Do you know what I'm in support of? Kids being strong. Keep in mind that I'm not around children very often, except the four or five that my friends have, but it seems every kid I see now a days is a little chunker. I blame television, video games and the fact that there is so much garbage in food these days. Sure my friends and I had TV and video games when we were younger, but we also spent a majority of our time outdoors exploring and skateboarding. Perhaps the fault lies in the growing number of creeps in the world that make parents not want to let their kids wander out of their sight. Who knows for sure?

Anyways, yes I am pro kid health. This drink is essentially Vitamin Water that is formulated specifically for children. It has all the vitamins and minerals that they need to be healthy and strong. Well, those alone won't make them that way, they do also need to stop being so lazy and go build a fort by the creek or something like that, looking out for Chesters the whole time.

This orange beverage tastes like someone took some weak Tang and mixed in some ground up Flintstone's Children's Vitamins. It tastes like it was made from a powder mix, but I chalk (no pun intended) that up to the high levels of vitamins in it. It is in fact a bit too chalky for my liking. If it were anymore than 12oz, I doubt I would have been able to finish it. I had a brief struggle with the amount I had, as the chalkiness got worse as I reached the bottom, even though I shook it up. This is a good concept, but the flavor just wasn't quite there.

More melons. I want more melon in my life. I want it in my diet all the time and I want it in more drinks. I love it. It's been done pretty poorly with the exception of the Calypso Triple Melon. This is close to a really good execution but something inside of this bottle is killing the perfection that I so desperately desire. I will blame it on the sugar as none of the fruits in this drink have the sharpness that I'm getting. I don't get the watermelon but I do get the strawberry and the melon and those are the two that I really want. I can taste things trying to get through like a goat trying to get through the fence at a petting zoo to stick its wet nose in your pocket to get the feed you just aren't giving to him fast enough. Oh, those rectangular pupils get me every time. I forget and then the twice a year I spend time with them; there they are, filled with 90 degree angles. It's just unnatural, but goats eat cans and boots so it's fine. Goats. You guys are alright.

For straight edge kids such as us, sparkling grape juice is like champagne. No it's not as expensive, but it's what we buy when we want a fancy drink. I'm used to the big bottles of this, and had never seen it in a single serving bottle before. To the untrained eye, I almost thought this was a wine cooler on the shelf.

I've had some sparkling juices that are more sparkle than juice, but this is not the case with this bottle. The grape juice is really good and has the perfect amount of carbonation. It has a bit of a thick aftertaste, but most likely due to the grape concentrate the drink is made with. I probably should have saved this for New Years, but I prefer the big bottles because they are good for sharing. This serving size is like a personal drink for a fancy dinner.

What a year! I went from not liking seltzer to scouring local grocery stores for good ones. I guess I was used to the swill my mom used to drink but this stuff has been good thus far. The cinnamon was awesome. The black cherry, less than awesome but still good. This was good. Right where I wanted it and just want I wanted: a little bit of mint and a little bit of chocolate. If anyone is familiar with Metromint Chocolate Mint, this is a sparkling, toned down version of that. I love that. I like this. For something that I put on my desk next to all day and polished off slowly, though, I liked it a lot and will get it again.

Mom, if you're reading this. You know I don't like your garbage seltzers. Perhaps for Christmas, if you're good, I'll buy you the good, top shelf stuff. I will also help you throw your old stuff in the yard and let the neighborhood dogs at it.

Lemon Lime: The illegitimate child of sodas. Everyone pretends to love it, but in reality it's normally the only soda left over after the family get together. I've never met a single person in my life that had lemon lime as a go to pop. Sure it mixes well with other drinks, alcoholic for some and for others such as myself it works well with cranberry juice, when out at bars. On it's own it's just a bland soda by nature. I mean how can it not when one of its key ingredients is lemon, the most meaningless of all fruit. Lemonade is amazing, but in all other forms I could do without the golden citrus king. I wonder if lime will forever feel cheated in this arrangement. A straight up lime soda aka a Lime Rickey is a thing of beauty. It's just too bad that on most days it's held back by its cousin the lime.

