One Foot Tsunami: four loko/ Search Results

7 results found for “four loko/”

Don’t Do the Dew ∞

I too like my sodas not to taste like my Cheetos.

Friday, July 29th, 2022

Long (very long) time readers may remember the mistake I made in trying trying Four Loko. In a similarly comedic vein, Geraldine DeRuiter recently tried 21 flavors of Mountain Dew for some reason.

You are probably saying to yourself, “I did not know so many flavors of Mtn Dew existed.” That is a reasonable response. If someone can name more than three flavors of Mtn Dew off the top of their head, they probably aren’t fit to live in society. What I’m saying is that this project has ruined me.

Hey, at least it was far less expensive than not eating at Bros.

Nice Can? ∞

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

One Foot Tsunami has long been devoted to all the important Four Loko news you need to know. Now, just two years after the fact, Four Loko is a halloween costume.

Cranberry Lemonade is not impressed by your choice of costume.

Crazy Core Skittles advertise themselves as having “two flavors in each piece”. There’s an exterior shell with one flavor, and then a crazy core with another flavor. But how do these Skittles stack up? Here’s a flavor-by-flavor review.

Crazy Cores Skittles

Mango Peach

This is one of the most realistic Skittles in the package, as it has two real flavors associated with it, mango and peach. The exterior shell does taste faintly like peach, but I would also describe the overall flavor as “sweaty”. Once chewed, the mango taste is barely there, and certainly does not act as a much-needed antiperspirant.

Cherry Lemonade

Cherry Lemonade is a complex Skittle. Like a fine wine, you need to let it breathe, because the exterior cherry shell on its own is overpowering. Biting allows the lemonade flavoring to mix in. Once you do, you’ll enjoy the best Skittle in the pack.

Strawberry Watermelon

There’s not a lot to say here. As with Mango Peach, there are two real flavors to enjoy here, and they’re decent enough. It’s a C+ flavor, maybe a B- if it came by after class for some extra credit. However, the Skittle is green with a pink core. If this were just a watermelon Skittle, it would be perfect. Instead, we’re left to wonder just who is eating green strawberries.

Melon Berry

Apparently, Skittles feels they’ve managed to captured the flavor of “melon”, and mixed it with the flavor of “berry”. What kind of melon? What kind of berry? No one knows. This nebulous flavor boggles the mind and stumps the taste buds.

Blue Raspberry Lemon

It’s awful, just awful. If you’ve ever wondered what it would taste like to drink Mr. Clean, just try the Blue Raspberry Lemon flavor. You may well wish you’d downed the toxic cleaning product instead. Is it really any surprise that Blue Raspberry has struck again?

Overall? Crazy Cores Skittles are passable, but on the whole, lousy.

Four Loko Finale

Friday, November 19th, 2010

It’s Friday, which seems as good a day as any to do a final wrap-up post on Four Loko. You read about it, then you read about how awful it is. You may have also seen videos like K. Ryan Jones’ amusing “scientific” test or New York Assembleyman Felix Ortiz’s nonsensical guzzling. As Gawker notes:

Ortiz has long lobbied local grocers in Brooklyn to take Four Loko off their shelves…so New York’s local NBC station basically said, “OK, Mr. Assemblyman, if Four Loko’s so bad, why don’t you drink as much of it as you can in one hour while we film it?”, which makes no sense at all.

A few readers noted that in my write up, I didn’t actually talk much about the effects Four Loko had on me. Ultimately, the most enduring aspect of it really was how godawful it tasted. I certainly did get drunk, quickly and cheaply. Worse, the stimulants hid the alcohol’s effects to some extent, which is not terribly safe. There were no hallucinations or other crazy behavior however – the end result was just drunkenness, followed by sleep. Perhaps the most interesting aspect was that the caffeine didn’t seem to do much in the long run.

Several states, including Massachusetts, have already banned the sale of the product. More recently, the FDA has laid the groundwork for a nationwide ban by warning the manufacturers of Four Loko and other alcoholic energy drinks that the combination of caffeine and alcohol is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

All is not lost, however, as Phusion has stated that they plan to remove the stimulants from Four Loko. When the reformulated product returns to shelves, buyers will again be able to purchase their disgusting beverage, albeit with no uppers. On the plus side, it will undoubtedly still be chock full o’alcohol and it will still be frighteningly cheap.

