Off the Rails.

May 12, 2008 8:28 AM

Blow is an energy drink.
posted by gman (60 comments total)

and energy drinks are for morons.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 8:29 AM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

In the same vein.
posted by ofthestrait at 8:33 AM on May 12, 2008

Uhh...up in arms over a drink named after cocaine?

Coca-Cola

Think about it.
posted by Muddler at 8:33 AM on May 12, 2008 [3 favorites]

Pepsi Blow.
posted by cog_nate at 8:37 AM on May 12, 2008 [3 favorites]

Seconding Muddler.

Did nobody ever have candy cigarettes when they were a kid? It's very smart marketing...

Of course Cocaine, the other drink they mention, suffers from what I can only presume is the same problem this stuff would: it tastes like syrupy hot ass.

Did they actually manage to "ban" it as the news report suggests?
posted by abulafa at 8:40 AM on May 12, 2008

What we need is a taste test to tell us if Blow, indeed, truly blows, or if it merely sucks.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:44 AM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

"With, among other things, 5.75 grams of caffeine."

Really? It's 100% caffeine? Each serving has enough caffeine to, at the least, send you to the hospital?

You'd think, maybe, the reporter would take a second to think about it. It's like when you're solving a word problem in third grade, and you calculate that Johnny can mow 450 lawns in an afternoon. Maybe you stop and think to yourself, "that can't be right, can it?" Jesus fuck.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:46 AM on May 12, 2008 [12 favorites]

You'd think, maybe, the reporter would take a second to think about it. It's like when you're solving a word problem in third grade, and you calculate that Johnny can mow 450 lawns in an afternoon. Maybe you stop and think to yourself, "that can't be right, can it?" Jesus fuck.

Maybe Johnny really likes his cocaine-themed energy drinks.
posted by ninjew at 8:48 AM on May 12, 2008 [9 favorites]

Well I don't know about the rest of you suckers, but I just ordered The Fiender's Hook-Up . 4 Limited Collectors Edition Display Cases (that's 96 vials of Blow). Includes Free shirts, Free stickers & Tattoos, and if you collect all your proof of purchase tags you could trade them in for this!!
posted by nola at 8:48 AM on May 12, 2008

Why does putting pictures of hot girls on random products make people want to buy them? I'm assuming because the practice is so common that it works, but why? If you routinely get girls like the ones on the site, you clearly don't need this drink. If you are a drooling homoculus starting at the pictures, do you really think drinking this drink will lead you to getting girls like this?

And why don't they use sexy women to advertise things like combs and paper clips? IS it because food is an appetite and so is sex? But paper clips and detergent aren't?
posted by Pastabagel at 8:51 AM on May 12, 2008

Half way through the 'Shock! Horror!' news report I was thinking a) where can I get some? and b) I wonder what happens when you snort it..?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:52 AM on May 12, 2008 [2 favorites]

As noted, it's been done. And I hate to forget about the children, but this is far more exploitative of those stuck in the complex maze of cocaine capitalism. Anyway, my curiosity as to the obvious way in which hiptards will attempt to consume this led me to this gem of an Ask Yahoo question and best answer combo.
posted by youarenothere at 8:53 AM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I nominate Pat O'Brien for all analysis related to this energy substance.
posted by cgomez at 8:55 AM on May 12, 2008

Blow: the Septum Mutilator!

It's cut with electrolytes!
posted by quin at 8:59 AM on May 12, 2008 [4 favorites]

And why don't they use sexy women to advertise things like combs and paper clips?

*imagines a sexy woman in a bikini top made of paper clips combing her luxurious pubes*

I should go into advertising.

Also, energy drinks (and power bars, too) are for idiots. Eat some actual food.
posted by jonmc at 9:00 AM on May 12, 2008

For one, I'm glad the war is over and the economy is back to normal. Now we can continue wasting our time needlessly fretting over these completely benign non-issues.
posted by tiger yang at 9:18 AM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I love the part where the lady says that Blow clearly isn't targeted at an 18+ crowd because it's advertised on MySpace. As we all know, MySpace is for teenagers.
posted by solipsophistocracy at 9:26 AM on May 12, 2008

I'm assuming because the practice is so common that it works, but why?

