Energy Drink Review: Brawndo
Coming from the makers of Cocaine, Brawndo is an energy drink made in promotion of a movie that, even when compared against the movie’s release on DVD, is about a year and a half too late. See, usually beverage tie-ins are created in anticipation of another product’s release, like how Mountain Dew created Game Fuel for the release of Halo 3. However, rare is the product that gets release for damn near unrelated reasons years after a time when it could have possibly been relevant.
Well, regardless, and seemingly in the face of common sense, we have Brawndo: the Thirst Mutilator, an energy drink based on the movie Idiocracy. In the movie, Brawndo serves as a metaphor for our corporate controlled culture and the influence large corporations can exert over the Government . The movie extrapolates these ideas to the point where Brawndo, a sugary sports drink, is made the official replacement for water. Relegated to only being used in toilets, water is even usurped in irrigation systems, which effectively destroys the production capabilities of the future America. So, in essence, Brawndo is commentary on modern marketing, group think, and deadly corporate double-speak.
Which makes the real life Brawndo all the more insulting. But we’ll get to that later.
Brawndo tastes a lot like homemade Powerade, which is to say watered down, watered down Gatorade. The drink is nearly tasteless with a vaguely citrus aftertaste. While not being terrible, the taste is just a little weird and off-putting. If you’ve ever made Gatorade from powder, you’ll sort of know what Brawndo is like to drink. Powder-made Gatorade has a weird chalky consistency that feels like miniature clumps of sugar scraping its way down your esophagus. In other words: unpleasant at best.
While not being marketed as such, Brawndo tastes like a diet drink. This is due, of course, to using the current sugar replacement darling sucralose instead of high fructose corn syrup or cane sugar. While replacing the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup is never a bad thing, using sucralose is arguably no better. If they were trying to go the healthy route, they should have used all-natural cane sugar instead.
To its credit as an energy drink, each can of Brawndo is loaded with caffeine. A whole can will net you 200mg, which is more than half of what you should probably limit yourself to a day. While this doesn’t beat Cocaine, another energy drink made by the makers of Brawndo, few drinks do. However, it is at least possible to finish a can of Brawndo, so you’ll definitely get more caffeine in the long run.
The packaging is good enough for being, more or less, a straight rip of the movie Brawndo’s packaging and advertising. It won’t win awards, but it’s a licensed drink, so it’ll do. The can features the same taglines and idiot-speak from the movie, using circular logic and over-obvious statements. This is carried over to Brawndo’s official website, which is formated sort of like a blog. However, unlike the movie where interactions with the idiot public are tempered through the perspective of the average-intelligence Joe, there is no filter here. So the “blogger” just come off looking more like an asshole, instead of just simply being a moron.
As previously mentioned, Brawndo is made by Redux Beverages, the company behind the Cocaine energy drink. Considering their pedigree, it isn’t surprising that the message of Idiocracy is lost on Redux. The movie’s Brawndo is an indictment of everything real life Brawndo represents, which at least puts it into the “totally missed the fucking point” hall of fame, alongside such cultural milestones as Fight Club: the videogame. Not familiar with the Fight Club videogame? Well, it was a 1-on-1 fighting game released years after the cult favorite book-turned-movie and featured amongst its playable characters Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit.
Yeah.
However, to not be a total killjoy, some of Brawndo’s advertising is actually pretty funny. Sadly it isn’t enough to justify a damn thing. Not a damn thing.
Overall rating: way below average. Brawndo is yet another modern Pespi Blue from the premier source of modern Pepsi Blues, Redux Beverages. You’re 0 for 2, guys, good luck with that.
Further Reading:
Website: Brawndo
Wikipedia: Idiocracy; Pepsi Blue
- Rob O’Reilly
