Stoked continues to un-impress me, this time with an orange juice that seems to be neither tropical or orange. While the caffeine buzz is nice, there is a price to pay from playing with the dragon. This drink is no more – pulled from the shelves with only a couple cans of this left at some Big Lots and discount stores across the country. With drinks like this – it really is not a wonder where they went wrong.
Packaging: 4
While the dragon theme seemed to work well on the black cans, it looks downright silly on a big orange background. The dragon has a halo of bare aluminum around it – trying and failing to make the orange/yellow color of the dragon stand out fromt eh background. And really, when I think of the tropics, what comes to mind is palm trees, warm beaches, sharks and jellyfish, not really chinese dragons. The can is also single faced, so it is not easy for CS weorkers and distributors to face on shelves. I did appreciate the caffeine listing, but seeing as guarana is outside that caffeine listing, there could be an undisclosed amount of caffeine added to that 80mg – there is no way to know. In terms of design, this one is the worst of the lot.
Taste:5
With a name like tropical orange, I really expected this to taste like tropical orange… I wanted mangoes, papayas, maybe a hint of pineapple or coconet with my orange. What I did not expect is the basic energy juice flavor, with lots of grape flavoring and a bite from some strong citrus, like ginger or lemon. Truthfully, I tasted no real orange flavor in here, let alone pineapples or coconuts. This did not taste tropical at all, and was pretty weak even for an orange drink.
Buzz/Nutrition:6
One look from the ingredients told me why – the Juice that this is made up from is not orange juice at all, but grape juice, a cheap filler juice companies use to make their product as cheap to make as they can. These was not even any mention of Orange anywhere in the ingredients! The bitter flavor I tasted was from Ginger root powder. While I like that this was not filled with High Frustose Corn Syrup, the 260 calories in a can of this stuff seemed a little high – especially if there were no other real nutrients in here outside the normal energy drink stuff
About the energy stuff, this has all the basics – lab made caffeine, guarana based caffeine, ginseng Glucurolactone, taurine, inositol, Taurine and the overdose of B vitamins. I would at least have expected some vitamin C from an Orange flavored juice. The buzz from this is decent, about 180 + mg, if you figure in the guarana too. The buzz is significant, but the crash from the sugars was definitely there – making me reach for another caffeine substance around noon.
A big thanks to http://energyheaven.blogspot.com for sending me this drink.