'Subtle' doesn't even begin to describe the packaging. 'Eyeball-rupturingly garish', however, is right on the money.

A while ago, while working for my previous employer, a man called Alex tried to persuade me not to buy a can of Rockstar and warned me that it tasted deeply vile.  Naturally, this very act caused me to hand over my money and promptly pour the entire can down my throat, resulting in my making a face the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the last time Sid James got his rocks off and then vowing never to drink it ever again.

So today, while wandering around Tesco, I noticed that the makers of Rockstar have realised that their product tastes rather similar to carbonated tramp piss – and, to try to mitigate this minor issue, they’ve stuck a bunch of orange juice in there to mask the horror.

Well, the good news is that it works.  Rockstar Juiced is probably one of the best-tasting canned energy drinks that I’ve ever had – it’s pretty much exactly the same as drinking half a litre of Fanta with light tropical overtones – apple, mango and passion fruit, to be specific.  They’re natural flavours, too, which is helpful.

There’s no disappointment to the caffeine content, either, with the same concentration as Red Bull but in a larger volume can.

Same caffeine content as Red Bull, but twice the volume of a normal-sized Red Bull can.

Ginseng is a good addition – it’s a stimulant on its own, but its activity when combined with caffeine tends to be greater than the sum of its parts.  And it’s also nice to see that we have an energy drink which actually contains the energy (in sugar form) that the caffeine/ginseng/taurine will aid in releasing.

It’s doing quite well, up to now.  Ingredients are good, taste is good, and the can design means that it essentially doubles as a traffic cone.

It’s a shame, then, that it’s crap.

The first thing that this stuff did was mess my stomach up.  Half an hour after drinking this, my body decided that my insides were getting a bit restless and fancied an outing on the porcelain flumes instead.

And as for alertness, a complete lack of it.  I’m now an hour down the line and nothing’s happened whatsoever.  Which is bizarre, considering the amount of caffeine in this thing, but I’m calling it how I see it, and how I see it is mildly drowsily.

Which is a shame, because it tastes really good.

GUYS GUYS GUESS WHAT WHEN YOU PRESS THIS BUTTON IT MAKES A DROP SHADOW

So this afternoon, I went to Tesco to grab some lunch (I may work in Shoreditch, but I’m damned if I’ve gone searching for actual interesting places to eat there yet).  Next to the Kx (rebranded from Kick) own-brand drink was this wonderful, questionably branded energy drink. Its ingredients, in English and Polish, set with glorious blocky Verdana, drew me in.  And just to make sure that I was convinced, it was endorsed by a man called Darek “Tiger” Michalczewski who appeared to be wearing a white shirt, jacket and pointing his finger in a threatening manner.  This, surely, was a promise of preposterous amounts of testostorone.

Preposterone.

What I discovered upon opening this aluminium prison of pure, liquid manliness, was a pale yellow fluid that I presume is the tears of Darek’s enemies with a little vanilla added to taste. Which is quite strong, actually, to the degree that with every sip you start to realise that with any other energy drink, a taste this strong would mean the impending arrival of a world-shattering aftertaste.

However, Darek appears to have used his powers for good in this case.  Just as you think the wave of horror is about to break, it…goes away.  A slight sweet taste remains, but that’s about it.  It’s actually quite pleasant.

Darek'll fix it for you.

As for energy, this is definitely hitting me harder than Red Bull does.  A cheekily fast uplift, followed by a fairly extended plateau.  There a little twitchiness here, but nothing unmanageable.

Nothing about this drink is right.  The branding, the packaging, Darek’s sternly masculine form, the colour of the liquid that you’re putting in you or the smell of it when you pop the can.  But, like Dave Lister’s famous sandwich, it all comes together to form a surprising success.

May Darek be with you, dear reader.

This will rape your mother, kill your father and then eat you.

The Relentless Energy Shot.  In its surprisingly utilitarian ‘cheap plastic bottle with a label glued on’ packaging, you could be forgiven for thinking that the purchase of one of these things might be an ego-boosting stroke of forward planning.  “Aha!”, you think to yourself, as I did. “I’ll buy a few of these, carry them around in my bag and when I’m knackered I’ll knock one back, wake up a bit and everything will be fine.”

Well, you’re half right. Two things went through my mind when I opened this bottle and poured it into my mouth.  The first was, “Sod the Quick Energy Shot, this is what pure industrialism would taste like”, and the second was “OH GOD I CAN STILL TASTE IT SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME OH GOD.”

Yes, I’m afraid so.  It tastes horrendous.  Fortunately, we’re only talking about – in the marketing blurb’s own words – a ’shot’.  50ml, to be precise.  And I’ll give it its dues, after you’ve swallowed it down, wondered how something can taste this metallic and artificial and still not be corrosive, and rinsed out your mouth with something, anything that tastes less disgusting, you will experience what I can only describe as an ethereal roundhouse kick delivered right to the very centre of your consciousness.

There’s only 80mg of caffeine in this, as well as the obligatory taurine, inositol and gluconurolactone, but for some reason it hits you a lot harder than a can of your favourite Red Bull-alike.

I spent the first ten minutes wondering if I was vibrating fast enough to walk through walls.  This is a brutal, brutal energy drink, and it is going to give you the shakes. I drink a fairly reasonable amount of coffee / Red Bull / ’stuff what makes you go’, and the buzz that I got from this was quietly peeking over the wall on the uncomfortable side of things.  Then again, I did have it in the office, and I get the feeling that if you were expending plenty of energy then it might be quite a pleasant experience.

Quick? Yes. Healthy? Probably not. Energy? Hold on to your underwear.

I found this garish monstrosity on an adventure to find beer a few weeks ago. After being promised ‘Quick. HEALTHY. ENERGY.’, I couldn’t resist inviting it back to my flat with the intention of letting it slide itself inside me.

See, now I feel dirty.  Anyway.

One thing that I’ve learned from my experience with energy shots is that they taste really quite bad.  This is to be expected – generally, psychoactive chemicals don’t taste very good at all, so a strong flavouring gets added – but this stuff took me by surprise.  It’s very similar to drinking neat orange squash – very sickly, quite persistent but not entirely unpleasant, and for an energy shot that’s pretty high praise.

One thing that I’ve decided to do with these energy shots is to actually take a look at the liquids themselves.  This is no exception, so I poured it out into a shot glass emblazoned with the Jack Daniels logo – in the hopes that Almighty Jack, our Lord and Saviour of shitty clubnights, might look down from on high and bless this endeavour.  And by ‘bless this endeavour’, I do of course mean ‘stop me from getting a massive fucking heart attack’.

Fortunately, I’m still writing, so I must have done something right.

This stuff is the colour of unicorn piss.

It’s pale pink.  This is surprising considering how strong it tastes, but the surprise fades when you remind yourself that absolutely nothing natural is dissolved in it.  This is a glass of industry, a glass full of Robert Louis Stephenson’s vision of a mechanised Utopia.  Which is interesting, considering it’s essentially WD-40 for the brain.

And how.  Rocket-powered uplift, which plateaus for about three hours, followed by a gradual return to normal energy levels.  If you can brave the very brief OH GOD MY FACE IS MELTING as the stimulants kick in, you’ll be set to go without any significant discomfort.

I like this stuff.  Of all the energy shots that I’ve had, this is the best, even if its packaging does look like it was designed by a twelve year old with a copy of MS Paint and a pirated version of Illustrator circa 2001.