Monday, March 2, 2009
Restaurants Let me buy you a drank...
Posted by Besha Rodell @BeshaRodell on Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 4:53 AM
OK, so I get a ton of products that come across my desk every week, and in general I ignore them. But this one is too awesomely bad, in so many respects, I couldn't resist sharing. Get this: it's an anti-energy drink called Drank. Their slogan? "Slow your roll with Drank."
I had to try this stuff. It's hard to imagine how something that lists high fructose corn syrup and sucrose as its second and third ingredients (after water) would relax you, but I was willing to be a human guinea pig. It also contains melatonin, valerian, and rose hips. It comes in a big can, and is fizzy and purple. It basically tastes like grape Cisco (for those of you who were young and delinquent in the early '90s) - a very sweet grape flavor with an odd, medicinal edge. I drank about half the can (each can holds two servings, and warns that you shouldn't drink more than those two servings in a 24 hour period), and waited. About 10 minutes later, I did start to feel strangely...calm. Sleepy, almost. A half hour after that, I was wide awake again. Now I'm doing my usual thing, which is to stay up way too late staring at my computer. But I can imagine if I had drank Drank right before I planned to fall asleep, it might have helped.
But really, is a big, sugary beverage with a crazy purple can aimed at folks who want a more natural way to relax than Xanax? I can only imagine it will be popular amongst the revelers who drink it after a long night of too many...uh...Red Bulls.
(Image courtesy of Drank)
Comments (2)
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Wow, this is (almost) funny. I imagine their targeted demographic is the same southern hip-hop crowd that popularized mixing codeine cough syrup with soda and sipping it as a recreational drug. On the streets, it's known as "syrup," "lean," "purple" or "drank" — hence the name. There's an entire rap subculture built around it that grew out of Texas and surrounding states over the past decade or so. Songs like "Sippin on Some Sizzurp" by Three Six Mafia (the same cats who won an Oscar a few years ago for the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp") glorify, what else, sippin' on sizzurp. The man most connected with "drank" and its popularity is DJ Screw, the Houston DJ who started the screwed and chopped style of mixing records, which gives them a slowed sound similar to listening to a record on the wrong speed. It mirrors the supposed effects of the drug, which apparently slows users' motor skills. DJ Screw died in 2000 of an alleged overdose on syrup. A couple of other Texas-based rappers' deaths have been loosely connected to the drug. One rapper named Big Moe built an entire career off of his love for drank. His first and second albums were respectively titled, City of Syrup and Purple City. Moe also died a few years ago. "Screwed and chopped" music is still required listening in many parts of the South, though not as popular as it was in recent years. As for the drank, the rapper who has done the most to increase its mainstream exposure is recent Grammy winner Lil Wayne, who rarely conducts magazine interviews without babysitting his styrofoam cup of the purple stuff.
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