In 2011 I came across a can of Havoc Energy Drink in a Big Lots in Lansing, MI. Our friend Christian was filling in on drums for my band for a tour and we were there teaching him the songs. As you can see from the review I gave it below, it was garbage. It also had been out of production since 2008, as I learned when I received an email from the gentleman who had recently purchased the company and was planning on reformulating it. Way to have expired goods Big Lots. Anyways, cut to early 2013 and here I sit with a slim can of the reformulated Havoc. I can happily say that it is much better. Luckily it no longer tastes like cough syrup. Instead it tastes like a mixture of raspberry and cherry sodas with a general energy drink taste mixed in. It's a flavor that doesn't normally exist in the energy drink universe, and I appreciate the change of pace.

While this isn't really anything groundbreaking, it is worlds better than the old version. I really have nothing bad to say about this, it just kind of blends in with most of the other energy drinks on the shelves, even though it is not a usual flavor. Actually, you know what? I think I would be more likely to grab one of these from a gas station than the usual suspects in the cooler if I was in need of a little boost on a late night. Havoc, you just bumped yourself up to four bottles.


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Old Product Review:

To quote the ever-clever Tony Flaminio, "This drink played 'havoc' on my taste buds." When an energy drink is marked down to $.60, there's probably a good reason, and that reason is probably because it's pretty gross. It tastes like someone took a bottle of cherry cough syrup and combined it with a two liter of sweetened seltzer water. Who wants that? My guess is no one, and that leads me back to the price drop. You may be tempted to buy it because it's cheap, but I say save that change, buy an apple or something with it. You'll be much happier.

EDIT (2011):
I was just emailed and informed that this product has not been in production since 2008. That means this was old and more than likely expired. Thanks Big Lots. The Havoc company has been bought out since then and is going to start producing new drinks soon. So basically if you see this out there check those expiration dates so you don't have a situation like we did.

Hawaiian Punch energy drink. I don't know how else to describe it because that is exactly how it tastes. Instead of reading me ramble incoherently, you should listen to The Best Show right now because they are having a fundraiser tonight and those shows are always entertaining: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/BS

I went to Hawaii for a friends wedding a few years ago. Before we left for the islands I had very little interest in our destination. Sure I knew I was going to have fun, but I'm not really a beach guy as the sun causes my skin to combust after a very short period of time. It's now two years later and I still talk about the trip all of the time. I'm a person who travels a decent amount, and I've seen a lot of places, but going to Kauai was one of the best experiences of my life. A couple of us have been talking about arranging another trip back, and as a result I have been selling a whole mess of junk I have around the house to raise money. I will surf. I will jump off waterfalls, and most importantly I will do it in exchange for records and such that I never listen to.

Drinking this lemonade, has given me another push to put a bunch of stuff up on eBay again this week so I can reach my goal of flight/hotel basically in trade. I drank a whole mess of lemonade over the week and half I spent on Kauai, and since my mind has been on it for the past few weeks, one sip of this brought be right back there. This is nicely tart, but with some agave sweetness to even it out. It's water, lemon juice and a sweetener. It's how lemonade should be. I'll never know why companies add a ton of extraneous ingredients to their lemonade. This is all there needs to be and it's wonderful.

Now I will go through my record collection again and thin it out for the cause.

Dude? I'll drink thicker drinks all of the day. Creamy, syrupy, so on and so forth. I'll do it. Thing about it is that I want to know what I'm getting into when I open drinks. This drink was a strange, syrupy drink. It tasted fine, a lemon lime drink that isn't carbonated which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. When have you ever drunk a drink that is lemon lime that isn't pop? I don't think they make many of those. Associating a flavor with a type of drink aside, this drink is still a little strange. It tastes like they used a gallon of agave. I like agave, but it seems to make the drinks a little thicker than you might be used to.

