Big Red Boots

Caffeine Examiner
Trying desperately to pull my overworked brain cells from their perpetual desire to slog off, I scour the aisles for the perfect caffeinated substance. From Korean Drink Cans to stomach churning bargain caffeinated malt liquor to organic hand picked beans from the Peruvian mountaintops, Ill help you on your journey through the world’s most popular psychoactive substance.

  

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Bawls (barely) buzzed (candy) mints

June 17, 5:20 PM
by Big Red Boots, Caffeine Examiner
 
 
Bawls makes a pretty tasty candy - like a slightly fizzy sweet tart - only without the strong flavor or memorable aftertaste. Not mints, not candy, and certainly not REALLY caffeinated, Bawls mints are nothing to get excited about.

Bawls used carbonated soda with citric acid to give you them impression of soda, although it leaves more of an impression of just having a slightly aggrivated saliva gland. They are very mildly carbonated - not enough to have you foaming at the mouth or like Zotz FizzPower Candy. They are tasty enough that it is really not hard to eat an entire pack of 9 servings ( 8 in a serving) at one time.
Packaging:8
The color and design is the best part of this candy. The slogans are silly, and there are some design mistakes - but overall the blue on blue stars with a WAY to smiley guy is ubercool. I wish the text on the package was different though: “Finally some mints with BAWLS. Spiked with the same high-caffeine guarana that fuels our BAWLS soft drink, these fizzy sweet mints are the first candies that help you stay up all night. Feel the power of BAWLS mints. Because regular candy is for babies.” This candy is not strong enough to do much to you. Unless you eat all 75 candies in one go ( 375 mg in the whole tin) - this will only help you stay though the night if you pound all you can find.
Another problem is the font craziness on the package. Does there really need to be 8 different fonts? They even purposely chose to label their ingredients in a comic sans font for no apparent reason. They also could have listed their caffeine content on the tin as opposed to the silly slogan. People probably would be more inclined to eat handfuls of these little blue pills and they could sell more.
Taste:7
I would have expected these to act like mints, since that is in the name. However, these don't taste like mint or even leave the breath minty. These are just mildly sweet and fizzy candies that crunch easily. I have had more flavor from any Willy Wonka candy. These are artificial punch flavored - and although not bad, it is by no means fantastic. Although I did down quite a few of these from the helpful friend who brought them in for me, Im not sure if I would buy these on my own over Jolt mints, penguins, foosh mints, Voss Caffeinated mints, or even Ice Breakers Energy Mints.

Buzz:nutrition:3
The serving size is 8 pieces, with 9 servings per tin. There is about 1 calorie per mint, and does not contain much of anything else. While this mint touts Extremely high Caffeine Content, energyfiend.com does not list their content any higher than 5mg per mint. By looking at their horrible graphic on their FAQ page on their website, they put each pill at 7mg. Either way, it would take 2866.50 Bawls Mints to put me down according to the death by caffeine calculator on energyfiend. So no nutrition, no nutrients, no calories, but no caffeine either. Shame - I was really hoping to love these.


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