Is it wrong of me to assume that when something is organic that it is just going to be solely what it is labeled as? I feel like ten years back that was the case, but not so much these days. I wanted there to be nothing in this bottle except for juices that came from mangos and oranges. Oh it would have been so delicious, perhaps a perfect drink. That is not what I received. While it still is better than 90% of the juices available to the world, there are other elements at work in this beverage that lessen its quality. Sure there are orange and mango juice in here, but right along side them, and in greater quantity according to the ingredient list, are their friends apple and grape. It's like orange and orange arranged this wonderful little get away together and then their two overbearing friends invited themselves along and rearranged the entire trip to suit their own needs. Jerks. What would have been the vacation of a lifetime ends up being more of an apple juice that is orange and mango flavored (grape got food poisoning and spent the weekend in bed). As I said I do really enjoy the drink a lot, and it's fairly unique tasting, but it's not what I was expecting, nor what I really wanted. Knowing what it is I think I would enjoy it a lot more in the future.

I had a true taste comparison with this one. As I've previously mentioned Arizona was my gateway into green teas. It was the first I've ever had and for a longtime it was my benchmark. How stupid I was. Last night I went to a show with my friend Dave and he brought a can of the classic Arizona green tea and I brought this bottle of Urban Zen. We were both happily drinking our respective teas when he needed me to hold his for some reason. Being the sneaky so and so that I am I took a sip. Wow, the two drinks while having essentially similar makeups were light years apart. I had never realized how cheap Arizona tasted before. It's essentially a sweetener with some green tea flavoring in it. This on the other hand was the real deal. It's properly brewed whole leaf green tea that has been infused with jasmine flower. It has a real green tea taste, and it's mostly sweetened with honey, which gives it's own twist to the flavor. All in all this has only 10g of sugar in it, which is all you ever really need in a sweetened tea. I'm pretty sure that Arizona has about 4 times that. The comparison made me realize how much of a kids drink Arizona really is, and how this is a tea of a pseudo sophisticated adult. It's slightly bitter with a nice light floral taste. Jasmine tea, it's not just for fancy Asian restaurants anymore. Arizona, I don't know if I'll ever look at your green tea the same way again.

If you've never had the joy of trying bubble tea, let me try and explain it for you. It starts off with a nice black or green tea (I personally always go for the green), then a shot of syrup or powder flavoring is mixed in. These flavors can be all over the map, there are fruits such as kiwi and guava, there is chocolate, there is even taro root. I've never had a flavor that I haven't liked. There are some that are milk based as well, but who really needs to mess with something like that?

One would think that this would be enough to have a nice flavored tea, but one would also be wrong. The true joy of bubble tea is the “bubbles,” which aren't bubbles at all but pearls of tapioca. I understand that it sounds completely disgusting and I was hesitant to try it at first myself, but they are wonderful and incredibly fun. The tapioca balls are fairly flavorless, so they just add a texture and entertainment (they make the best spit balls you have ever seen). The first time I had bubble tea I didn't realize you were supposed to chew the pearls, so like the idiot I am I swallowed them whole and felt terrible afterwards. After a whole lot of mocking from my friends I tried it again and with some chewing I grew to love it. I bet you will too.

Why am I talking so much about this Asian delicacy? Well that would be because this tea tastes exactly like my flavor of choice at my local bubblery. 95% of the time when I get bubble tea I'm going to go with the passion fruit. What can I say? I have a weakness. I was shocked at how much this tasted exactly like bubble tea, which tastes slightly different than just normal flavored tea. It probably has something to do with the way they flavor it. If this had been poured into a glass with some pearls in it and served to me I would never have guessed that it wasn't from a bubble tea place. It's a very sweet green tea, with a flavor that tastes exactly like passion fruit. It's one of my new favorites. Too bad I've only found it at a market in Toronto.

Also, when I was entering the company information for this review I saw that the web address www.bubbletea123.com was listed on the packaging. It's good to know that my taste buds are working just fine.

