Tayto D'Lite Oriental Rib Flavour

Right so according to the Tayto website and the world wide web as a whole these do not exist.


They do exist though as I ate some. I was given them at the IFA office as a bribe I assume for going to watch Northern Ireland lose to Serbia, sometimes it feels like part of the reason for going is the free tayto.

As their existence is denied I do not have an official snap yet so I'll say it looks very like the cheese and onion packet shown below.

I'm a Vegetarian, I know right?, and am a bit weird about meat flavoured crisps. I know, it's silly as I'm not even a 'ethical' vegeterian but still I am a little strange about it so I was pleasantly suprised that the Oriental Rib Flavoured crisps were in fact suitable for vegetarians like myself. The flavour is inspired by the Asian barbecue rub that would be put on the ribs rather than trying to capture the ribs flavour themselves.

I guess this is because they think people might be a little confused by a crisp that was 'Asian Barbecue' flavour.

Right before we get onto the flavour its important to know these are a low calorie snack item so it's only fair that when we judge the taste we compare them to snacks around the same sort of range, the likes of snack-a-jacks/ pomme bears and things of that ilk.

The first thing about the taste that will hit you is aniseed. It's big and it's powerful and it's not going to be for everyone but it's a brilliant way to have the flavour of Chinese 5 Spice that's been cooked. After that there is a sweetness from the paprika and garlic flavourings.

Personally I like it and it's great to see a lower calorie snack that isn't scrimping on flavour. I have a feeling the aniseed might put a few people off but these are definitely worth a try

Rockstar Energy Cola

Rockstar energy cola. It looks like this

I'll be honest this is a cool looking can and it's a 500ml can so it towers above most others. It's the kind of thing that a designated driver you could get away with drinking at a house party without looking like a dick. That's a good thing, a really good thing.

Now onto the important bit how does it taste? Well that's hard to say, do you judge as a cola or as an energy drink?

As a cola it's maybe a little soft tasting. It tastes like a carbonated tip top or big time cola drink carton. Remember those things? Amazing. So it's not a bad taste, far from it it's nice and as an energy drink it's quite good that it doesn't slap your face about in an effort to gee you up. So we're kind of in a quandry as a cola I think you could do better for an impactful cola taste but as an energy drink it's mild enough thats its genuinely drinkable without face contrortions on every sip.

It's probably fairest to stand it up against Red Bull Cola, and whilst the flavour isnt as strong as the Reb Bull version it's preferrable. At a time were Red Bull are pulling their Cola from the US market we have a drink that's maybe found a way to make an energy cola a realistic drink.

That's pretty cool. This drink is pretty cool and I think I might be starting to change my impression on Energy Drinks

Screme Egg Review

Here at Fizzness we love each other. A lot. I would take a bullet for G-Pez and he took a figurative bullet for me. I saw the cadburys screme egg recently and felt incredibly sad. Since it took a hiding from the Malteeser Bunny and became only the 2nd best Halloween treat going (screw that 3rd Mini Eggs on a roll son) its become a confused depressed husk of a man. Now it's desperately trying to attach itself to the national holiday for perverts, Halloween. How dare you Cadbury. How dare you

Oh look an exciting new variation of the Easter treat that is the Cadburys Crème Egg is out just in time for Halloween (well 8 weeks before)! What a delightful pun they’ve used in the name and what spooky packaging it has, all very seasonal! I wonder what differentiates this from a normal Crème Egg? Oh look it has green goo instead of the usual yellow, and um… that’s it.

Yep it’s a green crème egg, that’s it that’s all ive got, they’ve changed the yellow to green with some food colouring. Brilliant work.

I can understand them bringing out a Halloween themed treat, everyone does it but they could’ve at least made some effort, maybe done a limited edition lime flavour to tie in with the green colouring? Chocolate and lime go together quite well but no, just green dye.

I’m a big fan of the standard Crème Egg it’s an over sweet sugar explosion that can sometimes be too much but it only appears for 3 months a year so everyone tries to eat as many as they can before they disappear. This is a huge part of their charm, their limited availability, something which Cadburys is doing its best to ruin these days. Every year it seems they appear on the shelves earlier and earlier, I’ve seen shops stocking them before Christmas and this is ridiculous. If Crème Eggs were available all year round they wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular and by ever expanding their window of availability they are starting to loose their appeal.

