12.11.05
Mr. Brown Iced Coffee
Hello all, TheMan here. I just want all you JSF junkies to know that I do drink things other than canned coffee.
This stuff for example.
Oh, sure, it says “Iced Coffee” on the front, but I’ve had canned coffee before. It’s called Hello Boss. It actually contains coffee. This stuff has “Coffee Extract” on the ingredient list. That must be the stuff left over after you’ve extracted all the flavor from coffee.
I’m not saying that Mr. Brown is bad. Bad is an insufficiently harsh description of what Mr. Brown actually is. It’s one of those chemical attempts to simulate coffee that tries to emulate the real stuff and fails. It has a smooth initial taste, but a nasty clingy chemical aftertaste that hangs on the back of your tongue and tries to crawl up the back of your nose.
Other than that, it’s not too bad.
The logo is similar to that of Hello Boss, a grinning bearded guy giving a thumbs-up. In this case he’s about to pour a cup of coffee down the front of his white suit. He has a bug-eyed look of shock on his face. Perhaps he’s just tasted the stuff inside of the can he’s on.
Fortunately the cans are small. Just a hair over 8 oz. So, there’s not much to suffer through if you happen to pick up one by mistake. And that’s the only way I could see this stuff selling. Someone sees it out of the corner of their eye and picks it up after mistaking it for a can of Hello Boss.
The combination of lousy taste and deceptive packaging earns this cheap little knock-off a grand total of 1.5 nasty, chemical, but still caffeinated Wasabi Peas out of 5.
Chung said,
February 16, 2010 at 10:32 pm
I just want to say that I believe Mr. Brown came before Hello Boss and that it’s Hello Boss that’s a knock off of Mr Brown!
In fact, most Taiwanese will tell you that Mr. Brown tastes better than Hello Boss! Haha!
Boo said,
March 29, 2010 at 11:05 am
Apparently I didn’t do my research thoroughly enough because I was unaware that Mr. Brown came first. I still stand by the rating but it’s good to see Mr. Brown has a strong following. Hello Boss needs the competition to keep their product deliciously tasty *g*
This also explains the Starbuck’s phenomenon: Some people just like their coffee different than others.