Did the association of purple/grape things and apes start with the Hanna Barbera character? I mean it makes sense due to rhyming, but I feel like I've seen more than a handful of things with primates tied to the flavor grape that don't use the word “ape” so the whole rhyme thing is out the window. A quick internet search also tells me it's a strain of medical marijuana. Is it possible that this gorilla got so high that it started to mistake grapes as its beloved bananas? It got so into the grapes that the juice dyed it's once glorious coat and gave it a purple hue? I think I'm on to something people. Think about it, when a primate that is wacked out of its gourd gets loose in your grape fields and ends up juicing them all before grape juice season (I say it exists, so it does), what else are you going to do but make soda with it? I mean, sure you're going to have to boil it down to get rid of all of those gorilla germs (great potential band name that I'm allowing you our readers to use), but why not just give it a little marketing twist and call it “Fire-Brewed?”

I think this hippy gorilla has done the world a favor. This is a nice soda that falls on the higher end of the grape line. It's a bit light on the carbonation, which I would like to see more of, but I won't hold that against it…€¦much. As I mentioned it's made with grape juice and not a bunch of artificial flavoring, but it falls in-between a sparkling grape juice and your traditional grape soda. It's a good place for it to be. It also has honey in it, and between that and the fire brew, it gives it a very special flavor that is unique to the Sprecher company. Like all their sodas the only problem with that is that although the flavor is delectable when it's nice and cold, as it gets warmer that flavor starts to take away from the overall greatness of the beverage. It becomes more pronounced and is too distracting. The solution for that is to not dilly dally while you drink this and don't forget to bring some snacks for our primate friend; he's got the muchies like you wouldn't believe.

Come on baby slip off that rind, take off those pesky seeds and let's get down to business. No baby, don't be embarrassed, there is no need for you to cover yourself up with sugar. You're sweet enough as it is. You know I didn't think you'd be down for this, but I'm glad you brought your friends along. This is going to be quite a party. To tell you the truth I've never been with so many fruits at once before. Baby, this is the best birthday present you could have ever given me. You've invited the strawberries, apples, peaches and mangos to the party. I love your juice baby doll. Orange juice is a classic and a standard and I don't mean to put you down by saying that, but you know I have you all the time. When you mingle with all your friends you still shine brightly, along with the guavas and the mangos. The other fruits are just background in this party, and you three are all I see. You're thick in all the right ways and I wish I could partake in you all day and night, but I'm only a single person baby, and I need a break every now and then.

You know what's nice? Not having a urinary tract infection. I know that it goes without saying but once you've been through living at college, you learn a thing or two about them. Number one is that you can't drink cranberry juice without at least thinking of one. This drink reminded me of a urinary tract infection unfortunately but it doesn't hinder my opinion of it, as it was good. It was nothing special as it was just a cranberry juice, but it was nice. A juice is a wonderful thing when you spend all your time drinking pop and other things. That being said, I just read the back of this and there are 280 calories in it and now I'm upset that I drank the whole thing. I thought this would be healthier. I don't know why Mr. Welch used corn syrup but I think that I drank it fast enough that it was cool enough to still be enjoyable.

This is good. I could have stood to drink half of it but hey, what are you going to do now, right? Nothing. That's what.

Nature, I just can't get enough of it. Well, I can't get enough of the awesome woods aspect of nature. I can do without the frozen tundra side of things. Sometimes I need to go out into the woods, like deep down need it to an extent that I know I won't be able to relax and settle down until I surrounded by the green (okay I'm reading Swamp Thing now, so that's a nod to classic Alan Moore with the phrasing). I have no doubt that when I get old I will live out in the country, preferably in the woods. The city is a young man's game and while I love it now, I know I won't want to be here in twenty years. So to the country I shall go.

It's late Fall now and it's getting cold and it's raining all the time. That means I'm going to be stuck inside for a few months without my precious green. I'll burn cut grass candles and pretend it's nice out but it simply won't work. This drink might help a bit though. It's a slightly sweetened yerba mate with the faintest hint of lemon in it. If you're not familiar with yerba mate it's a pseudo tea that has a bunch of caffeine in it. It tastes like everything in the woods was boiled down into a wonderful drink. If I ever had to describe what I think nature would taste like, I would hand the person a bottle of this. It's strong, herbal and wonderful. It's a Brazilian tradition by way of Canada. How does that even make sense? Oh well, here's to hoping we get a few more nice days in so I can go engulf myself in the forest. Then, hibernation.