Kids are dumb. They'll drink anything as long as it's sweet. This is sweet and has kids playing soccer and skateboarding and stuff on the package. Kids will love it. It's made for kids, not disgustingly cynical thirty year olds. Kids? Get some standards. Me? Lay off kids. They're just kids.

Driving down some old country road Martin passed a fruit stand. He decided he would treat himself to a nice healthy snack, so he turned around and stopped. Being from the big city he couldn't believe how cheap the produce was at this stand. Knowing that he would kick himself for passing up such a great deal, he bought the entire stock and told the peddler to go enjoy the rest of the day as they loaded it into the back of his BMW. As he drove off into the summer haze Martin chucked an apple core out of the window and cranked up the Huey Lewis on the stereo.

It's now a week later in Martin's high-rise luxury apartment and the air is starting to thicken with fruit flies. Martin had never bought large quantities of produce before. He would normally stop by the local Whole Foods and buy what he needed for the meal he was making that night. Now that he had a couple of crates improperly stored around the apartment, he didn't know what to do with it. It hadn't all fit into his fridge with all his bottled water and micro brewed beer, so he had left it on the counters. That's how people seemed to store their fruit in movies. Apparently the silver screen had lied to him. He called his sister in Tampa to see if she had any ideas and she recommended he try the juicer she had bought him last Christmas, which was undoubtedly sitting unopened in the back of his closet. It was. Not knowing how to actually make juice Martin just dumped it all in together; sweet potatoes, grapes, apples, peaches, carrots, and mangos. He had no idea why a fruit stand in rural Illinois was selling mangos, but they were fifty cents each, so how could he pass that up.

It was only when he was pouring himself his first glass that Martin realized that he might have made a horrible mistake mixing everything together. Mangos and sweet potatoes, what was he thinking? He took a tentative sip, and then a much larger gulp. Everything was coming up Marvin. It was delicious. It had a general sweet fruit flavor, with the peaches and the mangos more exposed than everything else. There was an ever so slight vegetable flavor in the background, but he thought that no one would ever notice that unless they were told what was in it. The more he drank, the more he decided he liked it. He pulled up Wikipedia and did some searching and found exactly how healthy this drink he had created was. He also looked up ways to get rid of fruit flies…€¦it looked like he was going to have cups of vinegar around the house for a few days. That was unfortunate, but this juice was great and healthy for him. It was then that he decided to call his uncle Mort who was a big wig at Tropicana and sell them his juice. He decided he would call it “Fruit Stand.” As he waiting for the secretary to patch him into his uncles office he began to daydream of how he would retire from this deal and spend the rest of his days following around Huey Lewis like he was the Grateful Dead. Life was good for Martin.

Is it possible to strain a liquid through a liquid? I suppose it would be. If you wanted to strain water through an oil, that would work. It's a matter of volume and separation. You may have to go through some sort of skimming process to take a layer off, but that works.

This drink, which sucks, tastes like you strained sweet tea through soup; iced tea through all the corn, peas, carrots, broth and the like. I gave this drink to our new employee slash my new coworker and she knocked it out of the park. I made her just smell it and she said that it smelled like water chestnuts and me, hating water chestnuts, am not too familiar with the scent. Number two ingredient after water? You guessed it, new girl: water chestnuts.
You're re-hired™. Take that, Donald Trump. I've coined my own phrase that people have been using for years and called it my own.

In the beginning there was Gatorade, and life seemed good for those who played sports. The big win didn't count until the winning team dumped a cooler of electrolyte filled liquid on their head coach. Then Powerade began being stocked on shelves and in coolers and people the whole world …€˜round said, “Why the hell do we need this inferior product when Gatorade exists?” The people were right to judge and Gatorade continued to reign supreme. Then the stars aligned and Vitamin Water burst onto the scene. It was like the beloved Gatorade, but with added vitamins and minerals to make it even more functional. On top of that the flavors actually had a variety of tastes, unlike the general Gatorade base with hints of other flavor. Thus began the age of the vitamin, but with all dynasties hubris took hold and Vitamin Water stopped coming out with new flavors and the world grew bored with them. They still drank it, but they did not love it the way they once did.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to a new age, a new dynasty of rehydration/sports drinks. It goes by the name A Game and it is what you have been waiting for. It is a drink that falls somewhere between the greatness of Gatorade and Vitamin Water. It has all the properties of a classic bottle of Gatorade, but it is bursting with flavor. It also has a bunch of vitamins added to it to round it out. You want to rehydrate? Well this has some sea salt in it and it puts other electrolytes to shame. It also has clover honey. That's right, they care so much that they used honey. Everyone loves honey. It even calms those angry bees.

