Seattles Best Coffee Vanilla Latte

If any of you remember a time before starbucks ruled the universe, you might remember when washington, or more specifically Seattle, was the caffeine capitol of the world.  In the years before Red Bulls filled the coolers of America, Seattle was the Mecca of coffee and caffeine, proudly brewing beans and roasts you just could not find anywhere else.

I think that is why Seattle's Best line never impressed me.  Sure, it used to be a small coffee house, but now it is owned and run by Starbucks - but marketed as a "working-man's" coffee, opposed to their high falootin' regular brand. Basically, it is Folgers with a touch of melancholy.

I already went into trying this coffee jaded.  Sure, it looked better than the old SBC look, updated to a Target makeover, with a deco 1920s feel. At least with this new feel there is a chance that the flavor is better than your average Folgers too.

Packaging:8
I enjoy looking at their new design.  The bubbles and deco font give this an air of sophistication is really lacked with the old marketing scheme.  Going for the Farmer Brothers look might have made the  brand seem cheaper than it's bigger sister, but it put the coffee on the same level of Yuban.  This new cute design has a stylized coffee stain, a snowflake, 2 lumps of sugar and the Needle, all embedded in fun circles.

As for functionality, the brand is all over the can, so you don't have to worry about which way the can is facing in the cooler to advertise your product.  The fonts are all big, bright and easy to read, and there is nothing extraneous about the design - everything seems there for a reason.  They list all their ingredients, although there is no caffeine amounts.  In this drink, however, that is completely excusable, as most coffee drinks without added energy ingredients rarely have a set caffeine amount.

Taste:5
This is not a coffee drink for coffee lovers.  This is a drink made for people who get their Mochas from 7-11.  I picked this can up for about a buck fifty, which is very appropriate for a coffee drink like this.  I have had a lot better, a WHOLE lot better vanilla latte drinks than this- but I have also had a lot worse too.    This did not taste like it was loaded with instant coffee or preservatives or baking soda.  It tasted like a decent cup of super milky coffeee with a lot of fake vanilla flavor added.

Buzz:5
Do you get a buzz from a nine ounce cup of coffee?  If a cuppa joe is enough to get you awake, this will do the job.  Probably for the most of us, this is not going to do much for keeping you perky, especially when you consume all those calories there is in here too.

There are 130 calories, mostly from the sugar and reduced-fat milk.  The one nice thing I found when perusing the ingredients was the lack of the dozens of preservatives that usually fill coffee drinks.  Not that this is by any means healthy or natural -  packed with ascorbic acid and artificial flavors - but seeing as this is being compared to the push-button cappucino drinks found in convenience stores, this is about what you would expect.