It is amazing what a little Monster in your back pocket will do. With Hansen’s big hit on the energy drink shelves, they have the wiggle room to try to grow out into all the different canned drink markets. Hansen’s has a sport drink line, a mixer line, a juice, a coffee and now they have branched into the tea market with Hansen’s Natural Primal Energy Pomegranate Green Tea. While this has been on the market in years past, they are going full throttle with their new Hansen’s Natural line – getting into Whole Foods and other natural food stores touting their great health and good-for-you energy.
Taste:3
I have had a lot of canned green tea – so I thought I knew what I was getting. Pomegranate green tea made with all natural stuff should taste very sweet and flavorful – I was thinking this would be like the Who’s Your Daddy line. I was totally taken aback after the first swallow, as I got a barely sweet chalky carbonated mess in my mouth. Maybe I was just expecting something sweet and tasty, and instead I got highly carbonated sour soda – but natural does not need to taste like Organic Ass Soda. After a while I settled in with the flavor, and although it never tasted good, it stopped tasting so very bad.
I think the problem is that these cans were placed next to the bottles of the most vile thing on the planet, Kombucha Tea. My hypothesis is that the Kombucha nastiness leaked out of its container and infected the can of Hansen’s natural teas sitting next to them. Like a virus, this spread through the shelf contaminating all the Hansens natural sodas, so that by the time I got to the Natural soda at the end of the isle, is was already filled with evil.
Buzz:nutrition:7
For slugging this whole thing in me, the least I wanted for my trouble is a good dose of energy – which I heard was pretty decent. While that might have been the case for some, this gave me the energy to make it home from a shopping trip with the kids and take a nice 20 minute nap.
Thank goodness I had another sample of On Go energy to help wake me up. Although, like all Monster products, this one does not list the caffeine ( which they label as coming from natural sources coffee and green tea). My guess is there was about 150-170mg of caffeine in here – not enough to keep my eyelids from crashing shut on a hot weekend.
I did like the healthy angle though, using cane sugar and real pomegranate extract – very different than the usual Hansen’s chemical lineup. With lots of Vitamin B, taurine and all the other energy drink ingredients in here – this was some pretty healthy stuff. And really, I can not blame a Monster for being a Monster.
Packaging:9
Borrowing a page from their lineup of successful coffee drinks, Hansen’s redid their old silly packaging with this beautiful new one – enticing the drinker with cool symbols and rich vibrant color. In terms of layout, this can is magnificent. There is a bit of cool writing on the side, some great font choices and is about as eye catching as you can get.
As for the mechanics, it suffers a bit. There is only the single label, so it is harder for clerks to face and gets wrongly placed on shelves. There is no listing of caffeine, so you are not sure how much you are getting. and the cap is not on showing the brilliant design. But these are small flaws in an overall beauty.