You know what I hate? I hate when people get perfume in my pop. I absolutely hate it. I often leave open bottles of pop on the floor at grandmother's homes and you know how grandmas are. They spray that perfume on with a Super Soaker before raging at the Bingo parlor, just gallon after gallon of lavender and Chanel No. 5.

I must have accidentally left this bottle open at everyone's grandmother's house in Western New York before I drank it because this drink tastes like a slew of different old women. It was a lot like the Pakola Ice Cream pop that we drank many moons ago. It tastes nothing like you would expect and everything like you don't want. Not a strong sales approach.

About a decade ago my friends and I had a tradition of doing a scavenger hunt every Halloween. A friend who had moved out of town would make up a list of about 25 things we needed to get/do that were all fairly ridiculous. Thirsty Mike participated the one year and he can vouch for how much fun it was. The list changed yearly with things on it like: take a picture of yourself nipple deep in Lake Erie (you can't comprehend how cold that is), steal a table pager from a specific restaurant, break into a pet cemetery and find the name of the gorilla buried there, video tape two teammates dumping a gallon of milk down each others pants, have two team members kiss with tongue (yeah my mom walked in on me kissing Jerid “The Hammer”…€¦awkward), drink BBQ sauce out of a condom and various other dumb things. One thing that was on the list every year was to get a single can of Mello Yello. You see these were the times when Mellow Yello was scarce. Coke had replaced it with Surge and that had gone the way of the Dodo. No one ever got points for that one. My team went so far as to drive to Canada (okay it's only 15 minutes away) because someone said a store up there had it. They were wrong.

Since I haven't been in Buffalo for Halloween since 2005, and my mother was the “Mistress of Ceremonies” the hunt was called off. Every year no matter where I end up being I always wish I were back in Buffalo doing dumb things with my friends. I found this can of Mello Yello a few weeks ago, and I knew I had to save it for today. That's right, my team would have won if the game were still on.

I can't even remember the last time I had a taste of this soda. I can tell you that it doesn't taste like I remember it at all. In my mind it was just Coke's version of Mountain Dew and that's not it at all. It tastes like orange and lime sodas were mixed together. You know what that's what citrus soda should be, screw lemon. Who needs lemon-lime soda when you can have orange-lime? I mean this isn't mind blowing or anything, but I do enjoy it. Of course I also have that stupid song stuck in my head as well, “I'm just mad about Saffron…€¦”

Who needs seedless watermelons? I mean seriously. You're eating watermelon outside and you are almost encouraged to spit the seeds. I don't think I've ever eaten sliced watermelon inside. Sure, cubed watermelon as part of a fruit salad I've eaten inside, but the kind that looks like fruit pizza I think I've only eaten outside. I love the stuff. I love the seeds. There is something therapeutic about filling your mouth with seeds and machine gunning them out. Not at someone as that would be sticky, disrespectful, and pretty disgusting. Just shoot them for distance and for fun.

I'm pretty sure that the whole "If you eat the seeds you will grow a watermelon in your stomach." I think that anyone who has ever believed that was true has never had a garden a day in their lives. I would say that twenty-five percent of my annual garden just doesn't come to fruition due to poor soil, water, drainage, dogs, space, etc. It's hard to grow some things and you need optimal environment to grow a lot of things. You really think that a watermelon could germinate inside your acidic stomach filled with hamburger grease, pop, sugars, no sunlight, and no real nutrients. I mean, you could argue that it was like a composter but it's still far too dangerous for anything to sprout. So that's that.

So if you still aren't convinced that you don't not need seeds, this drink is for you. It's watermelon flavors, as it should be since it claims it is, but it's right in the middle of "real" watermelon and "candy" watermelon flavored. It's a tallboy and should be shared. No one should drink this in one sitting unless they love 300 garbage calories dedicated to a drink that doesn't fully taste like the fruit it represents. I think you could probably eat a whole watermelon for under 300 calories. I wouldn't recommend it as you body would have to go into some sort of fruit shock. That might just be called diarrhea, actually. Don't get me wrong, it's a good drink and is nice on overcast days like this to bring you back to a childhood summer, but for almost twenty-four ounces, this is gluttonous.

