Mr. Brown and Me
Normally, I'm not in the business of trying out random food products that I've never seen at the store before and then posting my reviews for all to see.
I'm also not usually in the business of trying out random and foreign-looking food products, either, since I'm not the type of person who regularly makes such impulse purchases. However, on a recent trip to the grocery store, this particular beverage which I am about to try out — and potentially make fun of — caught my eye. I decided that it wouldn't hurt to buy a small can of the stuff to try it out, even if the price per ounce was sort of steep.
That beverage, my friend, is a can of "Mr. Brown"-branded iced coffee. What is this "Mr. Brown" business, you might ask? I guess we'll have to find out.
The Can
This is an 8.12 fluid ounce can of Mr. Brown. It's got a sort of anime-y depiction of an overweight man (presumably "Mr. Brown") holding up a cup of coffee and making a gesture of approval. You'll see this in the picture to the right. The front of the can also advertises that it is "READY TO DRINK".
Looking at the other side of the can, I can gather that it's got 104 calories, is apparently best served chilled, and is distributed by a Taiwanese company known as "King Car". The can also instructs me to "PLEASE HELP KEEP OUR ENVIRONMENT CLEAN, DISPOSE OF CAN PROPERLY", which I'm guessing refers to recycling. Finally, judging by the bottom of the can, it's got a shelf life of approximately five months.
Now that I've gathered basic facts from the can itself, I suppose it's time to actually try the stuff out.
Taste Testing
After leaving my can of Mr. Brown in my refrigerator overnight, I decided to have it the following afternoon with my lunch.
What followed was actually a surprisingly good can of iced coffee, especially considering that it came from some random foreign food distributor that I had never heard of until spotting "Mr. Brown" in the international section of my local grocery store. It's a fairly straightforward coffee drink, with nothing particularly outstanding or bad about it; it's mildly sweetened, but not to the point where it's gone overboard.
The only thing that would most likely prevent me from buying "Mr. Brown" again, barring finding something incredibly bad out about its distributor, is the price. Decent or not, $1.10 for slightly over eight ounces of iced coffee is not exactly my cup of tea — or coffee, as it were.
All in all, this was a decent drink, but the price was a bit steep, which I'd imagine stems from the fact that it was an import. My one concern was the number of dented "Mr. Brown" cans at the grocery store. I had to look through three rows of cans before finding one that wasn't dented, nearly giving up on buying one in the process.
So, I guess the only thing left for me to do now is look up "Mr. Brown" and his distributor, and make sure I didn't just unintentionally give money to some wacky cult or whatnot.
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to Google we go!
Investigating Mr. BrownLooking online, Mr. Brown appears to be like many overseas goods that have found their way into American markets somehow: popular over there, but not so much over here. Mr. Brown's even has a Facebook page with about two hundred fans, most of whom appear to be from the Republic of China.
The one iffy thing is that Mr. Brown's products were linked to the Chinese melamine tainting scandal of late 2008, and were apparently recalled and ordered off of store shelves by the Food and Drug Administration that same year. It does appear that those problems have since been rectified... or at least it seems to be that way.
As for the manufacturer (King Car), their website is here: unintentionally humorous translated English and all. They've also got a page for Mr. Brown that can be found here, albeit in Chinese.
So, there you have it: Pretty good, especially for a random imported brand that I had never heard of before, but the price is high enough to throw me off from buying it again in the future. Let's just hope for my sake that the melamine issues have been successfully rectified since the recall.
Got any questions, comments, corrections, or concerns about my Mr. Brown "analysis"? Send an email to captainnosebleed (at) electronicrenaissance (dot) com, and your comments could end up in the next edition of Captain's Mailbox.
You can also discuss this article at its associated forum topic.
