High Fructose Corn Syrup - 485 Reviews

For a product that seemed to be a flop in the review world, Mountain Dew is still pushing hard with their Kick Start line. I guess it does help that they seem to have stopped pushing that idea that it was a morning beverage to replace your coffee. There is definitely a time in the day when it is too early to be drinking soda, so that being your main marketing scheme was just bound to fail. The thing is that when you take that aspect out of it (as they seem to have done), these sodas aren't terrible tasting. I think it was just the idea of waking up and downing a can of soda that was turning everyone off.

With these new flavors, the cans mention nothing of morning or breakfast, just that it will give you a hydrating boost; a much better attempt in my book. They are still soda that contains juice (only 10% but it's better than nothing). As an added bonus this new flavor also has coconut water in it. Overall it tastes like a new flavor of Mountain Dew, but a little smoother. It's pretty much their flagship flavor with a little pineapple and mango thrown in, and then they water it down a tiny bit with coconut water. I must say I enjoy it a lot more than the original.

The company has also decided to take the route of going half and half with sweeteners. While a lot of companies are mixing cane sugar and stevia for a lower calorie count, Mountain Dew went the cheaper (grosser) way of mixing high fructose corn syrup and sucralose. The diet flavor is pretty much masked, but it still pops out a little bit, and that I could do without.

I was had. I am in Florida, Cape Canaveral to be exact. No, I am not here to see space stuff. NASA stuff would be cool and it's actually pretty close but I'm here for a cruise. An exotic cruise to the Bahamas. Part of me thought that the Bahamas was a place that only rich people went to. Since I'm able to go, it couldn't be further than the truth. So, back to why I was had.

It's night time. I am in a hotel the night before the cruise. I need to look around for drinks when I am away from home. There isn't much to pick from around here and I do not know the area. There was a gas station a quarter of a mile away and a 7-Eleven a half mile away. I made the poor decision of taking the shorter route. I'm overreacting, of course, but there was nothing here. I chose a melon Powerade because Florida. We had done sour melon so I thought; I'll do the regular variety. I am pretty sure that the execs at Coke said, "You know what, Johnny? We're not selling anything to those weaklings as "sour melon" so let's drop the "sour" part of the name and keep selling the same thing." This is sour and tasted like the melon did. I'm going to call it a different review because in the case that it is different, you now know what the non-sour one tastes like. In short, this tastes like sour...I don't know...honeydew? I don't know what melon it actually is. Picking from watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe it is closest to some sort of man-made honeydew. It's that mixed with the same thing that makes sour apple Jolly Ranchers sour and you've got it.

Florida. You're mostly fine. Don't try to pull one over on me. You're fine.

Ah, familial holiday parties, what a better time to eat more garbage than you ever would on a normal day and also get a standard beverage review out of the way for Thirsty Dudes. Somewhere in the haze of cookies, pies and ice cream I found myself with this bottle of Schweppes.

Sometimes it boggles my mind when I realize we haven't reviewed a certain drink. As it turns out when we started this website we wanted to review the drinks that people might not be as familiar with, and now we have some catching up to do on the usual suspects. To me Schweppes is THE classic ginger ale. It's what was around when I was young and it's what I was given when I had a stomach ache. Side note to parents it's the ginger in old time ginger ale that soothed the stomach. In most modern ginger ales the amount of actual ginger included is minimal if it's there at all.

If you've ever had a ginger ale you can imagine how this tastes. It's a ginger beverage that contains very little ginger, so it has zero burn, but sometimes that is just what you're looking for. To me this is what all store brand ginger ales are based off of. It is superior to them, but it's that type of ginger ale. It's sweet, quasi ginger flavored sparkling water; exactly what you would expect from a “big soda” ginger ale.

I've been trying to figure out how to best describe the flavor of this soda. It has a specific taste that I just could not put my finger on, as hard as I might try. I decided to go back and read some reviews of other guarana flavored sodas that we have written, and none of them seemed quite right. In the past I have talked about how sodas of this nature taste like a fruitier version of kola champagne aka liquid bubble gum. Seeing as this doesn't completely gross me out and make me feel like I'm drinking a sweet shop, I kept reading. I finally came across a review where I compared guarana to pineapple flavored bubble gum, and I believe that is as accurate as I'm going to get. Luckily the gum flavor is pretty low. Actually, so is the pineapple. It's like someone took hints of those two flavors and mixed it in with a general fruitiness. They then took that concoction and mixed it with generic bubbly sugar water. The result is this soda.