Until next week, thanks for reading One Foot Tsunami – the site that got Four Loko banned.

Steve, Don’t Eat It! ∞

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

If you enjoyed the sacrificing of my taste buds to Four Loko, you should absolutely check out Steve, Don’t Eat It!. This running feature from the all-too-infrequently-updated site The Sneeze has some of the biggest, funniest, and grossest laughs on all the web.

Steve tries some of the most vile things that can still be called food, and then reports on them. From his very first post in the series, on Potted Meat Food Product:

Inside is a smooth, oddly pink meat paste. So smooth, in fact, I dare call it “creamy.” (I actually got a little gaggy just typing that.) Surprisingly, it was a little spicier than I expected. Although, that sensation may have been a by-product of my tastebuds dying.

Thus far Steve has sampled ten different bizarre foods, and the whole series is worth a read. You may want to wait until after lunch, however.

Mistakes I’ve Made: Drinking Four Loko

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

You’ve probably heard about alcoholic energy drink Four Loko, possibly from this very site. Maybe you’ve even thought about trying Four Loko yourself. Fortunately for you, I’ve bitten that bullet so you don’t have to. Subjecting myself to a 23.5-ounce can of caffeinated liquid that’s 12% alcohol and runs less than $3, then chronicling the whole thing for your amusement and edification, is just the kind of foolishness I’m up for.

While deciding which flavor to drink for my act of stupidity, I found that Four Loko’s lineup is cobbled together from real fruits, real drinks, and just made-up shit. The eight Four Loko “flavors” are Blue Raspberry, Cranberry Lemonade, Fruit Punch, Lemonade, Lemon Lime, Orange Blend, Uva (some sort of Brazilian grape), and Watermelon. After much contemplation, I came to the conclusion that they all sound dreadful.

In the end, I bought a can each of Blue Raspberry and Watermelon because that’s what the liquor store had. While ringing up the purchase, the store owner glanced at the cans of Four Loko before stating “that’s the closest I come to selling real poison”. I couldn’t make that up.

So on a recent Friday night, I stayed in to down a can of this bad decision juice as rapidly as possible. Responsible moron that I am, I had my friend Lena present as photographer/emergency caregiver, and her photos accompany this post.

At 10 PM, I took the can of Blue Raspberry Four Loko from my fridge. Despite being overcome with a deep sense of foreboding, I pressed on in the dual names of science and comedy. For the rest of the night, I went mano-a-cano with this:

Sure, it looks fun.

I stared down the can for a full two minutes before I finally built up the courage to open it. After popping the top, I sniffed its contents by wafting it in as one does with potentially dangerous chemicals. The odor was not completely repellant.

The taste was another matter entirely. When the first drop of Four Loko touched my tongue, I immediately regretted my decision to run this little test. Blue Raspberry definitely does not taste like raspberry. Hell, it doesn’t even taste like anything blue, with the possible exception of 2000 Flushes. Put simply, Four Loko Blue Raspberry is abhorrent and I can only imagine that these cans are filled by a long assembly line of Smurfs vomiting.

Here’s my reaction:

I assure you, this was not acting.

After sipping at it for a few minutes, I started to wonder if Four Loko is intentionally made to be so awful that it can’t be chugged. I tried it as a shot, and while this was a passable way to choke it down, the can was much too voluminous for it to be practical. I also attempted to drink it without getting it on my tongue. This was not workable either.

I had no choice but to drudge my way through, rallying for big gulps every so often. Halfway through the can, I was still trying to determine what exactly this beverage tastes like, when it hit me – it tastes like regret. As far as drunkenness goes, whether it was the caffeine counteracting the alcohol or something else entirely, I felt nothing but self-loathing.

Finally, at 10:45 and after around 42 minutes of drinking, I finished the can of vile blue liquid. While drinking, my stomach was unhappy and my taste buds cried out for the sweet release of death. But in under three-quarters of an hour, I had downed the alcohol equivalent of four to six standard drinks.

