Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
C4 began life as a pre-workout drink mix. In the years since, it’s made the logical jump to energy drinks in general.
A quick rise hasn’t quite put the Cellucor brand on equal footing with Red Bull or Monster or Rockstar, but it’s been viable enough to be a staple in grocery stores across the country. A big part of that growth has been thanks to the co-branding that allows C4 to drop candy flavors — Starburst and Skittles — into pounder cans with familiar, beloved flavors and 200 milligrams of caffeine.
There’s more to C4 than just Halloween memories. So we’re gonna run down each flavor and see which reigns supreme.
I’ll have a separate scale for C4’s Smart Energy, since that’s a different brand and, notably, it doesn’t contain the tingle juice that makes the original a pre-workout staple. These are the 11 flavors of performance energy-branded drinks I can find at my local store, everything in the official C4 lineup but Strawberry Watermelon Ice. Here’s how they rated out.