The bottle says nothing about caffeine, but the guarana plant has one of the highest concentrations of caffeine found in nature, so I'm sure this thing will pack a punch that will wake unexpecting people right up. Me, I'm just going to have a couple of sips and see where things take me.

Who would have ever guessed that carrot juice could be so good? I mean I am a friend of the carrot, and I enjoy eating them in their crisp, raw form, but I never thought I would take pleasure in drinking their life-juice. Let's be fair, there is a lot of sugar in here. I mean an obscene amount, like 65g. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the enjoyment factor. It also helps that apples, pears and mangos are also in the mix. The combination of all of these fruits and vegetables creates an unusual fruit punch that you won't be seeing in gallon buckets. The flavor here is almost all mango and carrot. The apple falls into the “sweet taste” category and I can't really make out the pear.

This could have been a nice healthy juice if it were freshly concocted without added sweeteners, but the high fructose corn syrup throws any health benefits out the window. It actually makes me feel fairly guilty for having drunk this entire bottle. That is so much unnecessary sugar I just ingested. Well, at least it tasted pretty great.

In a short span of time the Day of the Dead will be upon us. The dead will be remembered and honored as altars are built and sugar skulls are created and eaten. I'm pretty sure that all of those left over sugar skulls that are leftover will them be melted down to sweeten these particular energy drinks. Seriously these things are way sweeter than they need to be. I have compared energy drinks to liquid candy a ridiculous amount of times on this website, so it only seems fitting.

Other than the sweetness of this is it a pretty standard energy drink that has been flavored by the memories of the dead. Actually that's not completely accurate. At first I thought it tasted like a cherry Red Bull, but with each sip it tasted more and more like a plain cherry soda. It's very grenadine heavy, but by the time I was 2/3 through with the can any sort of classic energy drink flavor was out the window. It was simply cherry soda water, taste wise. Perhaps that is what the ghosts of your ancestors want and who are we to argue with them?

If this beverage is supposed to be a tribute to American soldiers who are in the armed forces, Rip It surely does not think much of them or this country. One would think that if you are honoring something you would put some time and energy into creating something that is of at least a minimum of quality. Rip It only delivers a soda that is as generic as can be that is extremely lightly flavored to an extent that it seems like they were running out of flavor syrup so they stretched it out by adding far too much water. Nothing about this tastes like an energy drink, which can be nice sometimes, but not when the flavor that replaces it is so unremarkable.

This drink tells me that Rip It hates the troops and wants them to drink this gross generic beverage. I bet this is what would have been given to the troops when they came home from Vietnam and people spit on them.

I didn't realize it until now, but Mountain Holler is the Save-A-Lot store brand, specifically their store brand version of Mountain Dew. This can was given to me by fellow soda enthusiast Dakota Floyd on my last trip down to Atlanta. We always appreciate it when people keep us in the loop of beverage we have not come across/reviewed.

Just looking at this can/name I instantly knew this was going to be their take on Code Red Mountain Dew. It isn't an exact clone of the original, but it is fairly close. The citrus base falls somewhere between a classic Mountain Dew and our long lost favorite (at least when I was in my late teens) Surge. It's as if someone mixed equal parts of those two sodas and then dumped some cherry syrup in for good measure. Perhaps it was too much of a good measure as it has a borderline cough syrup taste.

To be honest I might like this a bit more than Code Red, as it does have that slight Surge-ness to it, but I'm sure I would be called a blasphemer by those loyal to the Church of Dew. On a side note, my friend Tony stated that he can't' drive past a Save-A-Lot without singing it to the tune of “We Care A lot” by Faith No More. I'm right there with him, as I can also only assure are thousands of others.

Chili oil. Natures gag gift. Oh, is this regular oil? Uh, no. It's chili oil and you just got pranked. Now your mouth is on fire and I'm sitting back laughing. Now, so that everything is out in the open, here I give to you chili oil Ramune. Now you can know what you're getting into. Is it hot like that prank chili oil? Hardly, bro. Hardly. It is a light tickling and, if anything, kind of a refreshing burn similar to one you would get from a light ginger beer but with a fruity pop instead of a...well...ginger. This is a mix between a kids party pop and "I'm an adult and I'm too old for fun and I like to feel pain when I drink" drink. Where are you on the teeter-totter of life. Whatever spectrum you identify with, this has your bases covered. I just wish there was more pain. I guess I know what side I'm on.