The agony of victory.

While ringing up the Four Loko, the liquor store owner had also indicated that “the kids” often mix it with vodka and other hard liquors. This seems like a huge mistake, not least of all due to the obvious stupidity of mixing one extremely alcoholic drink with another. An even bigger problem is that adding any liquid to this is just going to spread out the unpleasantness. A greater volume will be left to drink, while the flavor won’t be depleted at all. Kids, be smart about your drinking. As smart as you can be while drinking Four Loko, anyway.

Ultimately, while the price of Four Loko is low, the cost to your sense of self-worth will be high. Further, both your mouth and your stomach will rebel against you, before admitting defeat and crawling into a dimly-lit corner to quietly whimper until you stop bathing them with this sewage. I’ve made this mistake, so you don’t have to.

Ridiculous Products: Four Loko

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Four Loko Cans

Four Loko is an alcoholic energy drink, so we’re already off to a great start right there, because why wouldn’t you want to mix a downer like alcohol with an upper like caffeine? Simple math says that the two will cancel out and keep you at a safe median. Loko comes in “delicious” “flavors” like Blue Raspberry and Cranberry Lemonade, and a 23.5-ounce can will set you back less than $3. For your money, you’ll get both six servings of alcohol and the caffeine of five cups of coffee, all in something you can probably consume in under 10 minutes. [See the update at the bottom of the page for more details. -Ed.]

That doesn’t even sound like it should be legal, but for now, it is. At that price, anyone can get drunk off his ass, while maintaining the energy to stay up all night getting even drunker off his ass. Loko isn’t just for the bum who needs to get stuff done though. It’s also a big hit at college campuses, where cheap students are purchasing it with the change they find under their couch cushions.

Of course, the concoction is less popular with college administrators. Schools such as BU and Northeastern have issued warnings about it to their student bodies. Other colleges, including Central Washington University, Ramapo College, and the University of Rhode Island, have banned it outright. Judging by the empty shelves around here, however, these actions have only served to increase demand.

Phusion Projects, the company who makes Four Loko, is working to counteract this recent negative publicity. This excerpt from their “Four Facts” page, providing information about their cans, is quite revealing:

Our cans feature seven different warnings about the alcohol content and the need for an ID for purchase.

Our ABV warnings are in a font as large as the federal government will allow.

We were the first caffeinated alcoholic beverage company to ad “WE ID” tags to our cans.

Four Loko’s can colors are no brighter or more appealing than the blue, red, and green labels of established beer brands like Budweiser and Heineken.

That is some defensive writing, and only serves to make them look bad. For instance, the fact that the government limits how large you can make your ABV (Alcohol By Volume) “warnings” makes it clear that this text is actually boasting of a feature, not warning of a problem.

That said, I’m not sure how you defend a candy-flavored drink with a ridiculously high alcohol concentration which also contains caffeine that will mask the effects of alcohol consumption. There really is no safe way to drink anything but a small quantity of this stuff. Hopefully the founders are smart enough boozenessmen to save their profits now, because they’ll need them once the first lawsuits roll in.

Judging by this gem from their FAQ page, however, I have my doubts:

Are people drinking Four because of its high alcohol content?

It’s really a matter of consumer choice. Our products are just a fraction of a wide array of beverage options. In fact, stores that sell our products also offer dozens of other beverage choices – from beer to wine to spirits. Consumption of Four products accounts for less than approximately 1% of total beer consumption nationwide.

Who dodges a question on their own Frequently Asked Questions page?

Update (November 17th, 2010): I checked the math on the statement from the first paragraph, which came from this post. At 12% alcohol and 23.5 fluid ounces, Four Loko has about 2.82 fluid ounces of alcohol, which seems to be closer to four or five “standard” drinks. The caffeine content is 260 mg, which appears to be closer to around 3 cups of coffee.

Also, as evidenced by this follow-up post, that ten-minute consumption estimate was overly optimistic.

7 results found for “four loko/”

Don’t Do the Dew ∞

Nice Can? ∞