Water is the most boring thing ever invented, which makes complete sense that it would be the one thing that we absolutely need on a regular basis to keep us alive: God forbid it would be something that actually tastes good. I think my struggles to drink the stuff are pretty well documented in other reviews on this site, so I’ll keep the explanation to a minimum, but I have to force myself to down this stuff most days. My plan is to drink at least a cup of water at work with my lunch, but I’ve found that I usually just don’t drink anything at all with my lunch, because I’m either too lazy to walk to the breakroom to grab a cup, or I just completely forget.
Enter these powdered mix sticks, a product that I would view as a completely stupid, unnecessary invention were I not one of the people clearly within the crosshairs of the target consumer. I’m sure these things are bad for you, considering all the chemicals that no doubt go into their creation, and so I don’t drink them all the time, but I am genuinely curious: What’s worse, barely drinking plain water, or upping my water intake at least threefold when I use these powders?
Anyway, this is the first kind that I tried, given my affinity for fruit punch, and it’s the perfect introductory flavor to get into Fit & Active’s line of drink mix sticks. My mom and I were pretty broke growing up, so I had plenty of the cheap powdered drink mixes where you add a boatload of sugar and water and end up with a pitcher of flavored sugar water; the taste of this is reminiscent of those, with a nice helping of sweetness blending with a mass of vague fruit tastes. I don’t find it as overly sugary as the sugared powder mixes, so the sweet aspects are dialed back a bit, which makes it much more drinkable, in my opinion, and very refreshing.
The price is pretty solid, too, with ten-packs retailing for $1.19. Similar packs of name-brand stuff can be had at Dollar Tree for $1, but those only have 8 in each pack—that makes Fit & Active a slightly-better deal, though the savings literally only come down to mere pennies. Either way, $.12 per stick isn’t too bad of a deal no matter how you look at it, so I don’t mind getting these once in a while to help me get the water intake that most normal people can do without the need for added flavors or other assistance.
Overall: 7/10. This is a good little flavor enhancer that recalls the fruit punch flavor of the sugared powdered drink mixes we all got when we were younger. In other words, it tastes pretty cheap, consisting of a mass of vague fruit flavors mixed with artificial sweetener, but I can’t hold that against it too much, because these are cheap: A ten-pack retails for just $1.19, giving you plenty of servings for the price. The flavor is nothing all that spectacular, but it tastes less sweet to me than similar drink mixes, making them drinkable without being too overpowering—likewise, for using artificial sweeteners, there’s not much of the “metallic” taste you get with most drinks that use them. A nice, refreshing drink on a hot summer day. Recommended, for sure.
