Four Loko
If you went to college, there’s a good chance you eventually developed a certain routine you tended to follow prior to a night out—like one guy I lived with who had a fairly interesting ritual he conducted in his dorm room that involved pulling up a fight video compilation on YouTube, lining up a few shots of vodka, and opening up a snack-size container of Pringles that he ate to chase the drinks he downed in quick succession to get the evening started.
I can’t say I pregamed as aggressively as my former roommate but anyone who’s ever been in a position that requires you to check your bank account prior to hitting the bars knows the importance of gearing up for an evening on the town by downing just enough booze within the confines of your place to get you kickstarted before making your way to a watering hole that charges six times as much as you paid for the can of beer you shotgunned right before heading out the door.
Last year, I got the chance to talk with the guys responsible for the Four Loko Panic of 2010, as the drink dubbed “a blackout in a can” took America by storm before inciting a moral panic at campuses across the country that forced the company to retool its formula after the concoction was (possibly unfairly) painted as the scapegoat for a rash of hospitalizations after it became all the rage.
I’m sure I’m far from the only person who downed a can of Four Loko in an attempt to get where I needed to go (and give myself a bit of an energy boost in the process) before making my way to a place I never actually made it too because I passed out before arriving there. This probably had something to do with the fact that downing a can of the stuff in a single sitting is almost enough to meet the clinical definition of “binge drinking,” and when you consider no self-respecting college student would let a drop of alcohol go to waste, it wasn’t exactly something that was easy to consume in moderation.
Shortly after I chatted with the masterminds behind Four Loko, they released the booziest hard seltzer the market has to offer (which managed to hold its own in the taste test I conducted shortly after it hit shelves). When you consider it’s packaged in the same container as their flagship offering, you’re still making a bit of a commitment, but now, the brand is releasing a slightly more manageable offering a decade after it blew up.
According to Delish, Four Loko is unleashing a new line of “Pregame” drinks upon an unsuspecting world, which (as the name suggests) are designed for anyone looking for a bit of a boost before really getting into it. While they sport the same 13.9% ABV as its signature offering, the liquid contained inside the 5.8-ounce bottles isn’t carbonated, meaning the Lemonade, Sour Peach, and Sour Blue Razz varieties being offered will go down slightly easier (and possibly a bit too easy).
As the outlet notes, Four Loko is currently only selling Pregame in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee (the last of which caps the ABV at 10%). I may be just a couple of months away from hitting 30 and subsequently fall decidedly outside of the target demographic, but with that said, I’m far more intrigued by these than I anyone on the verge of being Officially Washed has any right to be.