Background

I was addicted to energry drinks throughout my last two years of college because I started using them to pull all nighters, which led to me trying out a lot of different flavors of Monster and some other brands. While I was drinking most of these, I started writing my opinions of them down in a txt file on my skool laptop, and then eventually made a blog post out of that for my ChiyoNET page. I graduated three months ago, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t had an energy drink at all since then. The last one I remember having was a Monster Zero Ultra that I got from a campus vending machine, which seemed necessary for me to drink so that I wouldn’t fall asleep during the graduation ceremony.

Recently, I was on a site where somebody asked the general community for Monster recommendations. I knew I could recommend at least something, but it had been so long since my last energy drink that I had to go back to my ChiyoNET post to refresh myself on what I like and don’t like. That’s when I realized how DOGSHIT my taste in energy drinks was at the time! I wrote down nice things about drinks I ended up hating, and negative things about drinks that ended up being favorites. This post will sort things out with the reviews I wrote last year, and also include reviews for some flavors I had afterwards.

The reviews

Monster Ultra Gold - My favorite Monster flavor, which pisses me off because everyone else hated it enough to get it pulled from shelves >:(. To me, it tasted like a liquidized form of Smarties.

Ghost Sourpatch Kids Blue Raspberry - This is practically the only non-Monster energy drink I ever drank more than once. It’s a drink version of the candy in its title, and since the candy is good, the drink is good. This is also the only thing I can think of that would probably actually kill a Victorian child if they consumed it. Eating a cool ranch Dorito would make them shit their pants but this would at least trigger cardiac arrest.

Monster Tropical Punch - Tastes like tropical punch. Wowza!!!

Monster Ultra Strawberry Dream - The best flavor to come in a girly can.

Monster Kiwi Strawberry - Another flavor I really like that has seemingly disappeared from stores.

Monster (default green flavor) - Tastes the way gasoline smells, which is good in my opinion. I don’t know what that says about me.

C4 Energy X Skittles - Tastes like Carpisun.

Monster Aussie Lemonade - Taste like better Monster Zero Ultra.

Monster Zero Ultra - Tastes like non-sour lemonade.

Monster Ultra Vice Guava - This is the first guava tasting thing I’ve ever had and it’s alright.

Monster Viking Berry - Tastes like pure diabetes.

Monster Ultra Fantasy Ruby Red - I actually don’t remember what this tastes like but I had it a lot.

Monster Pipeline Punch - Another drink I forgot the flavor of. This one I drank moderately less than Ultra Fantasy Ruby Ridge.

Monster Rio Punch - This tastes weird but not in a way that’s weird enough to be outright bad. It’s at least a 6/10.

Monster Ultra Paradise - I remember liking this the very first time I had it, but then immidiately disliked it the second time and never tried it again since. According to my first review of it, it tastes like a melted lime popsicle.

Ghost Sour Patch Kids Redberry - Tastes like Playdoh.

Ghost Swedish Fish Blue - Boring version of Mountain Dew Voltage.

Ghost Creamsicle - Very underwhelming creamsicle flavor.

Redbull (default Redbull flavor) - This is the drink that kickstarted my addiction. I needed to crank out an English Comp 2 essay that was due in less than 36 hours, so I got this at a gas station. The thing is, I never had a Redbull prior to this, but I had a few Monsters before. I used to only get Monsters because I liked the flavor of them and I always heard that Redbull tasted like piss. Once I became an adult that was legally allowed to drink alcohol, I had an epiphany: if something tastes bad, then it’s successful because the effect of it outways the flavor. That was the logic that applied to alcohol, so I figured it also applied to energy drinks, and I really needed something that would help me stay awake for over a day. Even though it did keep me up for 30+ hours, I eventually did the research and found out that Monster is a stronger energy drink than Redbull. Redbull doesn’t really taste that bad (I think it just kind of tastes like medicine), but I figure it should at least taste better than it does in order to justify the stigma that only person has applied to it. I personally give Redbull a -12589102/10.

Monster Mango - Tastes like mango, which isn’t the best fruit imo.

Java Monster Irish Creme - This is one of the terrible drinks I wrote a good review for in the original post. All I have to say is that it tastes like bad Irish creme coffee.

Java Monster Salted Caramel - Same as above but I didn’t start off liking it. This one in particular just tasted like watered down salted caramel.

This might officially be the longest text-only post I’ve ever written.

-Burpo