With a flavor called “citrus” you would expect something generic like orange or lemon-lime, but this has a nice blend of different citrus fruit flavors that stands out on its own due to the sea salt and honey.

If this doesn't start being carried in gas stations and mini-marts all around the country I believe it may be a sign of the impending apocalypse.

If the marketing team at Red Rain has a single brain cell in their collective heads I would hope that they have contacted Peter Gabriel to use his song that is the same name as their company. Just imagine that chorus playing as slow motion shots of sports teams winning the big game and spraying each other with cans of energy drink. It would be like they were announcing that the sun has set on Gatorade in the energy drink age. It would be triumphant, and it's a great song on top of that.

I don't know if that's the market they are looking to sell their beverages to, but it's not the scenario that is important, it's the song. It really is a great song, and I'm gonna say this is a fairly great energy drink at that. Cranberry should be used more in energy drinks. It covers up the typical candy flavor nicely. This has a predominately cranberry flavor with a nice citrus touch around the edges. It's certainly not a typical flavor for an energy drink, which is nice.

Think about it; Peter Gabriel and an unusual tasting energy drink. Then think about all of the toonies pouring in, much like that self same red rain.

Sheryl, there isn't enough coffee to make two cups. I know how you get when you don't have your coffee but I too need the energy to make it through the morning. Perhaps we compromise with the following scenario. We take the coffee, we split it right down the middle. Then we take a little bit of creamer and a little bit of sugar to fill up the cup a bit more. Then, since we aren't going to make a coffee with fifty percent coffee and fifty percent milk, we are going to do about a fifty-fifty split milk and water to fill it. Yes, it will cut down on the coffee flavor and it will taste like watered down coffee but hey, we both need what we need, right Sheryl? You agree to this agreement? Let's have a marital shake on it. There we go. Let's take our "probably worst cup of coffee we will ever have" and go to our separate works. I love you, Sheryl. Sorry today's coffee sucks. Let's blame it on our twenty-four year old son who refuses to "conform to society" and instead, doesn't work and drinks all our coffee and sleeps in the basement. I swear, if I have to hear that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song about the Salvation Army one more time, I'm going to take all his stuff and donate it there since he loves it so much. That'll show that kid. Well, then he'll just spend more time here to acquire more stuff to move out with. Sheryl, he's never leaving, is he? Can't we live our own lives? Why can't we live our own lives, Sheryl. Sheryl? When can we live our own lives?!?!?

I'll tell you what I need now is a taste of the tropics. I'm tired of the snow and the cold. Layers are for idiots. If I didn't have any friends or family, number one: I feel like I would be really depressed, but number two: I would go somewhere nice. I went to Key West a couple of years back and that was nice. It has a certain small-town, local, petina feel to it. I liked it. The entire time I was drinking this I wanted to be back there. I got a good taste of pineapple but I can't really place anything else. That's not to say it was bad, I just couldn't decipher any other fruits. It had that salty, Gatorade taste to it that I somehow like. Oh, nothing suits me after a long day of crushing weights like a nice, salty juice.

This was good. The flavor line is pretty promising, too. Pomegranate Cherry and the other one is just a generic "citrus" which is fine with me. They are something to look forward to. Am I at all on my A game? Nope. I don't know what that sensation is at all but I'm quenched. I don't know the streets, but I might say that I'm half way there.

