First Impressions: Harcos Health Potion

by: Chuck - posted: 2/20/2009 12:50:00 PM

Energy drinks are all the rage right now with ones aimed at gamers becoming a fad as companies have realized that gamers have the extra income to afford this drinks. Harcos has recently entered the market with two energy drinks aimed at the gamer crowd: Health and Mana . The bottles come in 3.5 oz bottles that are designed to look like a health potion that you would find in a game. The difference between the two is that the redmana potions are sugar free while the blue mana potions are premium unleaded. Harcos claims that the Health potions will give you five hours of heightened awareness without a sugar crash.

Since I didn't have a LAN party on the docket I decided to take a few of the potions to work as the Venn diagram of coders and gamers overlaps significantly. Myself and four otherpeoplle tried the potions with mostly positive experiences. We did find that the bottles were a little difficult to open as they come wrapped in one big plastic wrap that's a bit difficult to get off. No one liked the smell or the taste of the drinks (one person described the taste as sugar free cough syrup) and a few people complained of slight headaches about ten minutes after ingesting the drink. The headaches faded quickly though.

The results of the potion were fairly solid as most people reported being very alert and not suffering through the usual end of the week downer (we tried the Health Potions on a Friday morning). For me the results lasted about four and a half hours and I didn't experience any kind of crash. I did feel a little bit less energy but not the immediate need for sleep like I've had with Red Bull or other energy drinks.

For the most part the health potions lived up to the marketing material. At $3.50 a bottle it seems a bit much but the price is in line with the rest of the marketplace. If you're looking for a good energy drink to get you through a long coding or gaming session I don't think you'll go wrong with theHarcos Health Potion although you may want to chase it with something to kill off the taste.