Hey everybody CaffeineMan here and
today we're gonna be going over a drink
for the gamers. That's right we're gonna
be going over Game Fuel by Mountain Dew and Amp.
But not only that, I feel
like my timestamps are gonna be highly
used in this video because I'm also
gonna be giving you guys a history lesson.
Do gamers like history? I don't
know but I'm about to find out,
Coming right up.
INTRO:  C *thud*   M  *thud*
*LIGHTNING STRIKE*
Hello again everyone. Thanks for
joining me today. Today we're going over
one for the gamers and that's gonna be
Game Fuel. It's been a very popular
request on my channel, not to be confused
with G Fuel, which I probably won't be
reviewing but I'll probably review it in
July when G fuel comes out with the cans
because I prefer the cans as opposed to
powdered drinks. So today it's gonna be
Game Fuel as well as a history lesson.
But if your gamers want to skip ahead
that's perfectly fine if you want to
learn something I got the info for you.
So what's this history lesson gonna be
on? I'm glad you asked! I'm gonna start off
talking about Mountain Dew. That's right,
the one, the only, the original, the first
highly energized soft drink. From there
I'm going to talk about its progression
throughout the years leading up to the
time that they came up with Amp.
I'll talk a little bit about the history of
Amp as well and tell me how they dealt
with Kickstart, also made by Mountain Dew,
and how they decided they were gonna
handle the competition. And that'll bring
me up to the modern times when we can
talk about the newest energy drink that
they came up with Game Fuel by Mountain
Dew Amp. I'm gonna go over the cherry
burst, the berry blast, the tropical
strike and the original dew. Time stamps
listed below.
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Game Fuel is
targeting gamers everywhere just by
simply putting the word "game" in their
beverage, but let's face it the original
game fuel was a drink called Mountain
Dew. Loved by teens everywhere, hated by
parents everywhere, teenagers drank the
stuff during any game that they played.
Whether it was their favorite board game
or even just a video game they had to
have the dew. Now back in the day, gaming
wasn't anything like it is now. Games
just sort of kind of continued on and on.
You know you jump over a pit, then you
jump over an alligator, then you jump
over a pit, then you swing over an
alligator, then you jump over a pit and
you get the idea. There wasn't a lot of
playtime involved. But as video
games progressed, you got lots of hours of
playtime. I mean some people take
hundreds of hours to play a game.
but way back in the day Mountain Dew was played
for a lot of other games that took a
long time. I mean some of these games
people would play for hours and hours
and did I mention they played them for
hours. I mean some of these games could
even be played for more than hours. They
could be played for days and they could be
played for weeks depending on who was
running the game.
UUmmm, can I get back in the shot please?
Thank you. So, once video
games start expanding out into longer
play times, hardcore gamers also expanded
from Mountain Dew to other energy drinks
such as Amp or any other energy drink
for that matter. Now as you all should
know Mountain Dew is a Pepsi product.
What you may not have known is that it
was originally created to be a mixer for
moonshine and whiskey. That's right it
was created by two bottlers in Tennessee,
Barney and Ally Hartman in the early
1940s. Mountain Dew is actually the slang
name by the Scottish and the Irish to
describe moonshine and the Hartman
brothers decided to use that as its
trademark in 1948. In 1960, the Hartman
brothers teamed up with a company called
the Tip Corporation. In 1961, the Tip
Corporation bought the rights to Mountain
Dew and Bill Bridgeforth, a manager at
the plant at the time, decided to start
putting his own Tri-city lemonade into
the Mountain Dew. And that caused sales
to take off. I mean they skyrocketed for
the company. In going with the citrus
lemonade idea Mountain Dew decided that
more citrus was the way to go. On the
back of the bottle or the can you'll
find that concentrated orange juice, high
fructose corn syrup and citric acid are
three of the key ingredients. In 1964,
PepsiCo purchased the Tip Corporation
and thus required the rights to Mountain
Dew and the rest is pretty much history.
Since its inception
Mountain Dew has come up with over 40
different flavors over the years. Some
are still with us; Many have gone away.
Has that affected the sales?
Some theorize that it has. The reason being
that sometimes people actually love
certain flavors, but if they don't
perform that well, or as well as the
company wanted them to, they'll pull them
off the market and if you do that enough
times, you're going to have enough people that
liked lots of different beverages that
you made and then you just took him away
from them and those people are gonna be
more skeptical to try out a new drink
when it comes out only to have it
potentially taken away. So as much as
it's always good
try and come up with new ideas, they came
up with a lot of new ideas, but pulled a
lot of them back from people which
potentially hurts them in the future.