It does indeed, according to a study, because men are easily distracted and influenced by women they find attractive.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 9:37 AM on May 12, 2008

"It", being "putting pictures of hot girls on random products make people want to buy them," for those who didn't catch pastabagel's comment.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 9:38 AM on May 12, 2008

This 80's nostalgia shit is really getting on my nerves.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 9:38 AM on May 12, 2008

/me chuckles heartily

What's next, an energy drink called "CRANK!" that you drink out of a broken light bulb?
posted by hellslinger at 9:40 AM on May 12, 2008

*considers marketing whiskey as a 'lethargy drink.'*
posted by jonmc at 9:47 AM on May 12, 2008 [10 favorites]

This has got a Del the funky homosapien song in my head...

super fiend, he used to gleam and glow
until he became a fiend for blow
posted by anthill at 9:49 AM on May 12, 2008

I can see a waxed and sweat sheened guido holding a can of this in one hand and a bottle of Grey Goose in the other while posing for a myspace photo with his boyz at the 2008 Howard Beach Queens Douchewad Awards.
posted by The Straightener at 9:55 AM on May 12, 2008 [3 favorites]

he got the mega-migrane
sorta like a spider-sense that he can't fight against
posted by anthill at 9:55 AM on May 12, 2008

I prefer the AMP Walk of No Shame over bastardized Dave Stewart + Girls Gone Wild (both YouTube).
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:57 AM on May 12, 2008

[Drug joke]
posted by Mister_A at 9:57 AM on May 12, 2008

It does indeed, according to a study, because men are easily distracted and influenced by women they find attractive.

Oh, come on. That's totally absurd. If you're selling toothpaste, I don't care if you put, say, Jessica Alba in your commercial, it's not going to get me to buy your toothpaste, no matter how amazingly toned her body is, or how good she looks in a bikini. Especially if it looks like she just got out of the pool, and she's toweling off and her legs just seem to go on and on and on, rising up to that perfect gravity-defying rear. And you slowly keep looking up, and you notice her smooth, tanned skin and her toned-yet-not-too-muscular belly and arms, then you catch her giving you one of those sly smiles she does (guys, you know what I'm talking about!). And those teeth! Those perfect, gleaming white teeth! I wonder what kind of toothpaste she uses -- whatever it is, that stuff works, baby!
posted by pardonyou? at 10:32 AM on May 12, 2008 [15 favorites]

Pepsi Blow.
posted by cog_nate at 10:37 AM on May 12 [+] [!]

Shoulda gone with "Pepsi Blew"
posted by nanojath at 11:05 AM on May 12, 2008

And why don't they use sexy women to advertise things like combs and paper clips? IS it because food is an appetite and so is sex? But paper clips and detergent aren't?

That reminded me of the Ministry of Sound's video for Benny Benassi's Satisfaction, that came out a few years ago. Very informative video, that. [nsfw]
posted by Project F at 11:09 AM on May 12, 2008

How about bong water, sum poosie, bawls, kronik, cocaine, hair of the dog, and deep throat?
posted by msaleem at 11:18 AM on May 12, 2008

Blow is also potentially NSFW. It might be a good idea to mark it as such on the FPP as well as inside.
posted by kalessin at 12:01 PM on May 12, 2008

What's next, an energy drink called "CRANK!" that you drink out of a broken light bulb?

Well there is Meth Coffee (via)

BYOLB (bring your own light bulb), or here's a beaker mug. Some labware is illegal in Texas.
posted by morganw at 12:08 PM on May 12, 2008

I'm genuinely curious and not raising some kind of PC alarm - how is that Bernassi video (or, for that matter, the Blow website) NSFW? I mean, sweaty exploitative advertising aside, I didn't see any nudity or explicit sex. Is innuendo enough?

Then again, I know people whose IT departments filter out all URLs from email and IM. Just in case.
posted by abulafa at 12:14 PM on May 12, 2008

Blow doesn't have anything on Powerthirst
posted by clearly at 12:17 PM on May 12, 2008

Who wanted Crank?
posted by tadellin at 12:39 PM on May 12, 2008

I'm working on a relaxing herbal sedative drink called SMACK.
posted by Liquidwolf at 12:43 PM on May 12, 2008

Wow. 5.75 grams of caffeine huh? I can easily understand how the tv newsdroid could make this mistake. After all, the nutrition info is only available on the company's own website and every package of the product, cleverly disguised as "Nutrition." And once there, you do have to be able to read in order to puzzle out the distinction between "serving size" and "caffeine." And that's before you even get into the technical arcana of "grams" vs. "mg."

Ok, that's all the arch sarcasm I can manage on this. Seriously, if you're in the TV news business, kill yourself. Just fucking kill yourself. A gun, a high bridge, plastic bag over the head, anything. Do it now. Fulfill your dream of making our world a better place.
posted by rusty at 1:01 PM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

Does that lady even have any kids? Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that she doesn't actually have any kids, and that she's just some local crank who started some group to patrol the internet - and that she gets 100% of her information from the internet as well. She seems to be about as in touch with "the youth of today" as a raccoon skin coat and phone booth stuffing.


All that being said, does anyone alive under 18 remember what "blow" even really is?

