Jump Start Apple Orchard is out of the Us. Out of L. A., actually, even though the only placer I have seen this drink was in a border town off the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. The drink packaging is really poor, which usually means a poor drink. Not so much with this one, giving off a surprisingly good taste and high kick.
You know what you are getting into with this drink when you see what else the company who makes this, Green Planet Products, manufactures and wholesales. These fine people also supply your local headshop with bongs and detoxifiers, air purifiers and even hair nets. However, going onto the Green Planet Product website is the only place you can find the Jump Start Energy Drink Video, a 35 meg beast – and very worth it! Macho men and busty women dancing for OVER 8 MINUTES – and the worst voice over EVER!!!! seriously, I believe they read the wikipedia entry on what energy drinks are over cheezy music as people ride jet skis and tan in convertibles. I felt my brains slipping out of my ears while viewing this – watching women crawl on the beach and jog bouncily for no reason at all, while voiceover guy growls about how energy drinks can be sour, or sweet.

Packaging:2
One of the strangest combination of fonts ever used in one drink. The entire company logo is done in the fonts from the movie The Dark Crystal , which does not usually invoke feelings of powerful energy. That’s OK, as it is followed immediately by an odd bamboo font and that is followed by a sillier sand-looking font. Except for the drink flavor, written in a calligraphy font that does not fit anything. And the printing job is so bad that you cant read most of the can anyways. This is all on a very cheap aluminum, and you could still make out the printer dots, meaning they did not even use a high enough resolution on the printer. It took me about 10 minutes of staring on this can before I even saw the apples in green at the bottom. Really, time to start from scratch with this can.

Nutrition/Buzz:5
Not bad – delivering 200mg of caffeine per can, plus the full host of energy ingredients (B vitamins, ginseng, inositol, taurine). This is no different than the hundreds of other energy drinks. This gets a slightly better rating because of the 100mg per serving of caffeine, but other than that it is just another high fructose corn syrup soda wanting to play with the big boys. This stuff is a pop that certainly wont sell because of its original ingredients

Taste:7
The one good thing about this drink is the flavor is actually sweet. They managed to pull off a nice very fake green apple flavor – which is complimented by the fake green color. As an apple soda goes, this is not that bad, of course it is not that great either, leaving a sticky sourness in your mouth afterwards as well.

Website:2
as would be expected with such poor packaging and run of the mill ingredients, this drink’s website is well below par too. We start off with horribly cheesy music – a crap song ripped from some bad somputer game in the 90s. It plays whether you want it to or not, and has no way of shutting it down. The opening paragraph is not even readable in the poor font and crappy rendering. There is a double listing of the site’s menu – even though only one of them works. Actually none of them work as the other category only has 3 of 6 buttons do anything. I love how when you click on the gear picture some hats spin onto the screen. You cant click on the hats – they are just pictures of schwag you cant get. And the html??? Gads People!! If you don’t know what you are doing, just stay away! Find someone who knows what they are doing or just don’t go public. Heck, even some of my D students from the Tech College I taught in did better than this.