Saturday, December 29, 2007

Two for one, new link

I decided to add two posts today as I missed my previous one due to the holidays. The two Bomba! cans seemed like a logical choice.

I also added a new link to Energy Drink Ratings - a more traditional energy drink review site, with proper scores and all. So if you for some reason tire of my ramblings and like Joe Friday want just the facts you should pay them a visit.

Bomba! - Sugarfree

The well-behaved sister to the original Bomba! although I personally don't think the sugar is the culprit in these drinks. I'm not saying that you should ignore how much sugar you ingest but if your excess sugar intake comes from energy drinks then you probably have other issues to worry about.

As mentioned in my post about the bad-boy Bomba! this can looks a lot nicer, mostly because they replace the Mini with a star. The white background is also easier on the eye.

According to the can Bomba! is produced in Austria - as a lot of other drinks - by Starzinger but when googling for their site I got a Bomba! specific site instead. The Bomba! brand apparently became quite successful so my guess is that they decided to branch it off.

As you can see from their product assortment they're not kidding around with the "Bomb!" name either. Also notable is the fact that my two cans differ quite a bit from the design shown here. I have contacted Bomba! to see if my design is the older one (most likely).

If we compare the nutrient facts of these two drinks then there's really not much of a difference until we come to carbohydrates, of course, where the original Bomba! has 11.7g per 100g and the sugar free version 0g. As for actual energy, something you would think there should be a lot of in an energy drink, the original sports 215 Kjoule while the pristine one only has 21 Kjoule - ten times less!

My initial comments aside, this is quite a difference and illustrates quite nicely what a difference sugar will make when it comes to the amount of energy we digest. The drawback of energy from sugar is that it's "empty" and is gone very quickly after you ingest it.

Bomba!

Another can from Hungary and as far as my awesome skills with the Hungarian language tells me the name of the can is simply "Bomb!" which, if interpreted freely, could be a drawback. As in; "This energy drink will bomb so bad." I can also tell my friends that I managed to bring a bomb from Hungary to Sweden.

Anyhow, not-so-funny linguistic twists aside the can is quite nice although I prefer it's sugar free sibling as far as the looks go. This is still remarkably clean and the only thing spoiling the design is the Mini Cooper with "Nyerj" - "Win" - above it.

The Mini Cooper is one of the most popular cars in the world and has roots all the way back to 1959. Up until the year 2000 the Mini was manufactured by the British Motor Corporation. The brand Mini was bought by BMW in 2000 and are now producing a number of models, although not all are very great.

The Mini has been featured in a lot of movies as well with The Italian Job being my all time favourite (the original version, the remake sucked).

As for exploding Mini Coopers - this is the best I can offer.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Happy Holidays

My regular weekend post will be a bit delayed due to the holidays. I will have it up by tuesday the latest.

Happy Holidays!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

A future collectors item?

I found out about a Super Mario energy drink just the other day and I'm itching to get hold of one. I'm not a Mario fan in any way but the can would be great to have.

Unfortunately the only place close by that sells it is in the UK and it will cost me approximately 100SEK/£7.44/$15/€10.4 to have it shipped to Sweden.

That's quite a lot for a can but I might just go for it, depedning on how much money I got left after christmas and new years eve. :)

Speed in

Another can I got in Hungary. This means that all of the information on the can is in Hungarian - which I actually knew a tiny bit of some odd 15 years ago but has since forgotten so I can only understand "Tutti-Frutti" and "Koffein".

The Speed in website is Hungarian-only as well but when I discovered the "Partynaptár" button I focused on the "Party" part and clicked away, filled with confidence that I'd be in for a good time. Unfortunately the Speed in party crawled to a halt in 2006. Bummer.

The "Letöltés" button contains a couple of not too shabby desktops (although some are less well done).

And that's about it for the Speed in website.

As for the can - not very impressive. Colors aren't all that bad but the design is messy and confusing. I like how they point out that the drink is 100% legal but no matter how hard I looked I didn't find any illegal drinks in Hungary so I'm not sure if that informaiton will sell more or less cans compared with other brands.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

V-power


This is one of many cans that I got from a somewhat recent business trip to Budapest, Hungary. The main reason I selected it at this moment is because I blogged about the V can in my previous post.

There was a number of interesting energy drinks in Hungary and most of them were quite affordable. This particular one costs roughly $0.90 USD/€0.70/6 SEK and, if the illustration is to be believed, screws with your head so much that you'll trip over your own feet.

Seriously though (I promise), I find it interesting that they credit L-Carnitine with what I assume isn't so much falling over as a spring in your step. My limited research shows that the main job for L-Carnitine is to convert fat into ketones (which then is harvested and turned into paint).

There was some indication that L-Carnitine gives kids more energy so I guess that Gramex, the makers of V-Power, wasn't talking completely out of their ass as many other energy drink makers tend to do.

The actual design is quite boring though. Not awful or laughable, just boring.

When I planned this post (in my mind) I associated "V-Power" with "vertical power" and my big idea was to compare vertical (upward) power in various objects; rockets, kangaroos, snakes, elevators and so on.

This proved to be very daunting so I'll just provide the two formulas I've found - one for rocket thrust and one for muscle forces in kangaroo mice (page 10/200, figure 5) - and leave it as an exercise for you, the reader, to calculate how big a kangaroo mice has to be in order to catch a rocket leaving earth.

Post your answers, complete with calculations, in the comments.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

V


For my comeback I thought I'd start out gently with a can I found at the Swedish airport Landvetter; V.

I've been tinkering with the setup for photographing the cans and although I'm not 100% pleased the new shots are still a lot better than the old ones. The slow pace of this process is one of several reasons to why I've been absent, by the way.

So, what about the can? Well, it originates from New Zealand and Australia where it was introduced in the late nineties, like so many other energy drinks. According to the marketing text on the can it "turned the energy drink market up side down". This begs the question; since this was introduced "down under" - is it a good thing to turn the market "up side down"?

It contains the regular ingredients of caffeine and guarana but has no taurine. Add three essential vitamins - B3, B5 and B6 - and you have a complete meal.

Now, the letter V is at least to me not symbolic with an inverted energy drink or even V for Vendetta but with the TV-series V. I was eleven or twelve years old when it aired here in Sweden and I loved it!

It had action, drama, suspense and even a bit of horror thrown in. I still remember running into my younger brothers room when I saw Diana eat a whole hamster (or some other sort of rodent) for the first time. From that moment on I never watched it alone again.

I watched it again some ten years ago and it wasn't as good as I remembered it (shock!) although it was a fun trip down the dwindling and obstructed path that I call memory lane.

The can is quite nice, despite being somewhat messy. I credit this to the sensible use of shades of green. I'm not sure why they used such an "80's video game" font for the V but it works so I'm not really complaining.