about all that Vitamin B in here.According to Wikipedia, over 200mg a day can cause neurological disorders, such as loss of sensation in legs and imbalance, can damage sensory nerves, leading to numbness in the hands and feet as well as difficulty walking, poor coordination, staggering, numbness, decreased sensation to touch, temperature, and vibration, and what every energy drink should try for - tiredness for up to six months. This stuff has 4900% of the recommended daily allowance. So after drinking a case of this stuff (Quixtar only sells this in cases) for a number of months you start smashing into walls and staggering around, you know what to blame.

They did also make the drink full of sucralose and Ace-K, so it is less caloric and more chemical - which is always what I am excited to give my kids too. Nothin' says healthy like a big dose of Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate, and Yellow 6. I figure, this is our new Western Culture's was of mummifying ourselves, helping us out so when we die, our bodies with be preserved and calcified into their original non-decayed state for decades. The more we drink of the stuff, the longer our relatives have to plan the funeral!

Packaging:7
I love the paragraph which manages to list all their negatives as positives. " Kick your energy into high gear without caffeine, sugar or herbs (or anything that actually lifts energy)!" The rest of the can is OK enough, looking more or less like all the other XS drinks do. No double facing, lid is on haphazardly, but the color scheme is very nice, and they did a good job with the basic mechanincs.