9 Popular Snapple Flavors Ranked Worst To Best

Snapple has made quite the brand for itself in recent years. It started as "Unadulterated Food Products" in the 1970s and one of its founders, Leonard March, even joked in an interview with Crain's New York Business in 1989, per The New York Times, that he knew "as much about juice as about making an atom bomb." Despite its unique start, the company saw massive success, some of which I personally credit to the fun facts printed on the inside of each of its caps. The brand has undergone quite the facelift in recent years, including replacing its iconic glass bottles with lighter plastic in 2018.

With all this change, I wanted to see if Snapple's drinks were still as good as I remembered — coming from someone who drank at least one diet Half n' Half Snapple a day during her high school years. To do so, I got my hands on some of Snapple's most popular offerings, tasted them straight from the fridge, and ranked them from worst to best. The drinks that were the most refreshing had the best balance of sweetness, and were memorable enough to warrant more than one sip ranked higher than those that tasted flat, overly sweet, or unbalanced.

Snapple's lemon tea was the first one that I sampled for this ranking. I would say that I have relatively high standards for iced tea, seeing as I grew up on my mom's proprietary blend of high-quality black and peach tea, sweetened to perfection. Snapple's tea is definitely not an artisan product, and I would argue that none of its tea flavors really scream artisan. It's what I would expect from a mass-produced tea brand like Brisk. In fact, if you blindfolded me and had me sample Brisk and Snapple's lemon tea, I don't think I could tell you the difference.

The big issue I had with this tea was not the flavor of the tea itself, but the artificial shroud of lemon that hung over each sip like a dark and foreboding cloud. Normally, lemon can add balance to tea and curb some of the sweetness, but here, it was just rife with artificial flavors and a heaviness that screamed "fake lemon essence." It was like someone infused tea with lemon Pledge.

Surprisingly, this tea was not as sweet as I thought it was going to be. But that lemon essence is what really did it in and made it score so low in my ranking. If I wanted a quality, store-bought tea, this would not be a bottle I would reach for.

I was a bit confused by Snapple's Grapeade beverage — in more ways than one. First off, when someone adds "ade" to a name, I suspect that there would be some emphasis on citrus — like lemonade or limeade. This Grapeade didn't have a lick of citrus in sight. It's very medicinal on the nose (like a less-strong grape Jolly Rancher), though this flavor is juxtaposed by its thin, juicy consistency. It sips like an apple juice, which makes sense, considering a big part of its ingredients list is apple juice and pear juice. I liken this Grapeade to the fruit punch of the grape world. Combined with the aroma, you think that it's grape-leaning, but once you let the liquid linger on your palate, you'll find that it's more reminiscent of apple juice than anything remotely grape. Confusing, I know.

I'm not a big fan of grape-flavored things, but even if I were, I don't think I could rank Grapeade any higher on this list. It's refreshing enough, which earned it a higher ranking than the lemon tea, but I didn't like that its flavor was so weakly grape that it was barely discernible. I was looking for a Goldilocks beverage here — not too strong, but not too weak — and it appears that I was knocking at the wrong cottage.

Let me make one thing clear: Snapple's Lemon Tea and Half n' Half Lemonade Iced Tea are two very different beverages. While the lemon iced tea tastes like someone shook up a container of bottom-shelf tea with lemon cleaning solution, this Arnold Palmer-style drink tastes at least a little more lemonade-like. In fact, it tastes too lemonade-like.

By this time in the ranking, I had decided that Snapple really sucks at making anything taste remotely tea-like. Since that tea flavor is so forgettable, the lemonade flavor in this drink takes over and eclipses any tea notes (though, I highly doubt there were any to begin with).

As I sipped, I noticed that this flavor wasn't as sweet as I thought it was going to be, though it started to taste like chlorinated pool water three swigs in. That sweetness hit my palate after I swallowed, and I was left with a saccharine aftertaste that prompted me to swish out my mouth with water before I continued with this tasting. I liken it to a fun drink at a bar that doesn't taste like alcohol until you realize you've had three of them and can't remember your own name — except this time, I didn't realized how much sugar I had ingested and how awful I felt afterward. Besides this bad experience, there wasn't anything memorable about this Snapple flavor to warrant ranking it higher.

Fruit punch was setting itself up for success in this ranking. While "Grapeade" made me think the flavor was going to be grape and lemonade, this fruit punch one had me expecting a wild array of flavors that only a seven-year-old with a hankering for Hawaiian Punch could love. On the nose, this beverage reeks (and I used "reeks" literally) of fake cherry. I love the Haribo Happy Cherries candy, so I don't mind it, but folks opposed to this borderline-medicinal aroma may want to plug their nose to sip it.

When I went into the first sip, I felt like I was being shoved into a packed nightclub, trying to mill my way through the crowd of flavors on my taste buds. There was apple — no wait, was that pear? Pineapple — nice to see you, my guy! What's up, something-vaguely-cherry? It was like calamity on my palate, and none of the flavors really stuck for long enough to be memorable or make this fruit punch lean any one way. I suppose the calamity is par for the course when it comes to fruit punch, but I was wishing that some flavors put their foot down and stuck around a little so that I could get my bearings. It wasn't as refreshing as the Hawaiian Punch of my youth, but I won't deny that on a hot day, it would be pretty satisfying. However, the saccharine and cloying flavors weren't pleasant and made this a Snapple flavor that I could take two sips of before saying, "Yep, I think I'm all set," and putting down the bottle for good.