Now that I've expressed in detail the mediocrity of lemon lime pop, I will say that Jones has made a version that is better than most. It's no surprise that the reason for it's spender is that it tastes more of lime than lemon. The use of cane sugar helps a lot as well, but it's the lime that makes this pop worthwhile. If this is what this flavor of soda always tasted like, I feel like there wouldn't be anything left in the coolers at the end of the party and that everyone would finally come to accept and truly love this soda made out of wedlock

I don't think that I've eaten a grapefruit in well over two decades. I just remember them being super tart and/or bitter. I've had things that are grapefruit flavored with no additional sugar that are quite awful. People eat it with tons of sugar on top. If you have to put sugar on your fruit, you're defeating the point of fruit. "Nature's candy", right? Isn't that what they say? "Nature's candy." You don't add sugar to candy. You're not supposed to. If you do, you don't really understand how candy works. If you add it to fruit, you don't understand how fruit works.

This drink knows how grapefruit pop should work. It's not terribly sweet and not wildly punchy like a lot of other ones. Squirt is good, right, but it's really sweet. This drink is more grapefruit and less pop. It could be the real sugar versus the corn syrup, which can kind of wipe out a lot of flavors. It's got a good smell and is not as strong as, say, Ting, but it's still good. If this is how they do grapefruit on the islands, as their moniker of "Island Soda," then I might have to frequent these islands. Maybe get a coconut so that I can drink this pop out of. It's how they do it. I hate feeling like I'm not a local.

Would you just look at that bottle? Is that the classiest looking bottle of iced tea you have ever seen, or what? It's just a normal plastic bottle, but the shape and the cleanness of the design make it look much greater than it is. Little kids would look at this and think to themselves, “That looks like it is for grownups. I bet it burns like grandpappy's juice.” I assure you the contents of this bottle are nothing like your grandfathers private stock, well unless your grandfather is a collector of fine teas. Those kids were right though. I bet if you gave this to 100 kids maybe 2 or 3 of them would enjoy it. It's an unsweetened jasmine green tea, so it's slightly bitter and tastes of flowers; two flavors kids tend to not like. It is what I like though. The jasmine flavor is just right. It's not overpowering like some of Oriental Leaves' competitors drinks are. This just hints at the floral and lets the green tea do most of the work. It's tastes like a dream, and it makes me feel like more of a grown up than I will ever actually be. Oh, did I mention that I'm 33 and I spent more than 60 hours over the past two weeks playing Final Fantasy X? That's right I spent more time playing a video game than most people work in a week. At least I get to pretend to be an adult sometimes.

Have we, The Thirsty Dudes, reached a level of respect and admiration in the beverage world that we can start demanding things? I don't mean demand people send us stuff, although it is nice when they do. I mean demand that drinks be named/labeled in certain ways. For example if a juice drink, such as this one has four or more different types of fruit juice listed in its ingredients that it must, under Thirsty Law, be labeled as a fruit punch. I will give the companies a little bit on leniency, in that they are allowed one fruit over those in the name of the flavor. I know certain fruits are expensive and using apple or grape juice to stretch out the juice is more cost effective. Anything more than that, will hereby be known as fruit punch.

The drink that I am currently sipping on will now be known as “Strawberry Kiwi Fruit Punch.” It's that easy. You see the top three fruits listed in the ingredients are apple, grape and pineapple, yet none of them are in the name. While I do enjoy this juice (especially since there is no added sugar) it by no means tastes like someone mashed a bunch of strawberries and kiwis together. That is a drink that would probably be costly, yet would totally be worth that cost. I'm drooling just thinking about it. This tastes like a fruit punch that has a slight kiwi aftertaste. I want to say that you can taste the strawberries in every sip, but the flavor I'm singling out doesn't taste like biting into a piece of red, juicy fruit. It is just a flavor that companies have programmed my brain to process as strawberry.

So there you have it. I have pounded my gavel and the first Thirsty Amendment has been passed. Make sure you spread the word to your friends in the business. I would hate for them to get fined for breaking my law.

Ahh flowers. They look great. They bring color to this otherwise depressing world. When I lived in Boston for a few months, I didn't know that I would miss foliage and color. I spent six week not really seeing trees or grass too much and then someone told me about Boston Commons and I felt I needed to go. It was like I had never seen flowers before. I spent the whole time just not caring but really my body craved those little guys.