It's been quite some time since I've come across a new Boylan's flavor. Luckily I came across this one waiting at my front door for me. Gifts are always nice, especially when they are a limited release pop. I don't know what exactly makes a Shirley Temple a seasonal release. I mean you can go bowling any time of the year and while beer may be the official drink of most bowlers, those of us who do not drink alcohol know that there is no other choice on the lanes than a Shirley Temple.

I just looked it up and I was shocked to discover that the actress Shirley Temple is still alive. I had always assumed that she had passed on…€¦crazy. I also discovered that her birthday is April 23rd, so perhaps this soda will be seasonal in celebration of her birth. I can accept that.

The best part of this soda is that Boylan got it correct. They used the proper base of ginger ale and not lemon lime and some people who like to cheap out use. Everyone knows that ginger ale is a superior soda, and it is what belongs in a Shirley Temple. You take that superior soda and put a splash of grenadine in it and bam there you go, a tasty beverage. This tastes exactly like it should. The only thing more I could ask for is for there to be a cherry floating in the bottle. Now that would be true magic. Well, that and me bowling a 300 tonight.

It's been a while since I've had a bottle of Ramune. I had forgotten how hard it is sometimes to push that marble down. Or perhaps I'm just getting weak/old. I bought this bottle on our last trip to the Asian market because I love the little face on the bottle. It looks happy because of the smile, but it's almost a mischievous look. It's as if he's saying, "go ahead, drink this... I DARE you." Maybe I've been watching too much of The Office, but he kind of reminds me of Dwight.

Actually, that is the perfect analogy to this drink. Lychee is great so you think this soda is going to be great. Then you see the mischievous character on the label and you start to second guess yourself. Then you turn it around and notice there is high fructose corn syrup in it and you think to yourself "I thought only Americans used that awful sweetener?" Then the marble is really difficult and gives you a really hard time. So by the time you finally taste it, it's delicious but you're really scared that it might actually be poison.

This drink is Dwight K. Schrute. If only it was beet flavored.

Does anyone else out there think that iced mocha drinks are the adult equivalent to chocolate milk? Like most prepackaged versions I have tried this is a very milky drink that has a nice blend of chocolate and coffee added to it, oh and a healthy heap of sugar. If you are a hardcore black coffee drinker this certainly is not for you, but if you like fancier gateway coffee drinks, step right up my friend. Seriously, if this were labeled coffee flavored chocolate milk, I wouldn't even question it, and kids would be getting all sorts of hopped up on caffeine. Now that is something this world doesn't need. Lay off the caffeine kids, you have enough natural energy as it is.

I don't want this to sound negative or inappropriate, but I wanted this drink to make me choke. After drinking this I wanted it to do the same thing. I wanted each sip to be punishing but deserving of another go. Once again, it's not bad that it didn't but a man has his standards.

This was sweeter than it was asphyxiating. The trade-off left me with a little more syrupy, candy-esque cinnamon. It was good but everyone agreed that it was just too sweet. If you could make cinnamon apples and just ate the cinnamon candy shell, that's what this would be.

Look, I don't want this to seem like I'm into choking because I'm not. I'm fixated on the punishment that I wanted from a drink. That might be just as concerting.

There are two things that this drink reminds me of. First is the most suburban America restaurant I can think of: Olive Garden. I would like to go on record and say that anywhere that has endless breadsticks, salad and soup is in no way shape of form a fancy restaurant. There is no need to pull out your fanciest clip on tie, and your slightly stained suit coat to take your family out for a meal there; t-shirts and jeans are just fine. Also, it's not gourmet food. It's a crappy chain restaurant that has a fake fancy image to trick the common folk. The one thing it goes have going for it is that they serve peach bellini, which is a nice tasting peach and raspberry iced tea with chunks of peach in it. Now that is something to brag to your friends about, not how large the portions of mediocre pasta are.

