A Review Of Prime Energy
By Rory Grant
(From right to left: the Co-Founders of Prime Energy, social media stars KSI and Logan Paul)
If you spend any time on YouTube it’s almost impossible to not know the names KSI and Logan Paul. Maybe you just heard the names from a friend, maybe you watch their content yourself, but either way, the names are in your head.
Both of them are YouTube stars who started out in entirely different genres of content, and decided to come together and create a business that was sustainable, profitable, and could be enjoyed by their fans. This led to the creation of their hydration/energy drink company: Prime
The appeal of Prime is nearly worldwide, thanks to the influence each YouTuber has in their respective markets. KSI hails from the United Kingdom, where he reigns as the UK’s biggest YouTuber, while Logan Paul is one of the largest American YouTube channels. The two met in 2018 through the YouTube Boxing scene, where they fought twice. During that time, they went from enemies to friends, and now business partners, as they look to expand their drink all over the world.
Prime, over the course of the last 6 months has absolutely blown up. The audiences that KSI and Logan Paul are able to attract are immense, and they have managed to successfully cultivate an absolutely MASSIVE wave of hype around the product, to the point where (especially in the UK) if any store has a shipment of Prime, it is sold out within a day. What started as a product in the US soon rapidly expanded to UK retailers, and is now available in Australia and India, and soon to be in South Africa.
But now we come to what this article is all about: How do the drinks taste? I haven’t been able to find all 9 of the flavors, but I managed to grab 6 of them. Now Prime has 3 lines of products, the hydration drink (the original stuff that comes in bottles, their Gatorade of sorts), the caffeinated cans (caffeinated versions of the drinks, their Red Bull/Monster drink of sorts) bottled in cans to signify the difference between the caffeinated and decaffeinated versions, and the hydration sticks. While I have seen some cans, I haven’t seen any of the hydration sticks (those things could honestly be called ghost sticks with how hard they are to find in small sizes), and the review will only be based off of the original bottled drinks.
Flavor #1: Strawberry Watermelon
This was the very first flavor I tasted, and it was a pleasant first act from Prime. The first sip left a strange feeling, as the coconut water base almost distilled and made it so that the Strawberry and Watermelon flavors didn’t have that much of an impact. After a few sips however, the taste starts to stack up on your tongue, and future sips do give you a nice sweet, but also mellow taste. There really isn’t much to complain about here, and the smell of the drink, when compared to some of the others, is really enjoyable.
Overall grade: 9/10.
Flavor #2: Ice Pop
Ice Pop is STRONG. From the very opening of the bottle and smelling the drink, the scent overwhelms you. It almost smells sickening, and it makes you blink. The taste doesn’t do much to help. True to its name, the drink tries its best to give you that Ice Pop flavor, but it always feels like they come up short, and not only is the aftertaste pretty bad on this one, but the taste itself just feels weird and artificial.
Overall grade: 4/10
Flavor #3: Meta Moon
This is the first flavor that doesn’t exactly tell you what it is, and the cover provides a lot of mystery with its galaxy and moon looking bottle (true to its namesake). This flavor gave me a very tropical vibe, as the smell gives off mango vibes, yet the taste has more of a peachy flavor to it as well. As confusing as the drink is, it actually tastes quite good, and it’s a very nice sort of mellow flavor. If only the real moon was as relaxing as this drink.
Overall grade: 7/10
Flavor #4: Blue Raspberry
Now this is the flavor that has been hyped up the most. Many reviews I had read or gotten from friends who were lucky enough to get their hands on one had said it was the best of them all. And as you open this bottle, “WHAM!”that Blue Raspberry flavor scent shoots right out of the bottle and wakes you up. Like Ice Pop, it’s a very strong scent, but this time I find the flavor a lot more attractive than the others. It gives off heavy 7-Eleven Blue Raspberry Slushie vibes, and as you drink it, the tastes are quite similar to each other. The problem is, it is still a very strong flavor, and while I think it’s a very good flavor, it can be a bit overwhelming at the start.
Overall grade: 8/10
Flavor #5: Tropical Punch
This is a really, really bad flavor. I got nothing but cough medicine vibes from it. I don’t think it’s fair to call this flavor tropical punch because that was more like a Tropical kick to the balls. And get rid of the tropical part entirely. There was nothing nice about this drink. It’s red for a reason; to subtly tell you to stop drinking it. I actually spat some of it out, which is unacceptable for the price($3.50) I paid for the drink.
Overall grade: 2/10(The bottle design saves it here, it’s a really smooth red)
And the final flavor(#6) I tried: Lemon-Lime
This is really just a middle of the ground drink. Very solid but I also can’t find that many things I actually enjoy about it. They don’t get the Lemon-Lime flavor wrong, but they don’t do anything to elevate it. If I wanted Lemon-Lime I would just go get myself a Sprite honestly. Unless I really wanted Prime specifically and this was the only option they had, I wouldn’t get it more than once. Very solid but very boring, as there is no real smell appeal when you open it, unlike the other flavors I’ve gotten to try.
Overall rating: 5/10(Dead middle of the road)
In conclusion, I think Prime is a very serious and legitimate business here. The company seems very well managed (especially considering it’s partly owned by Logan Paul, who has an unfortunate history of crypto scams) and they are really pushing on the hype they have, desperately trying to expand as much as they can, and right now the only issues they seem to have are supply ones. It is going to be interesting to see whether the actual quality of the drink manages to keep the business around after the hype finally dies down (it’ll be a few years though), but I believe this can be the most successful product to ever come out of the YouTube industry should the growth continue. They’ve managed to make an unreasonable price for a drink (while it retails for $2 at Walmart, it’s almost never in stock and thus the price can go upwards of $5 per bottle at local deli’s, with some collectable 12 packs going for hundreds or thousands of dollars on EBAY upon release) seem reasonable, in a way competitors like Gatorade or Red Bull will just never be able to do.
They are clearly capable of creating palpable hype and then maintaining it, and should they keep up this trend of “Limited Edition” flavors like they have with the new UK exclusive KSI flavor, attention will always be brought to the company. If you manage to see a bottle of Prime on the shelves of your local Walmart, GMC, or deli, why not go ahead and give it a try, it might just surprise you.