So, I self-admittedly enjoy a flower every not and then. It's fine. This drink was floral. It was like if you had a red tea that wasn't too bitter, infused a flower, and then added a little sugar to it. I will also admit that I clearly have no idea what hibiscus tastes like because sometimes it's the greatest thing I've ever had and then other times it's just...there. I'm not hating on it, but I wish that I could taste it in it's truest form so that I know which side of the fence I'm on; like or love. I guess either side is pretty non-confrontational, but still, I don't like this floral purgatory I'm in. It's terrible but the smell is relaxing and the sights from up here are quite scenic and well pruned.

The rocky coasts of Maine are a wonderful place. It's blustery and the air is salty. There is no other place on this Earth (that I have visited) that makes you feel more like a sailor. When I'm there I constantly feel like I should be wearing waders and smoking a pipe, telling tales of Old Gregg.

While it is a wonderful place that makes me feel connected to the vastness of the sea, there is one thing that could not possibly grow there: oranges. I believe that is why this soda lacks a little something. The ingredients in here are carbonated pure water, organic cane juice and spices. There is no mention of fruit of any kind. I suppose ground up orange rind could be considered a spice, but to me that is not orange flavored.

To me this just has a general sweet soda taste with some flavoring in it that tastes more of orange holiday spice than and actual mandarin orange. It's also not consistent from sip to sip either. The bottle says settling is normal, and to roll it to help mix it up, but there is only so much rolling you can do with a carbonated drink, and I believe I reached that point without achieving consistency

In it's own way it's a decent drink. Just be advised to not go into it expecting a standard cheap orange soda, nor a carbonated orange juice. It is neither of these things, nor does it fall anywhere between them. It is its own entity, forged in the caverns of Maine. After you try it, tell me one thing: “What did it mean to you to drink that?”

Sharon was sick of all the rules. There were so many rules. No carbs. No bread. Watch your salt. Exercise then carbs. No bacon. Salad but no creamy dressing. No milk. No cheese. Diet pop. Artificial sweeteners are bad for you. So many rules.

Sharon works hard, alright. She eats with moderation, exercises regularly, and looks good. Look at me. She looks good. She doesn't need to worry as much as she does but she does because that's what happens.

She was talking to a friend who was a personal trainer and he said he found this awesome drink. It's a low glycemic drink with less calories, carbs, and sugar. It's a win-win, right? Well...not quite. If you drink it slowly, it's alright. It's like a slightly mango limeade. If you drink it quickly, the Stevia can be a bit overpowering. Sharon, who drank wheat grass on multiple occasions, can deal with that. She enjoys drinking slowly and loving life. Now if she could only spend less time at the gym and more time finding a man who tells her that she can spend less time working out and more time with him, she'd be all set.

Your expectations are low if you are like me. You don't have high hopes for anything really. I mean it's McDonald's. I play a strong "ignorance is bliss" role with them because I do good by not eating there but twice a year, maybe quarterly. When I go, I typically get a spicy chicken, for some reason also known by its alias "Hot & Spicy." I was in a rush yesterday, got my old standard, and got this guy on a whim because it's seasonal and I like chocolate and mint.

Was I surprised? Kind of. It was a reserved mint, not like someone put the base "mocha" in and poured it over a starlight mint. It was different and was not overpowering. Even on the last sip I wasn't left with some awful, thick, minty sludge. I tend to swirl my drinks out of habit in hopes of eliminating that and it worked. You can borrow that skill. Practice it. Hone it. Enjoy it.

McDonald's has been putting out some decent drinks as of late. Kudos to them and Kudos for me because those cats are delicious.

What we have here is a better tasting than most diet energy drinks. I would say that it is actually borderline diet. It still has regular sugar in it, but it's not as much as the regular version. Replacing it is some sucralose, but the mixture of the sweeteners doesn't give it the diet death taste. It's still sweet and candy like, as your typical energy drinks are, with just a hint of a diet flavor to it. There is nothing particularly surprising about this. It tastes like an energy drink, but just a little bit better than other diet ones I have had.

ps. The pink can is a little bit too obvious for a diet drink. Come on Hype, you have to have a better marketing team than that.