To be fair Olive Garden is my only form of reference for peach bellinis. Apparently, it's normally an alcoholic drink that is a mix of peach schnapps and champagne. That sounds horrendous, especially because in the way back time in the early 90's when I actually would drink alcohol I drank way too much peach schnapps and vommed everywhere and it was black and stringy. I couldn't eat anything peach for years.

This is closer to the Olive Garden version than that other unmentionable version. In moderation it tastes like a watered down peach/raspberry tea, but if you add more mix to give it a bit more flavor there is some weird taste floating around beneath the surface. I don't know what it is, but it tastes remotely like plastic. This is to flavor water though, not make a sweet drink, so follow the directions and go light on your squirt and it's a nice treat that has no sugar and no real diet taste.

Oh, and that other thing that each bellini reminds me of? Well, that would be the Kids in the Hall's “Touch Bellini” contest. In fact I'm going to have my own “Touch Bellini” contest. For the next week anyone who sends us an email to thethirstydudes@gmail.com or comments on our Facebook page as to why they should be able to “touch bellini” will be put into the running to receive what is left in this squeeze bottle of drink mix. Kraft sent it to us to review, so we shall pass along our leftovers to you, our twelve readers.

Can someone look back at the Truman Show-esque tapes of my life and tell me exactly what happened to make me such a fool for melon? When I was younger I never disliked melon, but I always thought of it as just there. In fruit salad it was the filler. One of the greatest Simpsons' quotes is about how cantaloupe doesn't matter when it comes to honey dew. I don't think a good laugh is enough to change my taste buds though. It remains a mystery, but I love melon these days.

For years I have been talking about how all I want is a bottle of cantaloupe juice. Think of how amazing that would be. It would be so damn flavorful. The last place I expected to get a little fix for my urge would be in a bottle of Gatorade. While this is a far cry from a glass of actual melon juice, it does taste enough like a mix of cantaloupe and honey dew to satisfy me until science comes through for me. It mostly has that general Gatorade flavor, with notes of said melons. This is the kind of Gatorade I would drink at an early morning sports practice. Remember that dumb summer when I decided to join the school football team and had to waste my vacation getting up way to early? You don't? Well looks like you should rewind those tapes of my life a bit further. I forced a fumble once that won us a game. That play probably consisted of 75% of the game time I actually got. Go make some popcorn, you're in for a wild ride.

Sometimes you can just cram a couple berries together and make something nice. This isn't always the case. Most fruit and berries are pretty good but sometimes you find something that just sucks up your drink. I feel like, for the most part, you could add grapefruit to anything and it will turn your concoction into the equivalent of a fruit poop. Yeah, if fruit had butts, it would make that. Blackberry, a pretty sacred berry, and blueberry...eh..., come together for an epic collaboration that you will talk about like it was 1992 and you just heard "Nothin' But A 'G' Thang" for the first time. Now, sure, in that case, Snoop and Dr. Dre are both blackberries since they are both awesome and calling either of them blueberries would be insulting to their bodies of work.

This is a pretty great drink, though, all jokes aside. It's diet but does not taste like it and just tastes like a juice. Go ahead. Go to a Snoop Dogg/Lion show and make him a glass of this. He'll love it. He'll (slowly) say that it's sweet, tastes like the fruits that are in it, and probably ask for another glass since, I don't know, I feel like he's eternally thirsty. Dr. Dre is in cahoots with Dr. Pepper so he probably wouldn't drink this for you. That's not a dis, it's just that I don't want you to get shot down. Go with Snoop.

Ps. Kraft sent us this sample. They want us to make sure we say that.

I have never drunk apple nectar before. Since most beverages that are labeled nectars are basically a thicker version of the juice, I was expecting this to be somewhere between apple juice and applesauce. Excitement ran high. Let it be known that when I purchase a bottle of applesauce I do not eat it with a spoon like a normal civilized human being. Instead I drink it straight from the bottle, and it's glorious. Why dirty your silverware?