Now, listen. You will be happy to know that this is not only a review for a strange and odd drink but it is a milestone. No it's not a sweet sixteen or a sweet sixty. That stuff is for the birds. This review that you are reading right now is, get ready for it. This review is Thirsty Dudes' 4,000th review. That's right. Four thousand. This is not Europe or whatever where they use commas for decimals points and we have reviewed four and no thousandths drinks. This is America and we idiotically use the standard system of measurement and that comma denotes that we have reviewed four thousands drinks. To celebrate we have provided you with a video that we blew our entire marketing budget on. Our marketing budget is, but should not be, zero dollars.



Thank you to all the fans and if you see us, shake our hands. We have done a lot of drinking and it wasn't all for us. It was for you, the people. The fans. The groupies. The dedicated followers of us, the Thirsty Dudes.

If you like pina-col…€¦..wait no, that's not right. There is any colada anywhere to be found in this soda. I kind of doubt that there is any actual pina in here as well. Actually, I'm fairly positive that no pineapples were harmed in the making of this pop. It's just your standard generic pineapple soda. Sure it tastes closer to oranges and cherries than their generic sodas do, but it's still a fake flavor.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that this may be the worst pineapple soda I have ever tasted. It's more plain sugar water than fake pineapple flavor. This is the only soda by the Motor City company that has been less than average. I didn't even make it to the top of the label, before I decided to call it quits. Good for me watching my sugar intake (at least minimally) but bad for Faygo. You can now return to singing your song about potential infidelity.

I enjoy watermelon. I enjoy pineapple. I enjoy a nice fruit salad in the summertime. I enjoy that Big Shot took the time to put two summertime classics together but in typical Big Shot fashion, it's just garbage pop.

Look, New Orleans. Get it together. You've got a lot going for you. Musically you are a wonderful place. Foodically you are a wonderful place. Leave it at that. Drinks can go to someone else. You don't need to have your hands in everything. You're bound to just spread yourself too thin.

This tastes like sharp candy and not like fruit. It tastes like if you had a generic watermelon and generic pineapple mix, said to yourself, "Oh, that would be interesting." and then went ahead and made it. No thought. Just two flavors that sounded good on paper put together and pushed out to the masses. Anyone who can finish this deserves equal part insane asylum invitation and badge of honor. You can't have both because the badge is sharp and you could hurt yourself and we don't want that.

This is a beverage for all of those times that you find yourself in Innerspace/Fantastic Voyage type scenarios. You know something happens internally to someone and only you can be shrunk down to travel inside their person and right the wrongs of the human body. It may sound like a walk in the park, but there are anti-bodies in humans that simply do not like outsiders, they are kind of racist that way. In order to sneak by them we suggest that you drape yourself in pink real tree camo. It's the only appropriate attire for inter-body warfare.

Exploring the interworking of a human can take quite some time when you're that small. You need to be aware and alert the entire time, so why not down this energy drink that will blend right in with your camo. You can drink it while inside your friend and the antibodies will be none the wiser. Unfortunately convenience doesn't always taste the greatest. This is supposed to be pink lemonade flavored, but it just tastes like sweet lemon poison. It's one of those beverages that if you served to someone say 20 years ago they would have seriously thought you were serving them poison. As a species we've become so acclimated to the taste of energy drinks that we no longer remember how weird and kind of wrong they tasted the first time we tried them. This beverage has that weirdness turned up to ten. It's more chemical than lemonade. It's like they're not even trying to mask it.

I guess sacrifices must be made when you shrink yourself into a tiny person. Get in there save the day, come out through a nostril or ear and become the hero you were born to be. Just make sure not to leave your trash behind. That could wreak havoc on the person you're trying to save.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We have done it. We have compressed all that you love about apples and turned it into a liquid that closely resembles that of its original, solid form. Please hold for applause. We have some more explaining to do. We've taken apples, actual apples and compressed them down until their poor skins cannot contain their contents any longer and when that happened, we compressed even more to release the sweet nectar of the apple. Then we added a little bit of sugar, you know, for fun.

Now, and only until now, can you applaud and get in line to shake the hand at the scientists that we gave massive amounts of money at to develop this master beverage. Why isn't anyone clamoring to allow these scientists, these masters of men, to impregnate their wives and determine the worthiness of their very being? I'm sorry sir, what did you say? Apple juice exists? Surely you jest. This has never been done before. What do you mean that baby has some? Baby, come here. Give me your bottle. Oh, you're very cute. Thank you. I promise I will not drink your entire bottle. I am a scientist, not a monster.

Huh. Well. This is a bit humiliating. It appears that this drink which you peasants call "apple juice" does exist and is readily available. It appears we have not only wasted your time calling you out of your homes and work, but have also wasted tens of thousands of dollars on developing something that all of you are more than familiar with. Perhaps us scientists should stop working in caves and go outside into the sunshine and fraternize with the people to find out what they really want. Our bad.

