Who’ s Your Daddy is an irreverent name for a powerful drink – and while this might not taste like a fresh brewed iced tea, this drink is so far the best energy drink/tea I have had that does not pretend to be a health food. This is like Monster’s release of a coffee drink. It might taste like coffee and look like coffee, but you know there is a couple miles difference between whats in that aluminum can and what the local barista can brew up for you. While you are never going to confuse this drink for an entry by Steaz or Syzmo, or god forbid real tea, this is an amazingly delicious way to enjoy a light refreshing crisp citrus-y tea flavored treat.
Packaging:9
I enjoy this design over the green backdrop, but its just a matter of personal preference. Like the HFCS filled version, the overall layout is lovely, getting across the green tea aspects but still has enough distressed/grunge elements to let you know this is still not something you would find at your super-natural-foods store. They also do a great job with info, putting on the website, toll free number and listing the caffeine content – all of which very appreciated. While not revolutionary, the art and function hold up well under scrutiny. The only small issue I can see is very common, where they have a big blank spot on the backside of the can, where if the product was in a beverage cooler the branding might not be displayed to the consumer.
Nutrition:7
In the can you wil find 1600 mg taurine, 200 mg caffeine, B Vitamins, inositol, zinc and sodium hexametaphosphate. They still fill this with Sodium Hexametaphosphate – so you know this is not going to be a drink that cared much about health. This is the same stuff found in Crest toothpaste, soap and water softeners. While the dump of HFCS and the sweeteners they use are very tasty and a BIG improvement over the syrup version, the continued use of S H cant make this drink get any better nutrition.
Taste:8
Like the full caloried sister of this drink, the sugar free version does not have the chalky grassy flavor that so many green teas do. While definitely green tea flavored, it does not come off as being too sour or excessively healthy. The use of Ace-k and sucralose is very nice, giving a bit more tartness to the flavor and less syrup. This certainly rocks over the flavor of other energy teas, including xing and Arizona.
Website:4
What originally starts off as a nice clean site gets waylaid by a bunch of bad UI decisions. The site looks very pretty, even utilizing the apple-eque design of mirroring the top graphic under the bottom line to give the feeling of a reflection.While the background is a big stock-photo-grunge, it still fits into their entire motif. The overall design of the page is very lovely – with graphics poking out of frames and the entire scheme of power and “extreme”-ness.
The site falls apart at the categories. There is no info on the drinks themselves, instead taking you to a shopping cart for each product.There is a media button, which goes to a page where you can see a dozen ads overlapping and no interactivity at all. Same goes for nightlife and distribution – where a whole lot of information could be given, but instead we get one big jpg. The news page takes you off to their yahoo finance page – where yahoo does all the work for them. Their links page even has a link – back to their own site in a new window (wut??) This is also the only way to get to their blog, kingofbloggers.com – which does a much better job promoting themselves than this completely lacking website. Their code still shows Macromedia Dreamweaver tags all over the place. The size of the site is big for no reason – where their background image is over 250k by itself. These are OK missteps for a company where the drink is the focus – and getting a website of a decent quality itself is a challenge. But to hire an outside company and still have half a meg size and categories that mean nothing and can’t even tell you the nutrition information is pretty inexcusable. LiveCastMedia might have made it look pretty, but for all intent and purposes this site is completely useless.