Oshee Vitamin Energy Formula: Vitamins + Minerals

It’s original alright – it doesn’t appear to have any added caffeine over the guarana extract. It tastes okay, it has no strange side effects, but it doesn’t give you the expected energy kick. It has tons of sugar in, so is not really aimed at the health conscious either which begs the question: just who is this drink aimed at anyway?

Relentless Origin Ultra

Considerably better than Relentless Origin. It doesn’t suffer from that odd brewed taste of its full fat cousin, and is overall much more palatable. It’s still a bit watery, and not the best Relentless in the range, but it is low in calories. Choose this over regular Origin.

Scheckter’s Organic Energy Lite

Smooth yet sharp, much like the full fat version of this drink. It still tastes like it must be good for you, and it even has the organic and Fairtrade logos plastered all over the can. It firmly fits in the tree-hugging category of energy drinks, but if you want something with street cred wid da kidz, stick to the other brands!

V Sugar Free

Just as I remember the full fat V energy drink, this sugar free one is also on the right side of sweet and sharp. Being a guarana based drink, I am still assuming that this is where the bulk of the flavouring comes from – and as I’m now writing this review having tasted Guarana Antarctica I can say that there are certainly similarities between them.

Monster Energy: The Doctor

This drink is intended to honour MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi, who’s nickname is apparently “The Doctor”. This is all very confusing to me as the only person who should sport that name owns a TARDIS. Oh well, on with the drink itself. It’s described as citrus flavoured, and I guess that orange is a citrus fruit – I was expecting something a little more on the lemon and lime side of things though! It’s very orangey, but that’s not bad because it’s still quite nice. Even the large quantity of drink you get in this large can doesn’t get too sickly, so they’ve managed the balance just right.

Monster Assault

I’m told that this is a standard issue energy drink in the US, but in the UK you can’t get hold of it. I found this in Spain so jumped at the chance of trying it without paying extortionate money to import a can. It’s really good! It tastes like fruit punch with a whole load of caramel in, and possibly a dash of cola in the background somewhere too. Whatever the flavour ingredients are (I don’t know, the can was in Spanish), they clearly work well together. I didn’t get the usual synthetic Monster flavour that is so prominent with this brand in this drink either which is a plus-point in my opinion.

Update 2021-09-23: Obviously since I first reviewed this drink over seven years ago, it has been available in the UK for quite a while. They have now updated the can design too, so I’ve updated the image on this review too. I am also now very certain that this is basically a cola flavoured drink.

Carrefour Psychik Guarana

Quite low on caffeine, but that doesn’t matter as it tastes very good. It’s fruity but not in a clone way, so I’m going to let it off with that because I enjoyed it. It’s a supermarket own-brand drink with a difference so that gets extra points in my book.

Rip It – Red Zone

Mmm strawberries. I have to be honest and say that I was expecting a much stronger strawberry taste, but that would probably lessen the appeal to the masses making it a bit too sickly. Rip It Red Zone has struck a nice balance, it’s got the nice strawberry flavour I like but it isn’t too overpowering and sickly. The background flavour is the same as the Rip It Shot of the same variety only without the bitterness you get with energy shots. Caffeine-wise it is one of the lowest in the range at 35.4mg/100ml but it is still much higher than most UK energy drinks! The drink is obviously a bright pink colour (red food colouring?) to associate it with strawberries even further.

Vitabiotics Wellwoman

This tastes like it must be good for you, and by that I mean it tastes bloody awful. The can claims it contains Elderberry, green tea, grape seed, artichoke, pomegranate and cranberry – I can only tell you that the combination is not good. Maybe you do have to be a woman to drink it, perhaps it tastes better then? But, in my opinion, it tastes like someone has filtered compost and canned the residue. I know it has a decent caffeine hit, but couldn’t tell you the exact amount because there’s no information on the can. That means that it doesn’t contain enough to warrant the warning – but the caffeine is hidden amongst the guarana and green tea extracts.