Author: Marvo

Jamba Juice 3G Energizer

Marvo 18 Comments

OMG! Like energy drinks are soooo like 2007. Now it’s like totally about energy-everything-else because energy drink are like so everywhere. They’re in like grocery stores, convenience stores, online stores, membership warehouse stores, restaurant stores, super stores, and like bar stores. Like I would not be caught dead drinking a canned energy drink because like aluminum is for siding and covering leftovers.

Because I don’t like want to look like a total dorkzilla, I’ve been like drinking the Jamba Juice 3G Energizer smoothie to like totally get my energy. It’s got like this 3G Charger boost thingy, which is supposed to like give me 120 milligrams of caffeine.

The boost thingy has like stuff you’d find in energy drinks, like green tea, guarananana and like ginseng, but it doesn’t come in some lamers can. Like the only things that like should be in a can are like canned food going to the food bank and like Oscar the Grouch. There’s like also an Energy boost thingy with lots of Vitamins B6 and B12. With all those vitamins it’s like they totally threw in some Flintstones vitamins.

Along with the 3G Charger and Energy boost thingies, the Jamba Juice 3G Energizer contains raspberries, strawberries, lemonade, passionfruit-mango juice, lime sherbet, and orange sherbet. When I read it had passionfruit, I like asked the Jamba Juice person if it was one of those like a-fro-dee-zee-ack thingies. The Jamba Juice blender jockey like looked at me like I was stupid or something. OMG! Whatever! Total hater!

Anyhoo, I like wanted to totally like this, because the color was cute and it was kind of yummers, but OMG, there were like seeds like everywhere and I was like totally not having any fun. Seeds were like crunchy and like getting stuck between my teeth. OMG! Hello, it’s like supposed to be a smoothie and go down smooth, not a smoothie sometimes and go down not so smooth. It was like a total bummers.

I was like trying to enjoy its strong lemonade-y taste, but like the seeds like totally got in the way. At first, I was deciding whether or not I was going to like spit them out, but it’s like totally lamers to spit, so I like swallowed all those seeds. I like totally hope a strawberry tree doesn’t like grow in me. That would be like totally gross.

OMG, while I was drinking the Jamba Juice 3G Energizer, I felt like I was that Duracell Bunny that like keeps going and going. While I was walking around the mall with it, it like gave me the energy to climb the stairs instead of climbing the escalator and like when I was pulling clothes to try on, the store worker came up to me and asked me if she could like take the clothes I had in my hands and put them in a dressing room, but because of the energy from the smoothie, I totally told her that I’d hold on to them.

OMG! I’m totally like Wonder Woman now.

(Nutrition Facts – 24-ounces – 470 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, 1 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 30 milligrams of sodium, 430 milligrams of potassium, 110 grams of carbohydrates, 93 grams of sugar, 6 grams of dietary fiber, 3 grams of protein. 90% Vitamin C, 30% calcium, 4 fruit servings, 1 big sugar rush, and like 1 big sugar low.)

Item: Jamba Juice 3G Energizer
Price: $4.69 (24-ounces)
Purchased at: Jamba Juice
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Good. Really sweet. Lemonade is the dominant flavor. Nice boost of energy. 120 milligrams of sweet, sweet caffeine.
Cons: Too many damn seeds. Not too smooth for a smoothie. Too many damn likes in this review. Lots of sugar. Being a dorkzilla. The insane abundance of energy drinks.

Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps

Marvo 47 Comments

In honor of these Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps being all-natural, I am eating them au naturel, or naked for you non-French speaking folk, because if they’ve got nothing to hide, then I’ve got nothing to hide. We’ll just put both of our cards on the table. Of course, some cards are bigger than others, and unfortunately, theirs were bigger. However, just as unsightly as my naked body is, these potato chips…I mean, potato crisps were just as unflattering.

You know how, “once you pop, you can’t stop” with regular potato chips, I didn’t get that feeling with these. I guess it’s like when wild animals get the taste of human blood, it’s all they crave, and that’s the way I feel about potato chips. They taste much better than these Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps and it will be very hard to convince me otherwise.

