“HOW IS THIS LEGAL I CAN’T FEEL MY FINGERS.”

~Off-Market Energy Drink Customers

For decades, centuries really, we have relied on coffee to wake us up in the morning and keep us going into the night.  Well, sure, there’s cocaine if you really wanna party, but as far as boosts of wake-up-feels would go, we pretty much had coffee and, to a lesser extent tea. If you didn’t like how that tasted, that was fine, you could fill it to the brim with all the sugar and cream your overworked heart could take.

Sure, you had your Cokes and Pepsis, or even your Mountain Dews if you’re a gamer, but for many years we didn’t really have a lot of ways to completely lose your mind on dangerous amounts of caffeine until the 90’s and 00’s brought us Energy Drinks. Red Bull, 5 Hour Energy, Rockstar, all of these companies sprung up to create a beverage that answered the question, “What if I wanted like, 6 cups of coffee, but I also hate the flavor of coffee, and would like to mix it with vodka.”

Now, granted, in most cases, energy drinks actually have less caffeine than coffee, but they also have a whole bunch of other stuff like taurine which, because it rhymes with caffeine, we just roll with the claim of “oh it’s like, super caffeine” and move on with our lives. And at the end of the day, energy drinks feel appropriate to have during a night out, while coffee still feels like something you drink at work.

Also, again, you can mix it with vodka so, you know, that at least to us explains their popularity.

And Energy drinks are big business. Red Bull makes over $4 billion a year, and even Amp, the energy drink you have only seen in rural town gas stations, brings in hundreds of millions in sales. And while you might think that all Energy Drinks are just caffeine delivery systems that taste like stale smarties candies, we’d actually have to disagree.  There are some energy drinks that are so much worse. As in, baffling they exist. As in, probably glow in the dark?

Let’s talk about some of the sketchiest energy drinks on the market today. Yes, you can buy these.  But you shouldn’t, unless you want to grow a third eye or something.

The Five Sketchiest Energy Drinks You Can Actually Buy

For all its regulatory power, the FDA doesn’t really care what you put in energy drinks.  Well, okay, that’s probably a lie, and we definitely made it up, but that has to explain how some of these products exist.

For such a crowded, saturated market, it seems like everyone is still trying to break into the energy drink game. And honestly…maybe they shouldn’t? Like, if you’re going to try to sell strangely colored sugar caffeine, you should probably go into it with more strategy than, “ha, wouldn’t this name be funny?” Because um, that seems to be the motivating factor for most of these following energy drinks.

Blood Energy Potion

Wow that was quick. Normally we just gradually work our way up to “well that’s fucking stupid,” but here you go. For those of you who want to spend $4 on 3 ounces of a gag drink, then here you fucking go you 15-year-old Goth kids hanging out at a fucking Hot Topic, Harcos has you covered.

This fruit punch flavored “energy shot, but really, just, a stupid gag,” has 80 mg of caffeine with the “same color, look, and consistency as real blood,” which takes a fucking load off our minds, we were super worried this wouldn’t have the same mouthfeel as human blood. Just great. It has iron in it too, because if you’re going to sell a caffeinated pouch of fake blood, complete with bloody fingerprints on the packaging, you might as well lean into that skid as hard as you possibly can.

Like, no seriously, they put the iron in there so they could advertise that it has “a similar nutritional make-up to real blood.”

Like, fucking why? It still tastes like fruit punch, no one is going to be doing a deep dive of like, “Okay, sure, it looks like blood, but tell me, does it have the same minerals and vitamins that I might find if I decided to be a real goddamn vampire?” Or like, one guy named Gareth who goes by “Gorgozon the Coy” in his dark poetry journal might ask that question, but most people would be like, “oh, ha ha, funny, it looks like blood,” and be done with it.

Pussy Energy Drink

Sigh.

Just…sigh. This energy drink prides itself on having 100% natural ingredients and a name that is 100% designed to get frat boys to buy a can just to say they “are really slamming some pussy tonight, bros.” And you, too, can, ugh, chug some pussy (oh God) in the comfort of your own home if you’re willing to shell out $14 for a four pack, or about $50 for a case. This drink came from the United Kingdom, where a man named Jonnie Shearer spent a few years coming up with natural energy drink formulas before testing one out at the Christmas party thrown by Richard Branson’s daughter.

Because Richard Branson made his fortune with the name Virgin, Shearer apparently decided that he’d call his drink pussy, because…sex? Like, they…virgins and pussies are both sex things? Listen, we’d normally give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say he was wasted at the party when he named it, but no, this asshole kept the name, so it clearly was intentional.

Eventually, it expanded, though it had its ads banned on British television for being too overtly sexual. Like, we…we just don’t get this. Like, what does a sexualized energy drink have to do with an “all-natural” energy drink? We went to their website hoping to get some clarification, and we came away with nothing. The fact that this brand became successful is a sign that maybe Capitalism is broken.

Revolt

Revolt is about as edgy as you’d think a corporation trying to sell you a product because you’re “such a rebel” would be. Which is to say, they literally sell you a beverage in a bottle that’s giving you the finger, which feels pretty PUNK ROCK while you’re downing uprising-causing drinks like “blueberry tea.”

This company hails from the Czech Republic, and while their website is in English, their e-shop is definitely not, so we have no clue how much it would cost to get this sent over stateside. Like “way too much” is a good guess? Yeah, we’ll go with that.

The ingredients are listed in Czech, so we had to do some Google translate to figure out that it is a pretty tame on the energy front. It has about 200 mg of taurine and 20 mg of caffeine, and warns that it has “minimum durability to: Printed on the neck of the package.” Which, we think is their way of saying it’s hard to carry or hold onto because of its wildly impractical “flicking you off” bottle design.

Anyway, yeah, so apparently bottles come shaped like this, and it’s not nearly as cool as we had hoped.

Louis XIV Energy Drink

Oh, fuck you. It appears you can only get this in Europe, but fuck you so hard. This is an energy drink that was “created” in Switzerland, is made in Austria, and has 24 carat gold fucking flakes floating in it. Ugh, there’s being gaudy for gaudy sake, and there’s just being a toll, and we’re pretty sure we know where this one lies on the spectrum.

Ugh, this one is obnoxious, we’re actually mad now. The last one better be super ridiculous but not douchey, or so help us…

Bazooka

Yess, yessss, oh this is exactly what we needed. Oh, look at that, that’s beautiful. Oh wow. No, seriously, everything about this drink, which appears to be based out of Philadelphia, but made in Germany, is wonderful. The name. The camo can. The fact that their slogan is literally, we shit you not, this is so wonderful, “Feel the blast within you!”

Everything on this company’s website is wonderful. There’s a video of some like 20 year old kid with a wispy mustache drinking it in slow motion at the top. Then, they list their benefits. Specifically, “Energy Drinks have suddenly taken the market of beverages by storm.

This type of non-carbonated drink has shrunk the carbonated soft drink market in a short period of time.  Energy drinks claim to be a healthier beverage choice. The energy beverage industry targets towards those people who need some sort of energy boost.”  Which is just beautiful. They’re “why you should buy our product” pitch is literally the opening slide of a PowerPoint presentation about energy drinks. We love it so much.

So yeah, Bazooka energy drinks is a thing that totally exists, and probably gives you radiation poisoning, and we want it in our bodies so much. This is so much better than that Louix XIV bullshit, thank God. Bazooka for life!