It's bad, very bad: Mother energy drink
Note: This review is based on the original recipe of Mother, which was released in 2006. In 2008, Coca Cola decided -- wisely -- to reformulate the crap into a basic Red Bull clone, and marketed it with the slogan "It tastes nothing like the old one", transparently demonstrating their acknowledgement of the fact that the drink you're about to read a review about tasted like Satan's crotchpit.
Mother claims to be an "all natural" energy drink, although I suspect most drinks can parade themselves under this label if they choose to. It contains an alarming amount of "natural" chemicals, including something extracted from the berries of the Açaí, a type of palm tree native to the Amazon basin, Korean Ginseng and the usual caffeine and guarana characters.
This drink is available almost everywhere, but I first located it in a convenience store in Sydney city. The store was being loaded with crates of the stuff, suggesting to me that it may actually be a decent drink.
It's slightly red-brown, and not as dark as cola. It's also quite carbonated and remains that way for much longer than other energy drinks.
It smells of ginger. It's like weak ginger beer, with a hint of medicine over it. I don't like ginger, or ginger beer, so this doesn't bode well for Mother.
It tastes utterly unpleasant. In fact, it tastes as though it just corroded part of my soul. It's slightly gingery with no effort made whatsoever to mask the reeking flavour of b-vitamins. There's also a hint of aniseed and the general flavouring of medicine. I can detect no flavour whatsoever that feels either safe, nor good for me.
It leaves very little aftertaste, and what it does leave tastes simply fresh, as though I've just swilled with ginger mouthwash. There's a very mild hint of b-vitamins.
I find it rather difficult to rate this drink on a whole. It's neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and my immediate dislike of it probably stems from my general avoidance of ginger, which makes my opinion more biased than usual. The problem with these drinks on a whole is that the ingredients rarely perform the magical tasks they claim, and are rarely well thought-out as companion ingredients in the same beverage. Having "all natural ingredients" doesn't necessarily mean that the ingredients, when mixed together, won't curdle your innards. This drink isn't unpleasant, but it does taste of ginger. It's unlike any other energy drink I've reviewed, thus far, so it stands alone in its weirdness.