Look, let me remind you youngins of a few things. Cocaine brought us Hall & Oates, Journey, Foreigner, Flock of Seagulls, men wearing lots of hairspray, women wearing boxy suits with shoulder pads the size of small mountains and DayGlo colors as a fashion statement - among hundreds and thousands of other horrible crimes against humanity including the unbridled selfishness of the "me" generation.

This is why your schools now suck, why the drug war still sucks, and we have an entire nation of old idiots in charge. Research "Iran-Contra". Research the CIAs role in cocaine trafficking.

I'm begging you. You didn't miss anything. It's not an era worthy of your retro-styling emulation - it was a period of extreme alienation and emptiness. The TV is lying to you - it was never as cool or as fun as they're trying to tell you it was.


I see you're still unconvinced. Let me see if I can put it more succintly:

Imagine every stiff, white, business-suit wearing, bitch-ass motherfucker you've ever met all hopped up on some crack. Except it's not crack, it's blow. It doesn't last 10 minutes, it lasts 10 hours, and they don't burn right the fuck out and turn into crackheads. It's your boss horning rails in the bathroom off the sink. He's licking the fucking counter. He's your Pointy Haired Boss, and he's in charge of you, your job and your future - and he's licking the fucking counter, tongue all up in the cracks around the sink making sure he got it all.

Yeah, I can see the horror of realization forming on your face now.

Let me put it this way. The government wants you to do coke. That's why they import it, and why they invented crack when people started wising up and saying "no, thanks" to coke.

But they don't want you to smoke weed at all. Choose wisely.

Spliff?
posted by loquacious at 1:22 PM on May 12, 2008 [2 favorites]

I was really disappointed to learn that this is not at all about oral sex.
posted by Mister_A at 1:24 PM on May 12, 2008

loquacious,
I agree . The 80s was a cruel joke of a decade. Just like coke-head, soulless and painful to listen to.
posted by Liquidwolf at 1:35 PM on May 12, 2008

The past blows.
posted by hojoki at 1:40 PM on May 12, 2008

Um... Perhaps a NSFWEWSOTRBVWOWWDFCMRFE (Not Safe For Work Environments Where a Screen Opening to a Thundering Rock Blast and a Visual of Well-Oiled Women Wearing Damned Few Clothes Might Raise a Few Eyebrows) would be useful.

TIA.
posted by Mike D at 2:13 PM on May 12, 2008

I see that loquacious must have also worked in the Advertising industry.
posted by tkchrist at 2:15 PM on May 12, 2008

loquacious,

I think you are mostly right, but if I understand your little "spliff" comment at the bottom correctly, I would have to retort by saying that supporting the tobacco industry and marijuana is not a whole lot better than supporting the international Cocaine cartel.

Sure coke brought a lot of awful music and style, but it has also become a popular drug for potheads to divert blame toward.

Granted cocaine is a lot more shady due to its physically addictive nature and resulting stigma, but either way you are supporting an industry that provides a means for people to kill themselves. Of course we don't know how many people die each year as a result of Cocaine usage and trafficking, but we know that tobacco related illness kills a tremendous amount. We also can't look up stats on how many people have physical or mental health (I know several people) problems related to marijuana usage, but it might be a problem too.
posted by hellslinger at 2:52 PM on May 12, 2008

The eighties also brought us Whitesnake's "Slide It In" album, an album that contained the following lyrics:

Who knows where the cold wind blows,
I ask my friends, but, nobody knows
Who am I to believe in love,
Oh, love ain't no stranger

Think about it.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 2:55 PM on May 12, 2008

Wake me when they've got toffee crack pipes.
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:57 PM on May 12, 2008

Its no good.
posted by ratla at 3:13 PM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wake me when they've got toffee crack pipes.

Close enough?
posted by jonmc at 3:51 PM on May 12, 2008

We also can't look up stats on how many people have physical or mental health (I know several people) problems related to marijuana usage, but it might be a problem too.

I'll agree with you on the tobacco industry. It's a hell of a drug. Pretty much pointless and insanely addictive. I know this first hand as I still haven't successfully quit. I strongly advise people to not start smoking tobacco.

But there is a lot of real data about marijuna, despite your arguments that there aren't. You just haven't looked hard enough.

One recent study pointed out that tobacco smokers who also smoked marijuana had significantly less lung cancer than the tobacco-only smokers. (I mention this not in favor of tobacco, but in favor of marijuana.) This study supports other studies that there is no link between smoking marijuana and lung cancer. There's one (quite old) study that I've ever heard of that ever claimed to find a lung disease/lung cancer connection, it was at the staggering rate of something like 100 joints a day for decades and decades of use, and the data and results of that study are suspect. (That's about 8-10 hours a day of non-stop joint smoking. Roughly 5 minutes per joint. Assuming you had a full-time worker making the joints for you one right after the other.)

