A Swicy New C4 Energy Drink Just Dropped and I Tried It

Combining sweet and spicy flavor profiles has been all the rage of late. I mean, look at all the dang hot honey-flavored products we’ve seen come out recently. Sure, most of them aren’t good, but that doesn’t mean brands will stop trying to satisfy the public’s hunger for “swicy” stuff—and that goes for energy drinks, too.

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I just got my hands on a can of the spicy-sweet new C4 energy drink flavor, C4 Mango Fuego, and tried it to find out whether it brings the heat…or just the sweet. Here’s what I thought.

New Product!

C4 Energy Mango Fuego

Amazon

Pros: I’m not as familiar with C4 as I am with Monster or Ghost (or Red Bull or Celsius or…), but this C4 drink—like the brand’s others—is zero sugar and doesn’t contain artificial colors. So that’s nice! It also purports to offer “enhanced endurance” thanks to its blend of carnosyn beta-alanine and 200 mg of caffeine. I didn’t put those claims to the test because, frankly, I couldn’t finish a whole can.

Cons: C4 is sweetened with sucralose and DAMN is this stuff sweet. Typically, sucralose is less terrible than stevia but slightly worse than aspartame. In this format, it is powerful and has an extremely cloying aftertaste. I just couldn’t get used to it. Flavor-wise, this smells more like mango than it tastes like mango. When you sip, it tastes like a fruity diet soda that was dispensed from the machine with two times too much syrup in the mix. It’s like liquid candy. And this is fuego, but the heat is VERY subtle. I’m super sensitive to heat and I had to really concentrate to feel the burn, and it really only settles in your chest—I couldn’t really feel it on my tongue or lips.

Rating:

4.5/10

Sporks

Verdict

I’m SURE there are better C4 flavors out there (apparently, Orange Slice tastes exactly like diet orange soda). The habanero burn just isn’t convincing enough to make up for the flavor’s shortcomings.

About the Author

Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks. Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction. Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home. Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.