A quaintly appealing Mother.
Energy drinks were developed for those night owls out there like you and me, incapable of functioning in the morning (yet required to by society) and not always feeling like a coffee.
Mother has had a stab at filling this gap twice now, leaving me less impressed from their first foray that left them with thousands of cans of swill that no-one particularly wanted to drink - piling up in supermarkets and bargain stores for a mere $2 for four cans.
They've since shaken off those early days through completely different packaging and an amusing advertising campaign that seems to have given them a second wind (including a SWAT-style raid of the original Mother facilities, and an entire truckful of the old Mother being crushed by a tank), but what I've grabbed the bottle for is to decide whether or not I can be converted back into the Mother fold.
In the style of recent energy drinks, there's a small panel included on the bottle that is either meant to amuse or inform, which reads:
When an ordinary energy hit just won't do, you need a MOTHER of an energy hit. Yep, this black bottle looks like a stealth jet on purpose because MOTHER's energy hit is off the radar. It delivers an all out assault on anyone with an open mouth. Ok, we're talking it up . . . but there is a MOTHER load of energy!
Cutting through the obvious marketing-speak it seems they're implying you'll get more energy from this than from other drinks; Mother has a 'High Caffeine Content' of 32mg per 100mL... which is pretty silly considering that the Monster Ripper drink has 32mg of caffeine per 100mL, and V: Double Hit has 31mg.
It's also got the same amount of energy as V, and slightly more than the Monster, so it's effectively exactly the same as pretty much energy drink out there - only differing with taste.
But I digress, because the taste isn't actually that bad, being close to a sour apple lollipop without the over-the-top intensity that you'd expect. Heavily carbonated (read: bubbly!), it's got a slightly cloying feeling when you swallow but otherwise is quite pleasant.
Reaching the bottom of the bottle was pretty enjoyable, and it's easy to slam it down quickly if you're in a hurry. There's just enough in the bottle to wake you up, but not so much that there's too much to drink in one go.
Going for roughly $3.20 for 355mL this is quite a price increase over a large can of Mother ($~3.30 @ 500mL) but the convenience of a bottle that you can close is pretty neat, and definitely worth a try for those out there who enjoy something with an interesting taste.
Check out the drink in the gallery of pics, and post below if this is your energy drink of choice - I've slotted it into my weekly energy drink cycle.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012