Amp Lightning Sugar Free

I was pretty excited to get hold of this new lemonade drink from Amp. I usually love Amp's products, and I usually love lemonade, so this looked like a match that couldn't go sour.

But I did go a bit sour - and not in the good way. The big problem is in the lemonade, or complete lack thereof. One usually adds lemons to make lemon juice, not just dump some citric acid and sugar and call it good. i mean, when even fake-a-licious Country Time beats you out on flavor, you know you have problems.

Buzz:6
The buzz was decent though. Noting crazy here - and about what you would expect from AMP. There is a very normal 160 mg of caffeine per can, along with all the energy staples you have come to expect. B-vitamins, Caffeine from Guarana, Taurine and Ginseng - it has all the stuff energy drinks are drank for. The buzz is decent enough to get a person moving, but not enough to feel wired. This is the standard energy buzz you would get from a monster or Red Bull.

As for other ingredients, there is enough preservatives to keep your cadaver body smelling fresh for weeks after you are gone. I would imagine that if you drank enough of this over the years, your body would be left in a satue-like calcified state.

More interestingly, there has been a major study investigating the mixing of Yellow #5 (which this drink has bucketloads of) and sodium Benzoate ( which this also packs in), and it seems to increase hyperactive behavior in kids. So while I never condone giving anyone underage an energy drink, I would Especially stay away from this one.

Taste:4
And Yellow #5 is a great way to describe the flavor of this drink too. I was really hoping for something lemon-related, but it just did not work for me. I tasted the fake citrus flavor along with the sharpness of the artificial sweetener instead. How did the people in the taste department at Pepsi really think this tasted like lemons?

While this was not bad - it really wasn't - it was a big letdown from what I was expecting, both from a Lemonade and also from AMP.

Packaging:8
But this packaging was certainly cool to keep around. The bare aluminum worked well to get across the "diet" nature, and their white stripes with black and yellow are tres' cool. Of course it is double faced, has a great tag line and "about me" area and lists all ingredients including caffeine conent (This is a Pepsi product after all, and they know what they are doing). They don't face their lids, however, which would be nice. Other than that, this is a very good job - very bold and classy.