This Halloween edition, with no new flavour at all, seems to be the tipping point into over saturation for me, if I can get a Crème Egg at Halloween, Christmas and Easter where’s the fun? Like a good friend once said (well Gary from Men Behaving Badly): ‘If there’s always biscuits in the tin then where’s the fun in biscuits?’

Maroon 5 in odd Drink Idea

Soda endorsement is a funny business. We've seen drinks today with Caribbean figures of Levi Roots and Bob Marley adorning the labels. One of the newest ones, and oddest, is also one of the most worthwhile. Maroon 5 are launching "Tea will be loved" playing on one of their most famous song titles with Snapple with charitable causes in mind.

We'll try and get our hands on some for a review soon but below is the announcement from their website (http://www.maroon5.com/news_detail/snapple_and_maroon_5_release_new_tea_will_be_loved_iced_tea_to_benefit_feed/)

 Snapple and Grammy award-winning pop-rock band Maroon 5 have partnered to launch ‘Tea Will Be Loved’ – a delicious blend of healthy green tea and tasty black tea with notes of pomegranate and berries. Tea Will Be Loved will benefit Feeding America, helping to provide 1,750,000 meals to those in need. Inspired by the unique personalities of the band members and named for their smash-hit “She Will Be Loved,” this limited release Snapple tea will be available at participating retailers nationwide beginning on September 1, 2011.

Tea Will Be Loved is a five-fruit mash-up of the best stuff on Earth, with each band mate choosing their own flavor to add to the tea: pomegranate, orange, blackberry, raspberry and hibiscus. Tea Will Be Loved features 13 specially marked gold Snapple caps with Real Facts about Maroon 5 and Feeding America, such as Real Fact #682: Maroon 5’s former name was “Kara’s Flowers.” The band also contributed to the graphic design of the packaging for the new tea.

As part of the partnership, Snapple and Maroon 5 will donate $250,000 to Feeding America. Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger relief charity, provides low-income individuals and families the resources they need to survive and even thrive. Feeding America’s member network supplies food to more than 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and three million seniors.

Marleys Mellow Moods

I'm not going to lie, I can't these blog posts are taken under oath, when I first saw  Marley's Mellow Mood drinks in the fridges of my local drink emporiums I thought it was another energy drink. It's only on closer inspection that I realised that this couldn't be further from the truth and it was infact THE ANTI-ENERGY DRINK. It's a relaxtion drink to 'reduce stress and relieve tension' so during a particularly gnarling week at work I decided I could maybe do with mellowing out a little.

Ice Cold Can in hand I decided to check the back. May cause drowsyness it says... interesting. Chamomile tea for relaxation and rose hips for vitamin A, B and C. So I opened it up and had a good smell of it. You can smell the lemon coming through a little so I decided to take an extra big swig as the early morning email check had maybe caused a little more tension.

The first thing is the taste is a little odd, it's different and it caught me off guard. It's very botanical and the nearest thing I could say it tasted like would be a whiskey cocktail or something like a hot whiskey with lemon and honey.

It's not very carbonated and you can taste the chamomile tea coming through, the lemon flavour is a bit out there. It tastes almost synthesised or as if you were tasting incense being burned. Does that make sense?

The taste itself isn't unpleasant. It's just so different it takes you a while to adjust to it, I also thought it had quite a powerful kick to the aftertaste, something which funnily enough impacts a lot of energy drinks as well. For me it made the drink a less relaxing experience, the kick of the flavour made each gulp seem a little more charged.

That said and I don't know if it's because I'm very open to suggestion, and I am, but I did feel a bit more relaxed and sleepy. Which was suprising as I didn't expect it to work at all but it did to an extent. I'm considering having a few cans in the house for nights after football or whatever when your body and brain just doesn't want to turn in for the night.

Could this be love? I don't know at the minute we're just jammin and seeing where it takes us. I'm quite keen to try the other flavours and see if there's something a bit closer to what I'm looking for.