A 16-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew has 61
grams of sugar and 72 mgs of
caffeine, which comes out to 4.5mgs of caffeine per ounce.
And then there was Amp. Amp Energy Drink
was created under the Mountain Dew brand.
In 2001, Amp was released onto the
market. The original formula of Amp
Energy Drink was marketed as a flavor
extension of the Mountain Dew brand and
the label read Amp energy drink from
Mountain Dew. Now, when I first tried Amp, I
thought that it was just concentrated
Mountain Dew. And when people did reviews
on it they just said that it was a
glorified Mountain Dew. But to a certain
extent that's kind of what Mountain Dew
was going for. They wanted Mountain Dew
as an energy drink. But I know that I did
not like it because it was sweet. In 2006,
only five years after its creation they
decided to change their packaging to
make it more amped up... see what I did
there? Then in 2007 and 2008 they began
releasing new flavors. Some of the
flavors released were Traction, Elevate
and Relaunch. And each year after that,
they tried to come out with additional
flavors including a few tea flavors as
well. In 2009, for the original flavor Amp
energy, they decided to take off the
Mountain Dew logo for another redesigned
can. And at that point, in 2009, they began
selling Amp under its own name. In 2012,
aggggain, Amp tried to make a difference in
the market by releasing yet another
series. This time it was their Active,
Boost and Focused line. It basically was
trying to market it based on those buzz
words. In 2017, Amp energy drink announced
its plans to release Amp organic energy.
With more natural energy drinks hitting
the market, Amp decided that this was
going to be their perfect opportunity to
get customers what they demanded. It only
has a few ingredients in it and those
ingredients are carbonated water, organic
cane sugar, citric acid, natural flavors,
and organic caffeine from natural green
coffee beans.
Sounds pretty healthy, huh? Welllll maybe not.
All that being said the 12 ounce can
that he came up with still had 44 grams
of sugar in it. Granted it was pure cane
sugar, the healthier of the sugars, but
still 44 grams in a 12 ounce can is
a lot of sugar. But then again, that's what
Mountain Dew is known for. As for
caffeine the organic energy drink series
was a 12oz can and it had 120 milligrams
of caffeine in it putting it at 10 milligrams per ounce, just like the standard amount of the most common
energy drinks on the market. As for 
regular amp, it's a little bit weird.
The 16 ounce can only has 142 mgs of caffeine in it.
so it's actually less than 10 milligrams
per ounce. Also it only has about 20%
of your daily value of all the B
vitamins. But most importantly, it's got
58 grams of sugar in it.  Whhooof! That makes it
one of the highest sugar contents of
energy drinks on the market and is just
beating out Venom and Monster by a
little bit and the only ones that are
higher than it are ones like Rip It, a
handful of the Rockstar flavors, No Fear
and a few other smaller independent companies.
But then again Mountain Dew
has always been known for the highest
amount of sugar in their drinks,
so why not energy drinks too.
With all this talk of Mountain Dew and Amp,
what about Kickstart?  Doesn't Mountain Dew
also make Kickstart? Isn't that, like, a
conflict of interest?
Well, with Amp finally taking Mountain
Dew off the logo in 2009, Amp has slowly
been pushing itself away from it's
association with Mountain Dew, even
though we all know it was still owned by
Pepsi and Mountain Dew. I mean, they must
have hoped that other people forgot it
as well, because in February of 2013,
Mountain Dew announced its new energy
drink called Kickstart. Now, they didn't
actually want to compete with Amp, since
they were the same company, but they
still wanted to tap into the energy
drink world a little more. When it was
released, Pepsi actually stated that Kickstart wasn't an energy drink, but an enhanced soft drink.
They believed that Mountain Dew lovers would turn to this beverage as a healthier breakfast option, instead of
regular Mountain Dew. Because people
drink Mountain Dew for breakfast.
An energy drink breakfast beverage? That's what
you're going with Kickstart?
I mean I don't know about you, but I don't know
anyone who drinks an energy drink for
breakfast besides... well... me.
But when I do have an energy drink in the morning, it's not for breakfast,
well... usually... okay sometimes it is. Anyway,
it sounded ridiculous to most people I'm
sure. I mean don't you agree? Comment down
below if you guys drink energy drinks
for breakfast and then that's it. I'd
love to know that I'm not the only one.