So, which physical problems are you talking about, precisely? Because the data I've seen doesn't even remotely support your suggested arguments. The most extreme physical problems I've seen from marijuana are asthma-related, and again, that's a pre-existing problem. Yeah, no shit, asthmatics shouldn't smoke anything. Go figure.

As for mental health problems - as far as I know, in 100% of the cases I've seen those "mental health" problems existed before marijuana use. In a scientific, logical and compassionate world, marijuana abuse is a symptom of these problems.

Marijuana can, indeed, make these problems worse for many people. However, it's not usually the marijuana that is making the problems worse. It's the coping that is making it worse, by way displacing any actual active healing, therapy or treatment.

And if we looked at the real-world data, how many marijuana users actually are successfully, responsibly and safely self-medicating, compared to those that fail at it? Why are cases of a successful self-medication such a taboo topic? Why is so much real world experiential data discarded so easily and with so much disdain?

Anyway, almost anything can be used as a coping agent. Power, money, ambition, sex, food, materialism, drinking, smoking - or even the sexual, verbal or physical abuse of others - the list is endless. Hell, some people collect rocks, obsessively, as a coping mechanism.

Any of these things that are private or consenual aren't immediately "bad", are they? Are any of them "evil" or inherently and ultimately "harmful"?

No, they aren't. And neither is marijuana, nor is any other drug. Not in a rationalist's world, they aren't. It is how it is used or abused that makes it harmful - and that is a direct symptom of greater problems, not the source or cause of them.

So, yeah, you interpeted me correctly. If you feel the need to cope - or if you merely wish to cop a recreational buzz, nothing wrong with that, is there? After all, it was Mr. Benjamin Franklin that said that "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

But if you do feel the need to cope - then, yes - I would much rather have my friends, family and loved ones reaching for a joint or a bowl than reaching for cocaine, alcohol, tobacco or most other natural or artificial pharmacuetical psychotropics. The objective scientific data and the experiential, anecdotal data supports the safety and low risk when compared to almost all other drugs.
posted by loquacious at 4:20 PM on May 12, 2008

I vote for more close-ups on mouse-clicking. So deep. Sooo representative of internet culture. *click*
posted by nosila at 4:43 PM on May 12, 2008

Why did they loop her saying "I love Blow" at the end of the clip?!
posted by liquorice at 4:47 PM on May 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

Coca-Cola

Named for its two active ingredients: Coca and Cola. Now it is brown water with sugar and bubbles.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:08 PM on May 12, 2008

Ok, correct my reasoning here, cause I don't have kids and I'm in the dark. A 15 year old won't have a credit card to buy BLOW because s/he's 15. If the kids are buying it with mommy and daddy's card, then that's a parenting issue, not a legal issue. If the parents are buying the stuff for the kid, that's a parenting issue, not a legal issue. It's not like kids will bump into this stuff at 7/11 (or can they?)

It's a stupid product that might find its way to kids, but then what? If the kids are unequipped to deal with fake cocaine, and it drives them to want to do the real thing, that's a parenting issue, not a legal issue. Parents, I realize I might be totally off the mark, so if so set me straight.
posted by zardoz at 5:10 PM on May 12, 2008

I just wanna say to loquacious that alcohol isn't a drug, it's a drink!
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:26 PM on May 12, 2008

Just so you know Coca is as far removed from cocaine as wheat is from a loaf of bread.

Old time Coca-cola with real coca and sugar cane sugar was probably healthier than it's modern version. Hell. My dad was told to chew coca leaves when he was sick in South America.
posted by tkchrist at 5:34 PM on May 12, 2008

Red Balls
posted by gman at 6:22 PM on May 12, 2008

For what it's worth, my two favorites are Hansen's Energy Pro and Guru.
posted by deusdiabolus at 9:06 PM on May 12, 2008

....bawls...
posted by msaleem at 11:18 AM on May 12

What follows is a true convenience store conversation.

Once when I was out and about at the ungodly hour of 9:45 AM, I felt that I was in need of the type of extreme caffeine that only one of those energy drinks that are so popular with the kids could provide. I entered the nearest convenience store, and was chuffed to discover that they had the sugar free variety of my favorite kind, so I grabbed two. It was going to be that kind of day.


"Naked Bawls." said the cashier.
"Yep" I said.
"That's what the distributor calls this kind. The other ones are called "Blue Bawls.""
"Oh, I like Naked Bawls." I said.
"I'm not offending you or anything, am I?" the cashier said, a bit worried.
"Oh, no. Not at all."
"Would you like a little bag?"
"A sack for my Bawls? Of course." I replied.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:31 AM on May 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Eat some actual food.
posted by jonmc at 2:00 AM on May 13

Who are you and how did you steal jonmc's account?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:25 AM on May 14, 2008 [1 favorite]