PRODUCT REVIEW: V8 Fusion With Green Tea

I love V8 Fusion, as does, apparently, the entire country. It's been a massive, runaway success for the company, selling tens of millions in product in its first year alone. It's proven to be big enough of a hit where Wal-Mart has even introduced its own Great Value version of the drink.

Capitalizing on this success, V8 continues to release new versions of Fusion and has now introduced an entirely new variant, a sort of double-fusion of Fusion and green tea. I was hyped and grabbed the bottle. I assumed that they just soaked a green tea bag in V8 fusion, but no. That would have been hoping too much, and it also gives me an idea to just do that myself.

V8 Fusion with tea is 50% juice and 50% tea, and the 50% that's tea has been sweetened with, ugh, sucralose. Why couldn't they have just used extra grape juice, or, sacrilege, sugar. Mercifully, the sucralose flavor is mild, here. No, the biggest problem is that the flavor is just so bland and mild compared to ordinary Fusion. That 50% that isn't juice is sorely missed. The flavor is hollow, you kinda' sorta' taste the green tea, and the sucralose makes itself known very quickly as the flavor leaves your palate. And, as with most sucralose-sweetened drinks, that flavor is the last one to leave your tongue after you stop drinking it.

Unlike drinks completely flavored with Splenda or aspartame, which means diet or diabetes, this is not zero calorie nor zero sugar. It has 10g of sugar and 50cal per serving. This is a drink that you drink because you want it, not because you're limited in your choices. As such, the use of sucralose is open to criticism. It makes it taste bad. Yes, yes, I know that not everyone can detect the difference; but I can, and so can most of my friends.

I initially puzzled, who is this drink for?! It's not diabetes or diet friendly, but it's flavor is negatively affected by the presence of sucralose. Why would they put sucralose in at all? Then it hit me. I'm coming at this drink from the wrong angle. It is not V8 Fusion. It is bottled, pre-sweetened green tea with juices added. This is for people who drink bottled Green Tea like crazy, because they think that it's somehow healthy, but want something that tastes, I dunno', good.

That is where my dislike is rooted; the bottle is branded incorrectly. If they had called this Lipton Green Tea with V8 Fusion added, I would never have even considered it, and I would have never been disappointed. As such, if you come at the bottle with this perspective, you won't be disappointed. In fact, you might be ecstatic to find bottled Lipton tea that doesn't taste like butthole. But I'm not reviewing Lipton, I'm reviewing V8 Fusion, and this concoction just isn't up to snuff.

V8 Fusion with Green Tea: NOT RECOMMENDED