I know some of you probably do it in the
morning for a pre-workout and that could
be your breakfast as well. All that being
said, depending on which Kickstart you
picked up, regular Kickstart has 5%
fruit juice in it and hydrating boost
has 10% fruit juice in it. Oooohhhh...
Kickstart also has some vitamin B
and some vitamin C in it as well. How
about caffeine?
This 16 ounce can of this energy
drink has only 92 milligrams of caffeine
in it. 92 for a 16 ounce energy drink.
That puts it at just under 6 milligrams
per ounce. As for sugar, it only actually
has 20 grams of sugar, so maybe they're
learning? Maybe not. As I said, Mountain
Dew actually came out with over 40
different flavors in their time. As for Amp, they keep trying to recreate
themselves every couple of years by
rebranding themselves and come out with
new logos and new cans and "look we're
new!" and then slightly changing up their
flavors and even though they constantly
try and reinvent themselves they haven't
been doing a bad job overall. Between the
years of 2009 and 2013 AMP was holding
strong as being the fourth or fifth
ranking energy drink on the market. Now, Id
say that's pretty good. I know all
companies strive to be the best but
there's no way that Mountain Dew or AMP
is actually gonna be able to compete
with your big names like Red Bull and
Monster and even the up and rising
Bang right now. But they can keep trying
if they want.
Now what they really need to do is get rid of all those other companies, all those other brands and all
those other flavors and focus on just
one drink. If they can focus on one drink,
maybe they'd have some success and limit
the amount of flavors - because you got
way too many flavors. Focus on just a few
drinks and you could be successful.
Is Game Fuel gonna be that drink? It might be.
Mountain Dew didn't mind having its name on Amp to help them out. They eventually pulled away and decided
to let Amp stand on its own two feet.
Then Mountain Dew experimented with
Kickstart. They did alright. Well, now, Game
Fuel's got three logos on it. It's got
Mountain Dew, it's got Amp and it's
got Game Fuel. Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel.
Going back to their beginnings with as
many logos as they can to sell the brand.
So enough with the history lesson. Let's
get back to modern times and take an
in-depth look at Game Fuel. First off,
this 16-ounce can has 90 milligrams of
caffeine. Boom!!! Strike one Game Fuel! 90 mgs in a 16 ounce can? That's, like, 5.5 mgs
per ounce. I mean,
coffee is stronger than that. I mean, come
on, a 16 ounce can of Mountain Dew - a soda -
has 72 milligrams of caffeine in it.
Do you really think
you're gonna be that competitive in the
energy drink market when you can't even
come in at the standard 10 milligrams
per ounce? Geez! Come on.
Let's take a look at the can. Total sugar 23 grams. Not bad for a mountain Dew product.
Added sugar, 20 grams. A bit high. 40% of your daily value.
Carbs are at 24, which is 90% of your daily value.
It's got 20% of your vitamin A , 40%
of your daily value of Niacin. 40% your daily value
for B6 and 40% for Panthoneic acid, which is your B5.
Not too bad but still kinda low for the
amount of vitamins in most energy drinks.
For sweeteners it uses high fructose
corn syrup, sucralose and asulfate
potassium. As for their ingredients, well,
there's a bunch in there, but some of the
noteworthy ones are L-theanine, which I'm
a huge fan of. Panax ginseng root extract,
which I'm also a fan of. Yerba Mate
extract, which I'm also a fan of. And the
cherry burst uses Red 40. Why do I
care about Red 40? Well, research
studies have actually shown, and proven,
that it can cause hyperactivity in
children. Maybe that's why they put it in
there? Lots of other testing has been
done on red 40, but nothing bad has
been conclusive for humans. Just a few
negative side effects in rats.
All right guys, let's try these out. See how Game Fuel does. Excited.
Let's start off with the Original Dew.
My best guess is that it's gonna be similar to Mountain Dew, probably similar to Amp with its own
Game Fuel kick to it. And as a side note,
these got some really cool tops to them.
It's meant to be opened, and then slid
back, but then it also can be slid forward so
that it's resealable. So actually, when
you saw the nutrition facts on the can,
they give you the one serving size and
then they give you the nutrition facts
for the whole can... unlike some of the
other energy drink companies, like
Monster, who just give you the numbers
for one serving but it's two servings
per can. This actually gives you both
options and because it's resealable you
can actually drink half the can if you
want, close it up, and save it for later.
I like it!!!