I don't mean to bum everyone out, but I currently have no grandmothers, as mine have both passed on. It happened a long time ago and I have moved on and learned to live in a grandmotherless world. Now that I've tasted my fourth bottle of this brand of tea I realize I was wrong and this is a plea for Granny Squibb to adopt me as her own so that I can get my fill of her tea any time I so wish. You see it's not available in Buffalo, and waiting for her new flavors to come out so that we can get samples is simply not acceptable.

This tastes like a nice black tea that one of my past grandmothers might have brewed up, except they never would have iced it. It was hot tea or nothing with them. This is chilled and sweetened. If it were just black tea I would have loved it, but the addition of raspberry made it perfect. This may in fact be the best raspberry iced tea I have ever tasted. When a tea actually tastes like it was sweetened with real fruit, you know the company has done well.

So what do you think Madam Squibb, will you be my new grandmamma?

Plum flavored drinks are not something that you see too often. Well, outside of an Asian market, and the plum drinks you find there are entirely different beasts that you simply want nothing to do with. They tend to taste like smoked mold. They are perhaps the worst beverages I have ever tried. I couldn't even swallow a single sip.

Real plums are great though. I went to a flea market a few weeks back and the fruit vender was closing up so he sold me 10 plums for a dollar. It was a good couple of days. I miss those days. Rob's does a great job with this drink and it actually tastes like you juiced a plum (well and then added some erythritol). I can't think of any other drink I've had that tastes so much like a plum plucked out of nature. The sweetener isn't too over powering and it actually gives it that specific bubble tea flavor. That is a taste that I will always love.

Rob's knows what they are doing with drinks, especially diet drinks. Diet no longer means absolutely terrible in this day and age. With the amount of obesity in this country it couldn't have come sooner.

Who doesn't love Lemonheads? I know I do. They're one of the best candies you can get that has a good lemon flavor. I didn't know what to expect until I looked at this wine shaped bottle and saw the stuff at the bottom. The stuff on the bottom? Pulp. The lifeforce of a lemon or other rined fruit. I think you can see where I'm going here but this tastes like Lemonheads. It's got a great lemon flavor but a nicely candied, still sour lemon. I don't know where these came from. Jay got them for me among his worldly travels. Wherever it came from, you should find it and get some. Get it for yourself and get some for your kids that like little candies. It's not terrible and if you're into health food you will enjoy the sensation that your tooth-rotting child is drinking something organic. I am not into health food and I wouldn't give this to my kid but my kid is under two and he shouldn't be drinking pop. Your kid can drink pop. I don't care. I'm not his dad. Am I his dad? I thought I was in the clear. Have my new found son call me. They've got some catching up to do and I've got a kid to inevitably disappoint.

I love that southern hip-hop culture is basically responsible for the entire existence of relaxation drinks. If you're not well versed on this, a lot of rappers talk about drinking cough syrup mixed with soda in their songs. It is commonly known as Drank, which I believe was also the name of the first relaxation drink. Lean named their various flavors of relaxation drinks after the different preferences different regions of the south had for their syrup. Lean cuts out the cough syrup and instead uses flavor syrup mixed with some pharmaceutical grade herbs. This way kids won't overdose on their syrup, and they can buy it over the counter.

Easta Pink was inspired by Lil Weezie. In it's original form it is cough syrup, Sprite, two Jolly Ranchers and some Skittles. The sounds like a sugar overload to me. While the Lean version is still very sweet, it has a very unique taste that doesn't remind me anything of Jolly Ranchers. If I had to pinpoint the flavor I would say that it was a can of Sprite that had those old timey strawberry hard candies melted into it. It's surprisingly tasty, and it will chill you right out. Here's to hoping that the reign of energy drinks is coming to an end and the world will just start to move in slow motion for a bit.

