Who needs coffee when you could have chocolate

With twice as much caffeine as a Red Bull, a new high energy chocolate bar is being advertised as a more affordable way of increasing mental and physical levels to help us keep up with our fast-paced lifestyles.

The chocolate, called Red Rush, was sent to Interrobang in trial format so we decided that, considering we tend to overload on coffee anyways, that we would so nobly test it for students.

The first thing we noticed about the chocolate is that though the information stated that there was 1,000 mg of Taurine, 200 mg of Guarana and the aforementioned caffeine, there was no nutritional panel on the back of the wrapper. Hmm... that didn't bode too well to be honest. But we took one for the team and wound up pleasantly surprised with the overall taste of the chocolate.


However, shortly after splitting the bar five ways so we could all try it, we realized it probably wasn't the best way to test its effectiveness. So this is where our graphics design student, Marc Fowler, comes in handy. As a part-time minion he is now moonlighting as a guinea pig. So we gave him the chocolate to take home with him smack-dab in the middle of his working on a big project.

So, we pretty much had three ideas of what would happen, he'd not notice a difference, notice an increase in energy, or die. We're happy to report that the third option did not come to pass (it's kind of late in the game to find another designer and would leave us hamstrung for the next issue). But we did manage to get his review on the candy, which went as follows:

Q - Do you normally use any caffeinated drinks (coffee, tea, energy drinks) to maintain a certain level of alertness?
A - I tend to drink a lot of coffee. I'll tend, on average, to have some where between a Tim Horton's L and XL every morning.

Q - Have you ever heard of a chocolate bar replacement for an energy drink? Would it appeal to you normally?
A - I know Mars Bar says “Energy Bar” on the package, but I don't think that's the same thing as what this is. I hadn't heard of a caffeine-infused chocolate bar before, but the idea makes sense to me.

Q - What was your initial impression of the chocolate?
A - I found that the chocolate tastes darker then it looked. I like dark chocolate so that wasn't a bad thing.

Q - Do you feel that it worked? Lived up to it's billing?
A - I feel that it worked pretty well. I was up until 3 a.m. doing homework and I didn't feel too tired during that time. I had the bar around 10:30 p.m. with a glass of milk, and then I went to do homework. Usually I get tired around 1:30 a.m. and want to wrap things up so I can get to sleep, but I didn't really think about it until I started to feel tired around 3 a.m.

Q - Would you consider using it in the future?
A - It was pretty good, but the long warning on the back of the wrapper kind of scares me a bit. But it was delicious and seemed to work, so I would have one on occasion, but for mornings I'll stick to my coffee.

Red Rush can be found at London Drugs, Shell, Sunoco, Petro Canada and Blockbuster Video stores.