Let's see how easy it is to open,
though. It actually has instructions on
the top... and on the side of the can too.
How helpful!
Pull here, ohhh...that's kind of pop to it! Then
slide back... nice!
Well look at that color! Whhhhoooo!! Look at that. That is flourescent right there.
Let's try it out!
Wow. Yeah... I mean that tastes like a strong Mountain Dew. I mean, I'm actually right, now considering trying
out the amp and Mountain Dew just to compare it to... I
have one around... I put one up there.
You guys want me to try it out? I wasn't
planning on doing this, that's why I'm
unprepared. I'm actually gonna do it. I'll
put this one down here. I'll go grab that one.
Yes, I know it is warm, but you know, in
times of need.
Let's compare the two.
Oh man, I mean, they're almost... so similar, I mean, if I were to
relate it to Pantone colors but you guys
probably wouldn't know what I was talking about.
Yes, they're pretty similar.
This definitely has a soda flavor to it
because it's Mountain Dew soda, and this
one has more of the energy drink flavor
to it, but it's Mountain Dew energy drink.
I mean they call it the Original Dew and
they weren't lying. If you like Mountain Dew
and you want some more caffeine, not a
lot more caffeine, but 20-something odd
milligrams, you'll be all set. Move along!
Next up we'll try the tropical strike.
Some of you may have noticed that
they're actually all called "charged", so
this is Charged Tropical Strike, the
other one is Charged Cherry Burst, the
other one is Charged Original Dew and the
last one is Charged Berry Blast,
but I think that's stupid, so I'm not calling them that.
Tropical Strike.
These things really pop! Be careful when you open these. You get a little mist
coming at ya, and can smell the Tropical
as I pour it.  Oh my goodness!
Look at that. These things are fluorescent
all right. Hate to see my pee later. Do I talk about pee too much? I might.
Wow that is actually a really good tropical flavor.
I get some pineapple in there, pineapples
probably the strongest. I get some
mango in there, a little bit of orange, a
little bit of citrus going on in there
as well. Im really liking it. I mean I
should probably do a comparison video
because I like the Red Bull tropical.
I've had some other energy drinks that
are tropical as well, that have been
pretty good and this is right up there
with a good tropical flavor. If you guys
like tropical, you like the pineapple, you
like the orange, mango, all that tropical
stuff... you're gonna like this! They are a
little bit sweet, but they're not too
sweet. I'm quite surprised by it because
I always expect Mountain Dew to be extra
sweet and even though these are sweet,
trust me, they're not not sweet, but
they're not Bang and Reign sweet.
They're just right under that
and maybe, like, under Venom as well,
because that was really sweet. But with
only 23 grams of sugar they must use a
decent amount of sucralose as well, as
well as that assamum something potassium.
I didn't look up what that stuff was, because I'm lazy. I mean, I had to look up all the
stuff for a whole entire a history
lesson, I did the history of Mountain Dew, I did
the history of a Amp, I did the history of Kickstart, did
Kckstart vs. Amp and I still had to fit time
in for an energy drink review. Hey I
drink all these things super quick
hopefully get this video down under who
knows how many minutes, how many minutes
is this video? This video is going to be a long video,
especially if you keep talking like this.
I shouldn't drink the energy drink
before I start the video. I usually drink
the energy drink before I start the
video, to get me up a little bit, to keep
me going, but then I drink four or five
energy drinks during the energy - now I'm
just babbling - okay I'm moving on to the next one. Tropical! Very good. If you like Tropical
I highly suggest you try this out. It's
good. Moving on.
Next up we got the Cherry Burst; Bursting with cherry goodness. At least
I hope so. Now, be careful now.
This thing's gonna spray all over me. Make
sure you hold that part away from your
face so it goes that way because if you
open it this way... you'd have to open it
with your thumb to open it this way... but
yeah open it this way, Woooo,  that's kind of fun.
Don't let me down with those bold colors, my
goodness, that's some bold red there.
Some cherry red.
We're going three for three.
It's a little bit sweet but it's not a
bad sweet cuz I'm a sucker for sweet
stuff. Got a good cherry flavor. I mean, I
mean, I'm talking from all the cherry
drinks that I've had so it's got a
strong solid cherry flavor to it really
got some pop to it but I am tasting a
little aftertaste of something. Now I
still got the cherry flavor but I'm have
to sip again. I didn't even take a second
sip of the other ones. Did I? I don't remember.
hmm yeah something a little bit weird
about it I can't put my finger on it and I
think it might actually be the sucralose
flavor, so it is a bit sweet probably a
little bit sweeter than the other two. I
think they might have had just a little
bit too much sucralose in it because I'm
getting some of that sucralose flavor.
not to say the sucralose flavor is bad
but you get this nice solid cherry
flavor and then you get this aftertaste
of sucralose.