I sat down at my desk while I was drinking this pondering what exactly I had to say about this beverage when my decision was made for me. I had put it down after taking a sip to open up my browser and my cat, Other Barry, jumped up and instantly started licking it. After that there was no stopping him. It was like a killer dog getting itâ…‚¬…„¢s first taste of blood. Barry needed more and he needed it instantly. I kept pulling it away from him and he kept moving towards the bottle. I covered the top with my hand and he started pawing at me to get me to move it. When I finally put the cap back on, he just started gnawing at the bottle to get the sweet nectar that was inside. Heâ…‚¬…„¢s not the type of cat to eat â…‚¬Å“people food,â…‚¬Â so Fitness Edge should take it as a great compliment.

I donâ…‚¬…„¢t know if cats taste the same things us humans do, but to me this tastes like a decent berry juice with whole milk mixed in. Thatâ…‚¬…„¢s the whey protein doing its work. I normally not a fan of protein drinks, because I think milk is gross, and whey is grosser still. The berry in this does a good job masking the whey, but itâ…‚¬…„¢s still there. That weird thick chalky aftertaste as if itâ…‚¬…„¢s starting to spoil is just not for me. Keep in mind this drink isnâ…‚¬…„¢t as bad as others I have tried, so I will give it decent marks. I mean itâ…‚¬…„¢s a drink with a certain function, so you should expect some sort of weird taste to it. Iâ…‚¬…„¢d give this a three, but Other Barry would give it top marks. Heâ…‚¬…„¢s still trying to break into the bottle.

Mike scored some free tickets for us to go see Insane Clown Posse tonight. Now we both think that they resemble nothing close to good musically, but the whole culture is ridiculous and interesting. Mike compared us to Jane Goodall. We were going to interact with the "apes" in their natural habitat. All I can say is holy was that worth going to. As soon as we walked up to the club the ground was littered with empty Faygo bottles. We tried our hardest not to laugh and upset the natives. We got there right before ICP went on and took our place in the balcony. The show was complete insanity. The music was bad, but I didn't realize how much they ripped off 90's radio hip-hop beats, so that made it tolerable. The show was more than I ever could have expected. There were two huge tubs full of two-liters of Faygo (which creepy clowns kept coming out to refill) and Icp kept grabbing them to pour on the audience. Violent J had his move down. He held the mic with one hand, rapping, and with the other he would open the bottle of pop and shake it up spraying it on the crowd. He had it worked out that his thumb covered the hole, so after a few shakes he let go and the thing shot off like a goddamn rocket. Even in the balcony Mike and I got hit by flying Faygo. I can't imagine cleaning up the club after that. There was Faygo everywhere. They had to have gone through at least 200 two-liters of it. I'm not even exaggerating. I remember reading that Faygo doesn't work with them at all, so they are paying for all that soda, and that's ridiculous. On top of that there were streamers, confetti and feathers (who's going chicken huntin'?) everywhere. One great thing is that with all the "meth mouth" that was in the audience you would expect it to smell terrible at the show. Instead of horrible breath and body odor the entire place reeked of root beer. How great is that?

Twice during the set there were "Faygo Breaks." During this time an army of clowns came out and just poured buckets of Faygo into the audience and tossed out two liters like they were nothing. There were accompanied by an insane strobe light, carnival music and the creepiest chant of "Get some Faygo" that I have ever heard.

I grabbed a stray bottle of diet root beer as it flew by, took a swig and passed it to Mike. He did the same and passed it to the gentleman next to him in the 5XL hockey jersey who had more face paint on than anyone ever should. The dude pounded the rest of the bottle smiled and just said "FAM-A-LY" (yes they pronounce it "A" and not "I"). I can't make this stuff up. The root beer itself was better than I expected. It had a general generic root beer flavor and it didn't taste overly diet.

On our way out we grabbed a 1/4 full bottle of cola and got a video of some down Juggalos chugging it and pouring it on each other. This is a night that we shall not forget, especially since we're legally changing our names to Mikey 2 Dope and Violent J Draper.

Thirsty Dudes. ICP. FAM-A-LY.

I saw this in every rest stop and convenience store that I went to while in the UK. Nothing about it looked appealing to me, so I passed it by every single time (take note that this was before Thirsty Dudes, so I had no contractual obligation to drink it). The label looks childish and not appetizing. As my ladyfriend pointed out something about it is reminiscent of Irn Bru, which I am also not a fan of.