Dr. B. I don't know what to say anymore. One guy said that this smelled like cough syrup. I think that it tastes like plastic flavored, overly sweetened tea. The Xylitol takes the cake in this drink and overpowers whatever flavors my have existed in it. It's like fighting an unmatched fight. Xylitol is playing the role of the 250 pound seasoned boxer and the lemongrass and iced tea together weight 300 pounds but aren't boxers and collect stamps and coins from the Civil War era. The only way this tea has any flavor that isn't artificial is if you take a big sip and let it mull in your mouth. Don't move your tongue. Just let it sit there. Then you think, "Hey, there's that lemongrass flavor Dr. B, a person I'm questioning whether or not they are a real doctor, was telling me about." The time in your mouth kills the cool, sweet sugar and allows the B-Team to take over. It's a fight that no one has the right to watch. It's too much. It's the man standing up to the tank in Tienanmen Square except the tank didn't stop. He just kept going. I think that makes Dr. B Deng Xiaoping.

Wait so did Somona leave the partnership with Williams, or is this beverage just an example of what you can make with the fancy appliances they sell in their stores? Oh neither, it's just the name of a city in California that is located close to where this fancy sparkling beverage is made? Well that's less exciting that knowing that I could pay way too much money to buy kitchen doodads that would allow me to make this drink in the privacy of my own home, but I'll let it slide due to the delectable nature of this juice. It is juice; don't be mistaken. It is simply a mixture of apple and blood orange juices that have had carbon dioxide added to it. There are no sweeteners in here mucking things up. It's pure and it is wonderful. I was hoping it would be pure blood orange juice, so the addition of apples is the only reason this didn't get top marks. It tastes better than 99% of the beverages you have ever drunk, but to be honest it is more apple than orange. The apple flavoring is like a roller coaster car slowly climbing the hill, and the blood orange hits you suddenly and quickly like rushing down that self same hill. Don't worry, there are no loopy loops on this ride to make you lose your lunch.

No. We haven't done this before. Yes. It has been out for a decade. There is no shortage of reviews for Arizona reviews on this site. As a matter of fact, they are one of the most reviewed products that we've done. Sometimes, though, things slip through the cracks. Things we've drank one hundred times we don't remember if we drank for personal pleasure or for the good of the site. Up until now, this was strictly a pleasure drink. Well, not any more, kids. Now it's business.

Look at all the darn fruit on this bottle. Let me count the ways this is a fruit punch: apple, pear, mango, cherry, both green and concord grapes, and strawberry. That's a plethora of fruit. That would make a pretty decent fruit salad. Does it make a decent drink, though? Well, yes, it does. You can't taste everything. I feel like I'm missing out on some mango action, perhaps some cherry, too. Do I hold it against them? No. How fine are people's taste buds that they can distinguish between like ten fruits all while being sweetened by corn syrup? No, that's not a dig. It's just what they use to sweeten it. Sure, I'd like to taste this with real sugar, or even sugarless, but it's not penalizing them. The sweetener is fine because there are a lot of fruit flavors going on in that bottle.

Arizona aren't a bunch of dumb dummies. They've been doing this for years. Remember how we just celebrated their twentieth birthday? They're vets. Pros, even. They did a fine job and you know that because you've been drinking their stuff for years. I'm sure they would thank you if given the opportunity. You should thank them, too. It's the right thing to do.

Devotion. Courage. Sacrifice. That is the tag line for this company, but I feel like it should also be the Thirsty Dudes motto.

Devotion: We've been reviewing drinks since 2009.
Courage: We have tried some utterly disgusting drinks
Sacrifice: Do you know how many calories we have probably consumed? Not to mention all the sugar we have ingested. I personally recently had to have 6 cavities filled, and 2 teeth pulled. While I'm not blaming that all on Thirsty Dudes, but I'm sure it was a contributing factor.

Apparently this is one of the most popular energy drinks in Thailand. It's non-carbonated, which threw me off at first. I was expecting it to taste like Red Bull, but instead it's like a pineapple-peach juice taste. It's actually not that bad.

