In the jungle of the library’s vending machines hides a new attraction; Green Monkey CBD: a new “lightly sparkling mixed fruit flavoured drink with sugar and sweetener.” Quite frankly, that’s all it is. It intrigued me; the company’s website was vague about everything, but who wouldn’t want a drink with a monkey on the can?
At first glance, their website makes you think they might be onto something with this drink; it comes across well-polished, but past the home page, there’s little to it. You might not know all that much about CBD, so you click their “what is CBD?” link – and are greeted with a blank page. Now, this might just be me, but I’d want to know what’s in my drink before I buy it, let alone drink it. Sure, this can be forgiven; they’re a relatively new company, and it’s not like we can’t search elsewhere about this.
Unfortunately, things started going wrong before I even opened the drink. Being in the Fairhurst building, I opted to use the vending machines on the first floor there. Not only are these cans too small for any kind of live monkey to fit in, they’re too small for the vending machines to dispense them properly; the first one I paid for, for £2.50 I should add, was pushed just up to the edge of its slot, but not far enough to come out, even with a quick shake of the machine.
The other vending machine I tried, down in the café, got stuck trying to take my payment, so I ventured back to the first machine and tried for a third time, paying for a second one to get the first one to come out.
Now we get to the drink itself. In one word: pointless. However, you’ve just paid £2.50 (or £5 in my case…) so you force yourself to drink it… Imagine you’ve left a mug of green tea to get cold, and you’ve left it out for days, then carbonated it. What you’ve made is Green Monkey CBD. Of course, don’t forget the 15 grams of sugar they’ve slid in there, amongst a whole load of not a lot else.
All in all, if you ask me, this drink is a nonsense. It’s all bark and no bite. There’s no noticeable effect from the CBD, the taste isn’t appealing, and it’s expensive beyond belief. Strangely enough, I won’t be buying it again.