It’s like when your doctor tells you have to stop drinking regular Pepsi, and then you start drinking Diet Pepsi to try and replace it, but it just isn’t the same. What I’m trying to say is, the Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps are like the diet cola of potato chips. You won’t like the taste at first, but you’ll eventually get used to it, because you have to.

The Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps comes in four flavors: Original with Sea Salt, Black Pepper and Sea Salt, Fresh Onion and Garlic, and Szechuan Pepper and Fresh Chives. I tried the last two flavors and I wasn’t impressed with either of them. The flavor was very light and was only there during the first couple of chews, but after that it disappears and they end up tasting sort of like Baked Lay’s potato chips.

According to the packaging, the potatoes go through a revolutionary freeze-drying process that gently removes the water to lock in nutrients naturally found in potatoes while preserving the flavor. The potato crisps seemed very fragile, like my ego and Precious Moments figurines, but were surprisingly durable. Freeze-drying, instead of frying or baking, dramatically increases the healthiness of these potato crisps. They have zero grams of fat and only 35 calories per bag, which is more than four times less calories than a 1-ounce serving size of regular Lay’s Potato Chips. But again, its flavor was probably four times less flavorful as regular Lay’s Potato Chips.

Brothers-All-Natural also has fruit slices that are freeze-dried, like these potato crisps, and I felt the apple and peach fruit slices were much more enjoyable than their starch counterparts. The idea behind Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps is a very noble one. Potato chips can be addictive, like cigarettes and internet porn, so having a healthier version of it would make popping and not stopping seem not so bad. Unfortunately, these potato crisps aren’t able to break my addiction.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bag – 35 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 grams of cholesterol, 190-220 milligrams of sodium, 8 grams of carbs, 1 grams of dietary fiber, 1 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

(Editor’s Note: I have a few extra samples of Brothers-All-Natural products that I would like to give away to readers (Ace is not eligible), so I’m going to have a drawing for them. If you’re interested in winning a free sample, just leave a comment for this review and let me know if you’d like to win either a potato crisps sample or a fruit slices sample. I’ll stop collecting entries on Sunday evening and announce the winners next week. Have fun!)

Item: Brothers-All-Natural Potato Crisps
Price: FREE
Purchased at: Given by PR people
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Healthier than potato chips. All-natural. 100% fat free. Kind of tastes like Baked Lays. Brothers-All-Natural Fruit Slices.
Cons: It’s the diet cola of potato chips. Not as good as real potato chips. Serving size is small for my fat ass. Flavor was light. Crisps seem very fragile. My naked body.

REVIEW: Sierra Mist Undercover Orange

Marvo 16 Comments

Summer is a time for hot temperatures, trips to Disneyland, tight short shorts, armpit sweat stains, and of course, summer blockbuster movies, and just like you can expect Dane Cook to use the word “bro” in everything he will ever appear in, you can expect each summer blockbuster to have a product tie-in. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has the Snickers Adventure Bar, Iron Man has the AMP Energy Freeze Slurpee, the new Harold & Kumar movie has skull bongs, and Get Smart has the Sierra Mist Undercover Orange.

For those of you who did not watch Nick at Nite in the early 1990s and/or watch television in the 1960s because your parents were afraid of the radiation coming out of the “picture radio,” Get Smart was a James Bond parody that followed the adventures of Maxwell Smart, an agent of CONTROL, a secret U.S. government agency. His task was to thwart KAOS, an evil organization with the same penchant for the caps lock key as CONTROL.

The Sierra Mist Undercover Orange is a 7-Up/Sprite wannabe lemon-lime soda with a splash of mandarin orange flavor. If your inner botanist believes a mandarin orange is a tangerine, then it does have a mandarin orange flavor. Personally, my inner botanist has had its fair share of canned Asian mandarin oranges in heavy syrup over the years to raise my fruit intake, so I have a pretty good idea of what mandarin oranges taste like and I have to say that I don’t think a mandarin orange is a tangerine. Therefore, I believe this soda tastes more like a tangerine.

Either way, the orange flavor in this soda isn’t like Sunkist or any of the generic brand orange sodas out there. I kind of prefer the flavor of the Sierra Mist Undercover Orange because it tastes a little more natural than most orange sodas because it’s less sweet and more sour, thanks to the Sierra Mist lemon and lime flavor.