Check out their website and if you're a fan join their revolution and celebrate one of the first 'Anti-Energy Drinks' http://www.marleybeverages.com/

Great concept, really interesting but not sure if this flavour is fully for me but I did see some results.

Levi Roots Caribbean Crush

Ahh Levi Roots. What a man. Levi Roots is such a fantastically likeable man that I recently managed to stomach close to 15 minutes of Jamie Olivers new cooking programme just because Levi Roots was on it. Yep he might be the cure for the common Jamie Oliver.

With this in mind you could probably guess that I was pretty excited about the prospect of LEVI ROOT BRANDED SOFT DRINKS. Yeah that deserves capital letters as this was a capital idea from the minds of Vimtos finest.

Levi was brinking out 3 drinks a Reggae Reggae Tomato Juice Drink (and some other juice drinks it must be said), err ok maybe not for me that one, a Ginger Beer (which we hope to have G-PEZ review soon) and one that was right up my alley, so to speak, Carribean Crush. A Reggae Reggae take on Lilt.

Carribean Crush proposes itself to be a tropical blend of mango, grapefruit and pineapple so yeah we're on pretty safe ground to assume we're looking at a Lilt type deal here. Lilt is a mix of Pineapple and Grapefruit so unless we're mangoed up to the hilt here it should be pretty similar.

I opened my nicely branded 500ml bottle and it is nicely branded. It jumps off the shelf at you and I have noticed it getting a little traction with customers locally as I'm seeing the bottles about a lot. More the Crush than Ginger Beer but still it's nice to see a new brand taking off and I think that's largely down to the man behind the brand.

First things first it smells like Lilt it's that tropical welcoming smell. First taste and the carbonation seems similar to Lilt, which is deliberately less carbonated than other Coke products to make the drink seem more relaxed. The grapefruit and pineapple are instantly recognisable, the mango a little less so. The pineapple after taste is strong and rides out well but then you're hit with another after taste one of dissapointment.

It tastes like an own brand version of Lilt. It doesn't feel like it has it's own identity or flavour to it, maybe side by side you could appreciate mango a little bit more but as it is it's feels like an impersonator. The looks there and it all seems right but deep down you know it's just not the real thing.

One thing that has come out of this is though that Lilt are bringing out a new Mango flavour to counteract this, so they've got someone rattled. I think if possible they should see if they can reinvent the flavour a little maybe by adding papaya or blood orange even if just to change the colour and outlook of the drink.

Sorry Levi Roots, I am dissapoint

You're Barred : - Barrs Ginger Beer review by a Ginger Bear

G-NOTE or as I like to call him Gerry "Pez" Peterson has delicately reviewed a powerful ginger beer and possibly got us both banned from Scotland for life. God bless him. Here's his review

I am a big fan of Ginger Beer, I am also ginger, I’m not sure if there is a relationship here but I though I would get this interesting fact out of the way before I started my review.
Another interesting fact is that Barr’s, Scotland’s biggest home-grown soft drink company, have a strong relationship with Gingers. Firstly they are from Scotland, the Ginger capital of the world, secondly they make Irn Bru, the fuel of all Ginger’s and thirdly they have recently launched a tinned version of their Ginger Beer. (See all this Ginger talk was leading somewhere.)
The new tin forms part of a range of budget soft drinks launched by Barr’s and having given them all a try they are head and shoulders above other similarly priced beverages, (lets be honest 35p drinks usually taste like fizzy water and sweeteners), but the Ginger Beer really stands out.
I’ll get this over with first, don’t be expecting a genuine ginger beer, it only cost 35p you cheap bastard, if you want to have a spice induced eye pop then stump up the cash for a bottle of Fentiman’s.
What you get instead is a ginger flavoured soda, and a good one at that. The balance between the sweetness and the ginger is perfect, the ginger is strong but not over powering. After each gulp there is a pleasant spicy buzz that covers up any cheap after taste that budget drinks usually have and most of all its tasty, damn tasty. It’s not going to please a connoisseur but for everyone else it really is a rewarding drink.
I cant recommend this one enough, its cheap and cheerful but like an Irn Bru fuelled angry ginger Scot it packs a strong punch (and possibly likes to beat its wife.)