After hearing about Eamon and Bec’s obsession with La Croix, I finally decided to bite the bullet and try it. After all, I loved the nacho chips they kept showing off, so what could go wrong?
Turns out, a lot.
Now, I’m in no way blaming Eamon and Bec – they’re people with their own tastes, preferences, etc. and it’s unrealistic (and unfair) to expect we’d like all the same things.
It’s 100% my fault for choosing to buy something solely because some people I’ve never met liked it.
That said, I am a product reviewer (once a month!) and not liking things is just a hazard of the job. But that doesn’t mean you won’t like it!
This stuff… I’m going to be honest, I thought this was going to be closer to juice or pop instead of what it was. That was the first thing that threw me. For those who might not know, La Croix is a line of flavoured sparkling water.
And for those who still don’t know what that means: it’s water that they’ve carbonated and added flavour to.
Once that sunk in, I thought it would taste similar to that Sparkling Ice stuff – after all, that is also sparkling (carbonated) water – but it didn’t.
At all.
I’d really like to chalk this up to just buying a bad flavour, but I can’t. Everything about this stuff was just weird. Like the line in Jurassic Park says: you were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think of whether or not you should.
The smell when you first crack open a can is… the closest word I could use to describe it would be musty, but even that’s not correct. Have you ever gone into a cellar in the summer and opened the door and got a gust of that hot/warm, ‘old’ air blasted in your face? It was like that.
Strike one.
Strike two was the drink itself. For context, I drink water every day – it’s the main thing I drink – so you’d think I would know what to expect when putting water in my mouth, right?
Wrong!
This ‘water’ was weirdly thick, closer to syrupy in terms of consistency, and the carbonation didn’t kick in until after you’ve swallowed. So imagine taking a regular sip of water, then once you swallow, your mouth/throat goes all bubbly with carbonation. It’s almost a choking hazard!
The watermelon flavour itself was also weird. It was definitely that artificial watermelon flavour that is used in candy, gum, etc. but not even the good artificial watermelon, it was bad.
Like, left out in a bowl to go stale bad.
I don’t know if this is something specific to the watermelon flavour, or if all of the La Croix products taste like this, but it definitely didn’t make me want to try their other flavours.
Hell, I didn’t even want to finish the box I had!
Which actually brings me to the thing I liked most about this product: only 8 cans come in a box. And for someone who didn’t like the product, that was an absolute saving grace. I really don’t know if I would’ve been able to finish the box if it had come with more.
I’d also like to point out that I really wanted to like this drink. All I’ve heard about La Croix is that it’s an amazing product, and I’ve not heard one bad review. I tried so hard to like this drink I even attempted to make it taste better by mixing it with things. Ice cubes, juices, Smirnoff Ice, etc. but nothing worked. This watermelon La Croix just… sucked.
Now again, my only reference for sparkling water is that Sparkling Ice drink, so I don’t know if they got things extremely right, or if all sparkling waters are supposed to taste closer to La Croix.
The only thing I can say for certain is that I’ll be sticking to my regular old tap water.
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