Red Lizard — Colonpipe

The main unique ingredient in this drink is amino acids. However, "amino acid" is kind of a container term for all manner of wonderful (and mostly inert and useless) chemicals. If you're really interested, you can read this page on Wikipedia, which tells you absolutely nothing about them, but uses a lot of big words.

Red Lizard is a cliché energy drink if ever there was one. It meets the required benchmarks, thus:

✔ Name involving a coloured animal Red Lizard. Red Bull. Blue Ox. Orange Gerbil. Whatever.

✔ Contains useless ingredient In this case, amino acids, clearly included because "amino acid" is a yuppy buzzword for "magical ingredient", and because it gives the false idea that allowing the beverage to ferment in a primordial atmosphere may bring about the advent of new life. Probably in the form of lizards. Red ones.

I was hoping it would be red. But it's not. It's the same urine yellow as most energy drinks. It's incredibly carbonated, though! I can hear it fizzing as I type this.

At the risk of comparing yet another drink to the benchmark - it smells like Red Bull. Upon opening the can, there's a strong smell of chemicals, however. It's exactly the same smell as the aroma of black felt pens, before they banned the inclusion of xylene as an ingredient. You remember the smell that you could taste? Mmm. Xylene.

It tastes slightly floral. Its similar to Red Bull, in that it tastes like vomit, but in this case, it's slightly floral vomit. The sweetness is definitely stronger than other drinks of the same kind. Not bad, really. Incidentally, it's still carbonated wonderfully. If I could award a drink based entirely on its bubbles, this one would be ze winnah.

The aftertaste is slightly greasy, but still floral. Somehow the floral or soapy flavour carries into the aftertaste. I've had worse drinks. If I could be bothered to waste the money on it, I'd have a can of Red Bull handy to compare these drinks to, but yeah, a ) can't afford it, and b ) I really don't want to have to drink a can of [insert beverage here] and then a can of Red Bull as well. I'd die. And we don't want that.

It's another Red Bull clone, but it's sweeter and slightly less offensive. Either that, or I'm becoming adjusted. There's a frightening thought.