As someone who once hated coffee, energy drinks were my balm in Gilead.
When college all-nighters required something harder than Dr. Pepper, Monster and Full Throttle were there, providing necessary caffeine and some very basic, sorta weird flavors endemic to the style. You either got sugar-adjacent Smarties taste or whatever prison sangria flavor Rockstar original was supposed to be.
I wasn’t alone, and energy drinks grew into a billion dollar industry and an entire row to itself at my local Woodman’s grocery store. My go-to is typically whatever’s on sale — usually either Monster or Rockstar (their offerings got much, much better) — but there’s one brand that stands out. Ghost covers a wide spectrum of bubbly drinks packed with caffeine and a bunch of other -ines whose purpose and effects escape me.
Ghost has a bunch of flavors endemic to the buzzy king cans that dot convenience stores, but also some very recognizable names to aging milliennials like me. Namely, partnerships with Warheads, Swedish Fish and Bubblicious (at least formerly, as the gum-flavored drinks no longer show up on the company’s website) to make your energy boost taste a little bit like the start of your TMJ issues in high school.
The folks at Ghost were nice enough to send me a proper sample — 12 cans and 12 flavors, two of which seem to no longer be in production. And, because the NFL season is still several days away, I decided to rank them. This is, decidedly and undoubtedly, the correct ranking of Ghost’s energy drink flavors.
12
Cherry limeade: C
11
Bubblicious Strawberry Splash: C
10
Bubblicious Cotton Candy: C+
9
Swedish Fish: B-
8
Tropical mango: B
7
Sour Patch Kids blue raspberry: B
That sounds like an insult, but it’s not. It’s pretty much just a description of Sour Patch Kids. So, well done.
6
Orange cream: B
5
Citrus: B+
4
Warheads Sour Green Apple: B+
3
Sour Patch Kids Redberry: B+
2
Faze Pop: A-
1
Warheads Sour Watermelon: A