The Sierra Mist Undercover Orange isn’t bad for a carbonated citrus beverage and summer blockbuster tie-in. It’s a limited edition beverage so once it’s gone, it’s gone…unless it’s really popular, then it will come back in the future, most likely with another movie tie-in. For now, it makes a great soda to wash away the taste of the trailer for the movie >Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bottle – 240 calories, 0 grams of fat, 55 milligrams of sodium, 65 grams of carbohydrates, 65 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 0 grams of caffeine, and 0 grams of box office gold.)

Item: Sierra Mist Undercover Orange
Price: $1.25 (20 ounces)
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: It’s clear. Tastes like a tangerine (according to my inner botanist). Low sodium. Has a more natural taste than most orange sodas. Iron Man. Nick at Nite.
Cons: No fucking caffeine. High fructose corn syrup. A lot of sugar per bottle. Armpit sweat stains. Spelling the word “night” as “nite.” The despair you’ll feel after watching the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Jack in the Box Strawberry Banana Real Fruit Smoothie

Marvo 10 Comments

What are you doing, Jack in the Box? Are you going all healthy on us with your Jack in the Box Strawberry Banana Real Fruit Smoothie? Whatever you’re doing, stop it! Because it’s freakin’ me out!

It’s like I’m in an alternate universe where Jumbo Jacks, Big Macs and Whoppers are healthy, while vegetables and organic foods are bad for you. It is also a universe where Jared is still the spokesperson for Subway, except Subway makes sub sandwiches the size of actual submarines, and Jared weighs 700 pounds, doesn’t know where his penis is, looks like Jabba the Hutt, and hasn’t moved his ass off of his couch since 1999.

Actually, there weren’t any nutritional facts on the Jack in the Box website right now so it’s hard for me to know if they’re healthy or not. (Editor’s Note: Nutritional facts are down below) This worries me because fast food joints have the ability to turn something healthy into something that’s not, like salads and adults collecting kids meal toys. For all I know, this fast food smoothie might be the most unhealthiest thing on the face of the Earth and they deep fry the bastard when no one is looking. But what I do know for sure is that the Real Fruit Smoothies are made from Minute Maid fruit juice and non-fat frozen yogurt, which sounds somewhat healthy to me, but then again I believe I can get all my daily vegetable servings from eating a full sheet of carrot cake.

Don’t expect the Jack in the Box Real Fruit Smoothie to be like anything you would get from Jamba Juice or Robeks. Jack in the Box only uses fruit juices, while the two smoothie specialists uses a combination of real fruits, fruit juices, free boosts, and fancy smoothie names usually reserved for girly, fruity alcoholic beverages which I enjoy for a few sips, then pass out, and then either wake up pants-less in some stranger’s bed or pants-less in the middle of the orangutan exhibit at the zoo.

The Jack in the Box Strawberry Banana Real Fruit Smoothie had a fruit taste that didn’t seem natural, but then again the idea of a strawberry-banana juice seems unnatural. If I squeeze an orange, I’m going to get orange juice. If I squeeze a banana, I’m going to get baby food and stink eyes from monkeys. There was an artificial sweetener taste to it, so perhaps that’s where the unnatural taste came from.

Overall, the Jack in the Box Strawberry Banana Real Fruit Smoothie was decent and was what I expected from a fast food joint. It’s definitely not something I would get my daily servings of fruit from, because for that I would eat an entire apple pie, but I think that it’s probably healthier than a deep-fried Jack in the Box Oreo Shake.

(Nutrition Facts – 16 ounces – 290 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 210 milligrams of potassium, 73 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 57 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Jack in the Box Strawberry Banana Real Fruit Smoothie
Price: $3.89 (16 ounces)
Purchased at: Jack in the Box
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Decent tasting. Made with non-fat frozen yogurt. Enjoyed the satisfying crunch of the coarse ice crystals. Possibly healthier than a Jack in the Box Oreo Shake.
Cons: Had a slight artificial sweetener taste. Strawberry-banana juice seems unnatural. No nutritional facts on website. Getting stink eyes from monkeys, because flying poop is soon to follow. Waking up bottomless in the middle of a zoo exhibit spooning a primate. The power of fruity, girly alcoholic beverages.