Up before dawn; that is the life of a surfer. Sure getting up that early blows, but that is when the waves are the best and more importantly when the beach is free and clear of tourists. Itâ…‚¬…„¢s bad enough having all of those people gawking at you, but the true hell is when one of them thinks that they know what they are doing on a board and comes out, gets in your way and inevitably needs to be escorted back to the shore before they drown. So yeah, the result is that I have to wake up far to early for one who lives a partying life as I do. Surviving on 4 hours of sleep a night, you would think that my immune system would be shot. It would be if it werenâ…‚¬…„¢t for my secret weapon: Kona Red.

My buddies go out to the coffee plantations and gather up the discarded coffee fruit. You see when you make coffee you cut the beans from the center of these little red berries. You didnâ…‚¬…„¢t know that? Well that is because you are more than likely a touring staring at me from the shore while Iâ…‚¬…„¢m carving those waves. Anyways, that leftover fruit is chock full of the antioxidants that help keep me healthy. My friends take the fruit, juice it and add some pineapple and apple juice. The result is akin to a smoothed out acai juice. It has a very dark taste, but the pineapple and apple juices liven it up a bit. Itâ…‚¬…„¢s a fairly strange taste that grows on you the more you drink. It tastes absolutely nothing like the coffee that you brew, and has no caffeine (but oh how that would help me).

Okay itâ…‚¬…„¢s 4am. I should wax up my board and meet the guys down at the beach. The pipeline waits for no man.

Honey, I'll be home a bit later, but I made some soup for you that is in the fridge. Just warm it up and you'll be good to go. Actually maybe toast a little bread and break it up in the soup, who doesn't love that?

*Cut to several hours later*

Darling, I appreciate that you took the time to make me soup for dinner, but I have to tell you that was the worst soup I've ever tasted in my life. It was so sweet and tasted vaguely dairy like. I don't know where you got that recipe, but please never make it for me again. I would rather go hungry than eat that again. What does it matter what container I took it out of? Of lord, please don't tell me you made mass quantities of it! Anyways I took it from the blue container. I thought it was weird that you put soup in a pitcher, but with a color like that what else could it be? What, the soup was in the Tupperware on the bottom shelf? Well then what exactly did I eat? Please tell me it wasn't one of the kids science experiments. Oh it was a smoothie that you made, that makes way more sense as to how sweet it was. I know I wasted a large chunk of your smoothie, but can I please try it cold instead of piping hot? Well this is much better this way. It's a nice thick mango and orange juice that is not insanely sweet, which I really enjoy. It's a bit chalky though, especially towards the bottom of the glass. That little bit was almost undrinkable. Oh, you added some whey and soy protein so it will help you out after your workout. You really are a smart one, and I am truly an idiot for thinking this was soup.

Things got real weird in my brain last night. I'm not one to subscribe to the preaching of the apocalypse, but for some reason as I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep I started to wonder if all this jazz about the Mayan calendar was correct, and that the world was going to end in a couple of weeks. It started off with me thinking that everything was going to end in one big shebang, like the sun was going to collide with the Earth and everyone and everything would die instantaneously. At this point I just tried to get everything in order in my mind of where I wanted to be, and with who (aka the woods with my close family and friends). I thought I was okay with that, but then my pre-sleep mind started to think about what would happen if there was disaster everyone, but I still lived. I instantly wrote off zombies, and thought more of a The Road type scenario. I was trying to figure out everything I would have to get together and where I'd go when I decided that I was an idiot and I really needed to get to sleep, so I reached into my nightstand and pulled out this bad boy. It certainly helped calm my brain down, and made it do normal brain things like sleep when it's 3am and you have to be up in six hours. Thank goodness for melatonin, valerian root and rose hips.

Oh you want to know what it tastes like? Well it starts with a berry flavor, that is heavy on the blueberry side of things, and then it takes a quick turn that reminds me of iced teas that I have gotten at Asian markets that have licorice root in them. It doesn't taste like black jellybeans, but it tastes like a natural tea, or chewing on a switch from a licorice tree. So we have a decent flavor and no worries about the end of the world…€¦I feel fine.