Unfortunately this was only slightly thicker than normal apple juice. I would estimate that there is maybe a spoonful of applesauce mixed in with the rest of the drink. It has a little texture, but nothing to write your congressman about. The real downfall of the drink is the added sugar. If there were ever a juice that did not need added sweetener it was that of the apple. Adding sugar to apple juice gives it a weird candy flavor, which is not what I want at all. If this would have been a thicker/slightly more textured apple juice I would have been pumped. Instead it's sweetened apple pulp concentrate that has way to much sugar in it for any self respecting lover of the fruit.

Do you know what lions don't like? Processed, chemical garbage. Don't get me wrong they will eat the hell out of it, but they won't feel good about themselves doing it. I feel the same way. Does that make me a lion? I have no fierce roar, but I do have a nice golden beard, so perhaps I am partway there. I will on occasion partake in an energy drink, but I generally feel terrible about doing it. There are all sorts of weird chemicals in those things that humans, or any creatures for that matter, should probably not ingest. When I find an organic energy drink, it's something I feel a bit better about drinking.

Roaring Lion knows that most people don't care about such things, so they have a line of regular energy drinks. For folks like myself they formulated the “Au Natural” version. Nowhere on the bottle does it say that it is organic, but it does say it's all natural (with artificial flavor) and that is enough for me not to feel like I'm poisoning myself all that much. Yes I know there are plenty of things found in nature that could kill me instantly, but I'm fairly certain none of them are contained in this bottle.

I don't really know what I expected this to taste like, but it ended up reminding me of a slightly lighter tasting version of your generic energy drink. You know the ones that are all derivative of the flavor of Red Bull. I personally have no problem with that, because it's a flavor that I enjoy. It's a somewhat regular occurrence for me to wish out loud that there were a soda available that tasted like that, without the energy giving properties. If you're striving to be a lion like myself and you like the flavor of such energy drinks, but you don't want to pour all that toxic garbage in your body that will more than likely end up killing you in a couple of decades, give this little guy a try. As an added bonus it comes in a resealable bottle. Now that's something more energy drinks need.

Did you know that Mountain Dew has a new CEO? That may or may not be shocking to you, but what you will say “wait whhhhhhaaaaa?” to is that fact that the new man in charge is no one other than Motley Crue bass player, Nikki Sixx. In a press release he assured stockholders that his crucial rocking will not interfere with the running of the business. He was quoted as saying, “If I can get our sound guy to teach me how to use Photoshop on the bus, that I can certainly run a multinational company from that very same home on wheels.” This left many people in the business and soda world shaking their heads until Mr. Sixx announced the release of a new line of Mountain Dew drinks called “Kick Start.” The newly appointed head of the company then told the world that the product tag line would be “Kick Start your heart from another overdose.” This left shareholders even more bewildered.

We recently received samples of this new line, and everyone at Mountain Dew can calm themselves down as no such tagline exists anywhere on the packaging. In fact it looks rather tasteful and one would never expect that a person capable of such debauchery had anything to do with its creation. The flavor of the Fruit Punch version isn't all that bad either. Even though it is sweetened primarily by high fructose corn syrup, it's not as think as you would expect, especially for being a fruit punch. It has 5% juice in it, all of which seems to be grape juice for some reason. If I had to break it down for you, which I do, I would say it tastes like someone mixed two parts of mild fruit punch in with one part regular Mountain Dew. It's not mind-blowing, or anything all that new, but it tastes pleasant enough.

It has 92mg of caffeine in it, which is slightly more than regular Mountain Dew and about half of the amount in a comparable sized coffee. I know they are trying to push this as a morning drink, but I really have no interest in drinking anything carbonated within the first couple hours that I'm awake. Mountain Dew obviously is always marketed towards younger folks, but man even in college I wouldn't have drank this until the afternoon. Rumor has it that Mr Sixx has been on a steady diet of nothing and Kick Start for the past month. He has overdosed a half dozen times in that time period.