Some people don't mind the sucralose but
any time an energy
has an aftertaste and it's not the
aftertaste of something good, it's a
little off-putting, so this one's gonna
be the bottom of my list, so far, for the
Game Fuels. It's got a good cherry flavor
but that aftertaste is gonna hit me. If
you don't mind aftertaste you might like
it as always I always say try it out for
yourself, if you don't like it don't
drink it again, don't blame me if you
didn't like it, cuz I warned you. Moving
on to the blue.
Last but certainly not least the berry blast. I am a sucker for a good berry and I'm hoping for the best
because the first two were good,
the third one not so good and berries
always my favorite so let's get right to
it.
Watch out for opening it cuz it explodes.
I can only imagine if you shook these
like a little bit. Okay! One of you guys
do it. I want to know how it goes. I want
you to shake it up, just a little bit ... or
a lot, and see how much it explodes
because these things explode just by
holding them. Watch this. I'm actually
gonna open this one closer to the camera.
Did you see that did???  You see that?
Nuts!
Ohh...Cool blue... ooh baby I love you ... not singing a song no copyright infringement please
I am NOT copyright infringement, I don't even know what
the song, hey that wasn't a song, I was
just talking about cool flavor.
*laugh*
Oh yeah! Didn't let me down. That's a nice good
blueberry. It's got a little bit of
raspberry to it, it's not too sweet but
it's up there and I'm waiting for that
little sucralose flavor to see if I'm
getting that aftertaste... and no. I'm not
really getting the sucralose
aftertaste as much as the cherry. I might
be tasting it a little bit but yeah it's
actually pretty good. It's a good
blueberry, good raspberry mix, might have
a hint of some other berry in there but
overall it's blue meaning that it's
blueberry, with little bit of raspberry, it's a
Berry Blast. It doesn't lie. I gotta say
they're very straightforward with their
colors and their flavors and they were
dead-on. They started off with four
flavors and they nailed each one of
those flavors... cherry has a little
sucrose but... and actually believe it
or not out of the four of them I
probably the tropical
best, even though this berry is pretty
good, that tropical got all my taste buds
going. Between the pineapple, the orange,
the mango, all the flavors that were in
there. Out of the 4 of them, I'd be picking that
one up again. Maybe this one too. Now
earlier I did poke fun at the fact that
these only have 90 milligrams of
caffeine in them, but honestly, if they're
actually marketing these to gamers and
gamers are primarily teenagers, and don't
get mad in the comments down below. I
know there are plenty of adults that
play games as well, whether they're
marketing it to gamers and then
marketing it to teenagers because it's
Mountain Dew, a lot of people don't know
this but the average amount of caffeine
that a child is supposed to take in and
that's anywhere between 12 and 18 years
old is between 100 and 150 milligrams
The hundred at the lower age, closer to 150
as you get closer to that 18 limit. Once
you turn 18, you can magically go to 400
safely a day. But until then you're
supposed to stay under 150. These energy
drinks, with only 90 mgs, are gonna keep the
gamers under that amount, which is quite
genius on their part I must say. And only
90 milligrams they'll be able to drink
this safely, play their game for as long
as they want, get the caffeine they need,
get some B vitamins and C vitamins and be all
set to go. Add that to the flavors being
really good it's gonna make it appealing
for a lot of Mountain Dew people that
want to step it up from Mountain Dew and
get away from Amp,
I think Game Fuels got a hit on their
hands right here. Not just this one, all
four of them. I mean, man, 5th in the market?
They're not gonna catch up the Red Bull
or Monster but I'm predicting in 2020
Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel could hit
that number three spot. I have to see how
Bang does. Bang doesn't have the
distribution out there yet.  Mountain Dew
Game Fuel, Pepsi, second best distributor
in the world. Not gonna mention the other
one. I think they can do it. Alright so
that's all I got for you guys today I'm
gonna go run some laps right now maybe
even clean the house who knows I should
probably just go to the gym but I don't
have a gym membership. Don't plan on it.
So until next Tuesday you guys have
yourselves a great day ....
or night
 
