Arizona Iced Tea Stix

Before I get on with the actual review, I have to do a little (mostly) facetious griping.

Two things:

I hate it when non-music websites feature music that automatically plays when the site loads.  That’s presumptuous, and it pisses me off.  If it’s a band, record label, or otherwise music-related website, I’ll let it slide.  But why the hell does Arizona Tea need music on their site?  I went to their website for information on their products, not to find out what kind of fucking music their web design guy thinks is cool.  Seriously, that pisses me right off.  I was listening to my own music, and then Arizona shit all over it by playing a song by some shitfest of a band called This Blue Holiday.  I don’t even know if they’re any good, and now I’ll never find out.  The band has lost one potential fan because they allowed their music to be featured on Arizona’s website.  Fuck Arizona.  Now I’m even mad at the state of Arizona.  That’s how bad they fucked up.  There’s so much sand in my proverbial vagina from this incident that my anger has bled over to something completely innocent, except for the fact that it shares it’s name with the bastard tea company.

Secondly, the word “stix” is ridiculous.  It’s just as bad as “Xtreme”.  This is not 1994, and we are not talking about a new and exciting bold flavor of Doritos.  “Xtreme” sucks, and so does “stix”.  To hell with replacing the “cks” at the end of a word with an X.
Okay, I’m done.  If you’re still with me and you realize that my panties are not really in a bunch over the aforementioned topics, please read on.  I’ve been using the Arizona powdered tea mix pouches for several weeks now, and I feel like I’m ready to give them a fair review.  The tea “stix” come in boxes of 10.  Arizona recommends using one pouch of tea powder per bottle of water.  This can, of course, be adjusted based on how strong you like your tea.  I bought these as a substitute for the gratuitous amounts of fountain soda from the gas station that I usually drink.  Once my 32 oz. fountain cup is empty, I put in about 20 oz. of water, ice, and one pouch of tea powder.  This is a sugar-free tea sweetened with Splenda, so it’s calorie-free.  Focusing solely on the artificial sweetener, I’m satisfied.  There isn’t really any nasty aftertaste, and it’s definitely sweet enough.  Now, on to the details for both varieties I’ve had.

 

 

The pomegranate green tea variety is the shit, plain and simple.  I’ve gone through 3 boxes of the stuff, and I love it.  It’s light and fruity, and moderately sweet.   Much better than drinking a syrupy cola.  Obviously, it doesn’t taste like freshly brewed tea, but let’s be reasonable.  For a powdered tea mix, it’s just fine.  The pomegranate flavor does overpower the mild taste of the green tea, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing to me.  It’s more like a sugar-free Kool-Aid kind of drink than it is a tea.  In my experience, green tea is a pretty weak flavor anyway.  So it could use a little help.  There’s a tiny amount of caffeine in this tea, FYI.  Not enough to do much, but it is there.  Arizona’s website claims that there are 7.5 mg of caffeine per 8 oz.

 

 

More recently, I decided to give their regular green tea flavor a try.  Initially, I thought it was crap.  The first time I drank it, there was an overpowering lemon-ish flavor that I did NOT like.  It reminds of that flavor that’s in pretty much ALL bottled and canned teas.  Drink a can of Lipton’s Brisk tea and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.  I don’t know what exactly that flavor is, but it’s in this tea also.  So, I was stuck with 9 more of these tea pouches.  I decided to go ahead and suffer through the rest of them since I’d already paid for them.  I’m very happy to report that the weird flavor is not nearly as noticeable the second time around.  I’ve grown to like this stuff, but not nearly as much as the pomegranate flavor.  I’ll finish the box, but it won’t be a repeat purchase.

I bought both of these varieties at Wal-Mart.  Each box of 10 pouches cost me $2.16.  That works out to about 22 cents per pouch, which is considerable cheaper than soda.  Arizona Iced Tea Stix are a nice change of pace from the carbonated diet cola I usually drink, and I plan on continuing to buy them.  I stole those pictures from Amazon.com, by the way.  That’s why they say “6 pack” on them.  I forgot to take pictures of my boxes, and I’m too impatient to hold off on this review until I buy more.  I’m not going to include pictures of the prepared drink mixes, because that would just be boring.  The pomegranate looks like dark red fruit punch, and the green tea looks like tea, or cloudy brown pee.  ‘Nuff said.

Big thumbs up for the Pomegranate, and not-so-big thumbs up for the Green Tea flavor.  Now go buy some tea!

 

I listened to Squirtgun, Leftover Crack, Type O Negative, and Elton John while I wrote this review.  I just wanted to tell you that.  Have a nice day.