I don't know where Mike got this from, but when he handed it to me I sighed and said, “Fine I'll do it.” I really expected this to be bubble gum flavored, which would have been infinitely worse than what it actually tastes like. It really tastes like carbonated sugar water with a little bit of lemon in it. There is that weird Gatorade flavor in there as well. What I expected to be some sort of weird, crazy British energy drink turns out to be a slightly carbonated sports drink. There isn't even any caffeine in it. All of its “energy” seems to come from sugar and lactose acid. Now I have no idea why athletes would want to drink something carbonated immediately before or after crushing it on the field, but I guess that's what people do “across the pond.” Man I hate that phrase.

Since I don't watch Canadian television much I'm not sure if this has happened or not, but it really should. Picture this: a fade in with some synth bass and a drum machine playing in the background. The scene is young women's bedroom and she's laying in her bed wearing a ripped up shirt and way too much jewelry. As it pans in we realize that it's Madonna (well a 1986 Madonna look alike) and she's getting frustrated playing around with a keyboard and sheets of music and lyrics litter the room. She just can't seem to write her next big hit. She decides she needs to take a break so she goes over to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of juice. She takes a sip and inspiration hits her. Just like that. She runs over to her bed aka workstation with a big goofy grin and starts working feverishly. By the end she's playing along and singing with the song that has been playing in the background and just as it gets to the end of the chorus and she sings the line “True Blue baby I love you,” the camera zooms in on the now mostly finished bottle of juice on her nightstand. It doesn't get better than that ladies and gentlemen. You get one hell of a song, one hell of a drink and a nice 80's throwback that all the kids are raving about these days.

I know what you're thinking and yes I am available to write ads for you as well, just get a hold of my agent. Oh, that's not what you were thinking at all? You actually want to know what the juice tastes like? Well, it certainly tastes blue, with a little purple in the mix. You see True Blue went a bit out of their color spectrum and used grape juice as filler in this drink. You can really taste both the blue and blackberries in this, but the taste of grape is always lingering in the background. I have no problem with that uninvited little fruit. It's actually kind of nice. It's also not as sweet as you would expect it to be. There is still 29g of sugar in this, but it doesn't taste that sweet. It's always a nice treat to not have an overly sweetened juice. Oh and if you spill any of this on a carpet or a couch, forget about ever getting it out. This blue is true and is staining forever.

Frankenstorm. Is that what they're calling it? Frankenstorm? All of the Thirsty Dudes are from Buffalo and we know a thing or two about storms. "The October Storm" is a storm that locals refer to as "The October Storm" but in actuality happened like six or seven years ago. We still call it that. I know there was "The Blizzard Of '77" but that has a year attached to it. "The October Storm" hit like nothing anyone has ever seen with warm, then melt, then flash freeze and then it just rained branches and snow simultaneously.

Canada felt a little bit, too, I bet, being so close an I know that some people were stuck in their homes. One thing that can survive without a fridge is Canada Dry. I don't know why, but it's always carbonated. Industry secrets. I guess if I was hunkered down in some iced over bomb shelter Canada Dry as the refreshment wouldn't be too bad. One step better would be this cranberry variety. It's a nice blend of the classic taste and a new, fruity twist. It's not too sweet so when you're in your temporary concrete, windowless retreat, you aren't bugging out with too much sugar. I'm not sure why, but I'm thinking that the shelter is set up like one of those church rec rooms with all old, used furniture, dark, wood paneling, and just decks of pinochle cards and not a "regular" deck of cards at all. That decor mixed with cranberry Canada Dry is defiantly better than some have it, but it's only half ideal. It makes you wish you took that winter vacation to the Florida Keys like you were planning. Hindsight is twenty twenty my friend.

I've been a big fan of the other two Capone sodas I've had, and while this is not bad by any means it leaves a bit to be desired. The vanilla and sweet soda flavors are both there, but they are both just kind of …€¦ separate. They don't really blend together the way I want them to. It is certainly better than any sort of store brand cream soda, but for what I was expecting from the ginger beer and root beer it's just not quite there. I'm guessing that everyone out there will probably enjoy this a great deal. Comparison and expectations will just be the death of me.