I'm pretty sure that if I was at some sort of gathering for my ladyfriend's family/friends and I was given this to drink, I would lean over and whisper/plead in her ear “Do I have to?” It would be an honest question as well, because I have no concept of how far I have to take social niceties so that I don't seem like a complete mutant. I don't often interact with “normal people” or grownups (yes I know I'm 35, but I swear I'm still a kid), and as a result I don't know how to properly act around them and I have a tendency to anger people or make them feel uncomfortable. So when someone hands you an iced tea by a company who doesn't have a great track record (and you've already turned down their offers for beer and other alcoholic beverages several times), can you say no thank you, or do you just accept it with a smile?

I will say that had I accepted with a smile, I wouldn't have been terribly disappointed. This is lacking the harshness that normally accompanies the Brisk name. It's also sweetened by a mixture of high fructose corn syrup and sucralose, which makes it more palatable. I mean sure it still tastes more like sweetened liquid than it does actual tea, but would you expect anything different?

There is no real mango in here, but it still mimics the taste at least slightly. I have to admit that this is the most reserved flavor of Brisk I have yet to encounter. Nothing is blasting you in the face. It's pretty calm on all fronts. It's still not great, but it's something I can sip on without grumbling too many complaints.

Just churning it out, just churning out garbage. Some companies use high quality ingredients handpicked from local gardens. Those people are not these people. These people...these people. These people are making carbonated poison as far as I'm concerned. Look, it's not that bad. I mean, it's bad, don't get me wrong.

This has that strange, sharpness that you don't want in anything you ingest. I mean, there aren't any great fruit punches around but this is worse than your average bear and fruit punch. Fruity? Yep. Not anything you should find yourself drinking.

For four long days I was in Florida last month. I was on tour with Cheap Girls, and I flew down there to meet up with them. When I left Buffalo I was still wearing a jacket. Within two minutes of walking out the door at the airport in Tampa I was drenched in sweat. I don't understand how people live down there. I mean I know people probably say the same thing about the cold in Buffalo, but I feel it's easier to warm up then cool down. Even though most of my 96 hours in the Sunshine State were spent sweating I refer to that as the dry portion of the trip. You see in those couple of days I only found a single beverage that we had not reviewed yet, and that is this can of 7Up. I wasn't even that excited when I found it because I thought it was just a new flavor that I would be seeing everywhere. Nope. I should have known better from the Spanish on the can.

The funny thing is that even though it was all I could find down there I still didn't drink it until a couple weeks after returning home. I am not a fan of 7Up. Like all lemon lime sodas I find it very boring. It's a flavor that I wish didn't exist. Sparkling lemonades are great. Lime soda is wonderful. So why does the combination of the two leave me unfulfilled? Lucky for me this is nothing like the original. I would liken it to one of the whacky Mountain Dew flavors, but with 7Up as the base. It certainly tastes tropical. It tastes like it's mostly mango, but there are other flavors in there as well that leave it not tasting natural. Like I said it has that Mountain Dew feel to it, but that boring base is hiding beneath the fun and excitement. If this was marketed as a Dew flavor I probably wouldn't have batted an eye, but that lemon lime flavor is hiding in the murky soda of the can.

You've got Brisk, aka, the worst "iced tea" money can buy, right? Let's all be civil about this and just come together and agree on this one thing. You've got Israel and Palestine, which no one can agree on. That's fine. I think they call that a "stalemate" right? An unwinable situation. Brisk is cut and dry. Black and white. You've got that. We have to live in this world and lets call it like it is.

You've got Brisk. You mix brisk with lemonade and cherry and you get...drumroll...a weak cherry lemonade juice conglomerate. It's not terrible and it's actually better the more room temperature it gets. Maybe that's the problem I've been having all these years is that I like a nice, cold iced tea and I've been giving myself these things that my body craves but with Brisk, it's the opposite. I should be drinking it like I drink a hot chocolate. Sounds completely unrefreshing but who knows? This, once lukewarm, loses the bite that Brisk has and you can taste some cherry and some lemonade. I should put those in quotes. Let's try that again. It tastes like "cherry" and "lemonade." It's like an artist depiction of those flavors. It tastes like a cherry and like lemonade but isn't one of those things. It's close. If you could have something taste a fraction of what it tastes like, that's what this is. It's not weak, it just doesn't taste like what it's "supposed" to taste like.