REVIEW: AMP Energy (Elevate, Overdrive, Relaunch, Traction)

Marvo 14 Comments

Mountain Dew is the O.G. of carbonated caffeine goodness. With 50-something milligrams of caffeine per can it was the beverage of choice for gamers, procrastinators and sleep haters back when energy drinks were just a twinkle in the eye of beverage makers and I wore my baseball caps backwards, while wearing two Swatch watches on each arm. Today, Mountain Dew is lost among the hundreds of energy drinks out there. Its caffeine content seems miniscule compared with almost every single caffeine bomb energy drink.

What happened to Mountain Dew? It used to encourage young people to do extreme things that only professionals should do, like pull 360 tailwhips on a BMX bike or a goofy-footed backside McTwist on a skateboard. Now energy drinks, like Red Bull, have kids doing crazy things like race in airplanes, flugtag, and post videos on YouTube of themselves doing a Chicken McNuggets rap. Mountain Dew’s descent from the caffeine crown is kind of sad, like seeing a 51-year-old big-haired, tattooed mother of four shop at Forever 21.

Mountain Dew used to tell us to “Do the Dew,” but now the Dew is not dewy enough. It tried to keep up with more powerful energy drinks by changing flavors, colors, and by greeting everyone with the salutation, “Wassup, dogg,” while pounding its chest a couple of times. But it is not about colors, it is about caffeine. The Radioactive Green One may not be extreme enough for this generation, but AMP Energy, its younger, bigger, stronger, sexier, more potent, and porn star cock-sized successors are.

The original AMP Energy is based on original Mountain Dew and recently AMP Energy added to its lineup the new Elevate, Overdrive, Relaunch, and Traction flavors, most of which aren’t really new if you did the different Dews over the last half-decade. Overdrive, which has been out longer than the other flavors, is very similar in taste to the cherry-flavored Mountain Dew Code Red, Relaunch is like the orange-flavored Mountain Dew LiveWire, Traction tastes like the grape-flavored Mountain Dew Pitch Black, and Elevate has a mixed berry flavor. All of them were easy to drink because they tasted more like a soda, than an energy drink, which usually can have a slight medicine-ish taste.

Like members of a boy band, each flavor has certain characteristics and has been given a particular label that describes them. Overdrive is the bad boy of the group and the energetic yerba mate it has gives it a turbo boost. Elevate is the smart one and the L-theanine in it helps it to focus. Relaunch is the cute one and the electrolytes and B vitamins it has gives it the energy to revive to satisfy all the groupies. Finally, Traction is the one everyone thinks could be gay and the maltodextrin and D-ribose it contains helps it sustain its secret. Each flavor did give me a boost of energy, but I didn’t notice any differences with their special ingredients.

Overall, I enjoyed all of the flavors, especially the grape-ish Traction, which let me remember Mountain Dew Pitch Black — my favorite Dew I liked to do. It is nice to see almost all the Dew flavors end up in energy drink form because I am a fan of Mountain Dew. Now that I have my caffeine bomb, all I need now are some Cheetos, an original Playstation, the game Twisted Metal, and I’m good to go.

(Supplement Facts – 8 fl. oz. – 110 calories, 29 grams carbs, 29 grams sugar, 1.5 milligrams riboflavin, 20 milligrams niacin, 10 milligrams pantothenic acid, 20 milligrams phosphorus, 148 milligrams taurine, 124 milligrams of guarana extract, 80 milligrams caffeine, and 20 percent increase in heart rate.)

Item: AMP Energy (Elevate, Overdrive, Relaunch, Traction)
Price: FREE (16 ounces)
Purchased at: Given by nice PR people
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Enjoyed all the flavors, which are similar to Mountain Dew flavors. Tastes more like a soda, than an energy drink. Easy to drink. 160 milligrams of sweet, sweet caffeine per can. Twisted Metal.
Cons: High fructose corn syrup. Added ingredients didn’t seem to do anything. If you hate sweet, you’ll hate these. Still can’t get my hands on a fucking Nintendo Wii. 51-years-olds who shop at Forever 21.