Liquid Ice Sugar Free diet - like urinal cakes and Otter Pops

April 20, 1:58 PMCaffeine ExaminerBig Red Boots  

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Liquid Ice used to be pushed hard by pimpking turned hollywood actor Ice T, but from what I understand, the connection did not last very long. The only real differentiator is the addition of coenzyme Q10, used to help migranes, blood pressure, and maybe a dozen other serious ailments. Of course the dose in here is much much much smaller than anything that would actually help you, unless you drank about 20-30 cans of this per day.

Taste:1
Sorry - but it tastes like public bathroom scent: a pungent mix of urinal cakes, fake bathroom freshener, pink hand soap and ick. That fake noxious smell that is supposed to cover up the smell of a thousand smelly farts and bowel movements - kinda like sucking on a berry scented car freshener.
Some fellow workers thought it smelled like watermelon or Blue Raspberry Jolly Ranchers, but they were not brave enough to take a swig. One adventurous person did take a taste and thought it smelled like a melted otter pop - which is pretty close except for the cloying and the bitter bite. I'll bet this drink would be made a thousand times better if remade as a freezer pop and just call it Iced ice.

Another drawback is this is one where the sugar free sweetener aftertaste hangs around with you after you manage to get it down. I actually did not want to finish the rest of the can (But who am I to ever waste an energy anything) and needed to wash it down with a little Diet Mountain Dew just to kill the flavor.

Nutrition:6
Not bad, but not so amazing either. The secret ingredient in this drink is 5mg of ubiquinone (CoQ-10). While I love CoQ-10 as a form of mental focus and energy in some individuals, it is not good enough or have enough to have to force this stuff down. The oversweetened mess was brought to you today by the popular Ace-K sucralose mix - which explains the aftertaste. Nothing natural here - as this has enough blue food dye to start working blueness on your tongue.
In terms of regular energy drink stuff, it has everything you would expect from an eight ounce energy drink; 1000mg of taurine, 80mg of caffeine, 47mg of inositol and lots of B vitamins. I got a little awake from this, but was back to hitting the diet mountain dews after about two hours.

Packaging:7
Gone is the bright blue label, and this silliness is in its place. The can is white and garish yellow on bare aluminum which works as badly as you would expect. It even has a big red starburst in the corner - and cheesy font choices picked right off of a 1996 word processor program. Really guys, this is why you go out and hire a designer. And if you did hire a designer, it is time to cut them loose and find someone who might have at least attempted a graphic design school.
The mechanics of the can were well done though. The lid is facing the right way, so you can drink your drink while proudly displaying your energy fix. The can is double faced, so you have less worry about your can being shelved correctly, and the caffeine is listed - which I appreciate.
But if you want to stay around, it is time to grow up. Get a bigger can designed by a professional.

Website:2 http://www.liquidiceny.com
This won an award for web design? According to their little plaque on the http://www.liquidiceny.com site, they won a 2008 award for web design. They were given this in march of 2008 from the The American Association of Webmasters. Well, after looking at the liquidiceny.com site, I wonder about the ethics of the AAWM. Well, it looks like all you need to get "awarded" by them is 20 bucks, 10 pages of unbroken pages and no visible error messages. They even list that over half of their applicants win an award - and with dozens of awards to award at 20 bucks a pop - getting into the awards business looks like good business. As for the site itself - there is much that sucks. First, they have tons of commented out code leftover from the design house not knowing how to publish a movie correctly out of flash. Sure, the html is only 6 k, but it really could be 2. Also their flash is very buggy. There is no wat to navigate on their "energy side" and much of their site is either used from http://www.caughtinthewebb.com' site templates that most of their sites use - plus free flash movies grabbed from flashkit.

Their ingredients list does not work at all, and there is a duplication of the night side/energy side, only with crappier graphics. It looks like the designers got a good idea for how the site should work, but then gave up when the site was 85% there. Or it was built right once, but then over the years it was filled with enough crap to make it unusable. The history did not touch Ice T, the FAQ did not actually tell you much about the drink - and the photo gallery of beach babes licking the energy can is just plain silly. Either way - I would give this site props for effort, but lost it all on the carry-through.


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