There has been a lot of quoting in this. Maybe this whole thing is an art installation. I'm waiting for someone to come in wearing sweater shorts and no shirt with a noose around their neck that says something like "Mother" and music plays that is nothing but someone yelling, "Father." Am I plagiarizing someone's art exhibit? If so, you should stop being an artist and pursue something else, like customer service or call center operator.

They taketh away and they giveth back. They recently closed my Arby's. Tears streaming down my face, right? Swimming in a sea of my salty sadness, I dealt with my loss of a local Jamocha shake. As soon as I shook it like a love lost, Dunkin' Donuts twists the knife and releases this guy and they do it well.

I don't know about "ice cream flavors" unless you're got very refined tastes but that's what this was released under the collection "Ice Cream Flavors." Cookie Dough and Butter Pecan yes. I have had those ice creams. Jamocha Almond Fudge Swirl sounds like a great ice cream that just doesn't exist yet. That being said I've got a small iced coffee version of it inside of me and am pleased to say that it can stay as long as it wants because it was rather great. Good coffee taste but well rounded by the chocolate and/or fudge. The almond I couldn't really get but I didn't miss it. Sure I love almonds and if I died today, the mortician would say, "Man, I can't believe that Dunkin' Donuts just kept stabbing him but this kid sure did eat a lot of almonds. Also here are all the pennies that he ate as a kid that didn't get digested. There is thirteen cents in here. Here, Tom, we'll split it since you're holding his ribcage open and have earned your cut."

A small was enough. Anyone who gets a larger one clearly doesn't know what a vegetable is and should be both mentally and physically evaluated.

We've all heard of block clubs. Neighbors get together to discuss ways to prevent crime, improve their neighborhood and throw the annual block party. I must warn you that if you live in a neighborhood that has a block club, and you choose not to participate, you will become an outcast and will be referred to as “the squatters.” Okay to be fair we really were squatting. Our landlord who lived upstairs just disappeared and stopped cashing our checks, so we stopped leaving them. We lived rent-free for about two years before his less than dramatic return. The house needed a paint job, and a new roof, but we took better care of it than if it was left to rot. The grass was cut. We picked up the garbage and were respectful of the neighbors. I wish they had treated us with the same respect. Oh well.

So yeah…€¦block clubs. Did you know that just outside Detroit there's a little town with such a low population that instead of a block club, they have a town club? They serve the same basic purpose as it's smaller counterpart, except on a larger scale. It's a paradise in the middle of a burnt out city. It's actually quite nice an pleasant if you're into the Mayberry scene. In addition to neighborhood watches, cleanups and parties they also run a small soda company called, well…€¦Towne Club. It's the extra “E” that keeps them classy. They produce a line of completely middle of the road sodas, but that's just fine. Someone has to do it, and they do it with love, so there's that.

They decided it was time to add a cherry soda to their line, and why not give it a little taste of home and call it Michigan cherry? I mean their production runs weren't huge, and it was rare that anyone outside of the “mitten state” would get their hands on one of these, but incase they did they wanted them to know where it came from. The 3% juice that it was comprised of did come from their back yards. Why not flaunt it? That little bit of juice really goes a long way in the soda game. This stands out in the cherry soda game. It has a slightly unique flavor that does not taste like couch syrup. Bravo for that Towne Club. Now work on fixing all the potholes in your state.

Brisk has expanded their list of beverages with their new Half & Half line. We've talked a lot of trash about this company throughout the years, yet they took the high road and sent us some samples of the new flavors. I didn't know they had it in them, but that was a classy move.

When I first saw this, my initial thought was, “Of course it's Brisk, so there is a ridiculous amount of it.” 24oz of their products seemed like more than any human should really ingest. This though, this was something different. For starters in order to cut down the amount of sugar in the drink they mixed high fructose corn syrup and sucralose. The result was only 13g of sugar per serving (39 per tall boy). It sounds like an absolute disaster, but somehow they have made it work. It's not very syrupy and yet it doesn't taste diet at all. Actually it doesn't have that harsh Brisk flavor at all. I was pleasantly surprised that I actually enjoyed this.

This tastes like 3 parts mango and passionfruit green tea and one part lemonade. Actually the ratios might be even more skewed as I hardly taste the lemonade. It tastes like a version of bubble tea (minus the tapioca) that would be available in a gas station. It's not mind blowing, but it has its merits and is much better than I anticipated. I would happily drink this again, I just wish it came in a smaller container, as I have no self control when it comes to beverages and I drink until it's gone. Good thing I don't partake in alcohol, or my life would be a mess.