This is a shocking product, which might just make it successful. But, from a coffee aficionado’s point of view, this is the worst of everything.

Really.

For one thing, it is sold as a drug, and an unnecessary one. That’s not a problem. Half of any Walgreen’s might be deemed unnecessary. But, this drug is caffeine. Caffeine is known as a generally safe stimulant. One reason I’m convinced coffee has stayed as popular as it has is because it delivers a small amount of this stimulant at little or no risk. This product intermixes Arabica coffee beans with Yerba Mate, a tea-like herbal stimulant. Yerba Mate is hardly a new product, and normally I would have no objections to it. I will reserve judgment on flavor until I taste it, but there are better ways to increase caffeine content without intermixing substances into it. Most canned coffees already do this at a bargain price by using most of all Robusta coffee in their blend. Robusta was a wild-growing coffee that had little or no market value and wasn’t even cultivated until the 1940s when shortages of good Arabica beans caused the industry to look into them. Robustas can offer twice the caffeine content of Arabica. It’s still all coffee and, believe it or not, there are some that are quite tasty.

The problem in the coffee business is the audience is moving away from high caffeine and has been for years. The modern coffee drinker is consumed with flavor. There’s even a sizeable market for no-caffeine coffees. Most coffee drinkers I know prefer low caffeine Arabica because they can have more coffee. I don’t stop drinking coffee because I get tired of the taste. I get tired of the caffeine.

But this product is not marketed to coffee drinkers, is it? It’s marketed as a legal version of illicit stimulants. Last year, I worked on a short video spot in Oregon, one of Crystal Meth’s highest use regions. It wasn’t pretty. This is a drug that can cause its user to forgo eating – the classic laboratory rat story of preferring a substance to food. This was the drug involved when a woman sold her child for money. That’s the drug this product is tying itself to.

The only reason I’m writing about it is because they’ve tied their product to my passionate product and I wanted to make sure if I publicize them, that I also publicize the terrible life they are selling along with it.

It’s just my way of introducing myself to the anonymous folks who are bringing you this product.

It’s one of those products I’d go out of my way not to buy just to not support it.

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