If I absolutely had to pick a flavor of sweetened iced tea to sip on, it would be peach. I've been spoiled with great peach tea over the years — including the orchard near my house that infused real peach juice and pulp into its iced tea slushies (though you can make them at home nowadays). As I expected, I didn't get Southern peach orchard, drink-me-on-a-porch-at-sunset vibes from this Snapple product. I found that it's only good when it's very, very cold and had the same flat tea flavor as the lemon tea Snapple. However, although it was very clear that there was not a drop of real peach in this tea, that didn't make it any less enjoyable. The peach flavor lingers in a way that's more pleasant than the ominous cloud of fake lemon.

Again, if you're after quality sweet tea, this is a brand to skip. The tea flavor is weak and one-dimensional, which amplifies the fake-ness of the peach. It would be better frozen or used as a mixer for some other drink, though it still wasn't as bad-tasting as the lower-ranked drinks on this list. If Snapple improved its tea and used a more natural-tasting peach flavor, this bottle would definitely move up on my list.

Raspberry tea can be bad... or it can be very bad. I've never had a raspberry tea that didn't taste like powdered Crystal Light, and I hate to inform you that Snapple didn't change the status quo in any regard. When I took a whiff of the bottle, I could smell the fake raspberry essence flowing into my nostrils and up to my brain. It was noxious in the worst way, and honestly, it made me hesitant to take a sip.

However, the actual flavor of this tea really isn't that bad. I wasn't as focused on how bad the tea was because I was getting hit upon hit of raspberry. While it didn't taste a freshly picked fruit straight from the fields, it was about half as artificial as I expected it to be — which is nothing short of a win-win for my taste buds. I don't see myself seeking it out specifically in the future, especially considering it just tastes like a raspberry iced tea dispensed from a soda fountain machine, but if it were the last liquid on Earth, I probably wouldn't complain about it.

The bark is definitely worse than the bite when it comes to this Snapple flavor. It was much better than the other teas in terms of its artificiality, though it still wasn't pleasant enough to warrant the top spot on this list.

Before I tried this bottle of kiwi strawberry Snapple, I tried to answer one question: Could I recall what kiwi tasted like? I can't tell you the last time I ate one of the furry fruits, nor could I tell you if I've ever sought out a beverage made with kiwi juice. But from a flavor angle, it seems smart that Snapple would pair strawberry, which tends to come across as very bold, with a more abstract flavor like kiwi. Based on the ingredients label, there was more kiwi juice in this drink than strawberry, though the two were pretty balanced overall. As with many of Snapple's other juice drinks, sugar and water came before any of the other components. As such, it's sweet, though like the half n' half, you don't realize how sweet it actually is until after you've swallowed and are left drowned by the saccharine wave.

Do I love it, or do I hate it? Well, this juice didn't really sway me either way. I wasn't in love with its flavor, as there wasn't anything that lingered on my palate or was particularly memorable about it, but I also wasn't vehemently disgusted by the balance of strawberry and kiwi. I wouldn't see it in a gas station and audibly say "I need one of these right now," but I also wouldn't mind using it in a mixed drink or ABV-free sipper — just diluted with something less sweet.

At this point in the ranking, the only thing that Snapple had to do was not screw up any flavors that are admittedly very hard to screw up — including apple juice. Although there are probably some brands of apple juice that are better than others, the only thing that a brand has to do is make its juice taste remotely like apples. It doesn't have to worry about balancing sweetness or making the tea flavor taste strong — all it needs to do is deliver something that is apple-adjacent. And that it did.

This Snapple Apple juice is made with filtered water and sugar first and foremost, but it gets most of its actual flavor from apple and pear juice concentrates. The two juices, although from different fruits, taste pretty much the same, so it wasn't clear that there was an apple imposter afoot. It's probably sweeter than most other apple juices I've tried (which I presume is why Snapple had to call itself a "juice drink"), but it wasn't cloying to the point where I had to put it down like I did for the Half n' Half Lemonade.

I don't normally reach for bottled apple juice, so I don't think I would go out of my way to buy a bottle of this Snapple product. Still, it was more pleasantly fruity than some of the other drinks on this list, earning itself a respectable spot in the ranking.

Did you know that all porcupines can float? Until I popped the tab of this pink lemonade, I didn't. And it seemed fitting that a Snapple bottle that offered me a fun fact about my favorite animal should win this ranking by a mile. Okay, case closed — we all can go home.

Just kidding. Porcupine facts aside, this pink lemonade was just what I was craving on the warm September day that I sipped it. Snapple has a track record of making its beverages too sweet, so when I saw that this pink lemonade had 50 grams of sugar per bottle, I was a bit taken aback. But, its flavor was actually pretty sharp and well-honed, and the inclusion of lemon juice helped tamp down the sweetness. In fact, I thought that this is one of the more puckery lemonade brands that I had tried over the years. It's the kind that makes you almost sweat as you sip it, but it's ultimately what sent me back to this bottle sip after sip, like a parched hamster going to town on the water bottle in its cage. It was the only Snapple flavor I tried that I genuinely wanted to continue to drink.

Besides being super sippable straight from the container, this pink lemonade would also make a great mixer for your favorite cocktail. It's refreshing, bright, and a crowd-pleasing drink that folks of all ages will like, earning it the title of top Snapple flavor by a long shot.

I tasted these Snapple flavors straight from the fridge on the same day, sans ice, in order to ensure fairness in ranking. As I sipped, I considered the overall flavor and sweetness of each beverage. While they are all juice or tea drinks, thus have some amount of sugar, the sweetness shouldn't distract from the overall mouthfeel and flavor of the drink — it should complement it. The flavors should also be representative of those listed on the label. Therefore, Grapeade should taste like grape (and presumably lemonade), while the lemon tea should have both lemon and tea flavors.

The ranking ultimately came down to how pleasant and flavorful each of these drinks were. Flavors that I would seek out at a grocery store or gas station ranked higher than ones that I didn't want to take more than a few sips of. My top pick, the pink lemonade, would be pleasing to all sippers, regardless of drinking preference.