​A protest album of sorts from a Brooklyn DJ is bound to piss off at least a few people now that it's made the newspaper. The record's cover art equates the banning of caffeinated alcoholic drinks with September 11 on its cover, as pictured to the right. The New York Daily News decided to give the local guy something of a pulpit for quite a played out 'cause': he "wants the state to put the snap back in the alcopop," along with every other punk on the internet. But this particular punk made his views clear in songs like "I Drink Four Loko in the Rain" and "Girl I Want to Buy You a Can of Four Loko Tonight."

More >>

​New York State Senator Jeff Klein is still ramping up with campaign against the the new Four Loko, which was stripped of all caffeine after national controversy sparked by sick kids and even death. But he says the new brew is still not safe enough and should only be sold in liquor stores. Now, Klein has announced an April 12 hearing and given his cause a name: "alcopop abuse." He claims that the product, which contains 12 percent alcohol, is still being marketed toward young people, probably because of the bright colors and fruity flavors and impossibly low price. "Four Loko is for people who don't have enough money and want a drink," an 18-year-old told the Daily News today. "It still looks really cool."

More >>

​Four Loko is back on bodega shelves in a caffeine-free and thus theoretically safer incarnation. But authorities still see fit to freak out about it. Eighteen Bronx bodegas were caught selling the new Four Loko to an underage undercover auxiliary cop. And in Albany, lawmakers are introducing a bill that would require the dread beverage to only be sold in liquor stores. Wait, why are we still talking about Four Loko again?

More >>

​Michael Mustica, a 22-year-old from New Jersey, alleges in a new lawsuit that drinking 2-and-a-half cans of Four Loko on a trip to Atlantic City last year gave him permanent heart damage, a "heart arrhythmia," to be specific, though the seaside slots have been known to get hearts racing too. Phusion Projects, the company behind the radioactive, banned beverage bomb of caffeine and alcohol, is responsible for the last health effects, Mustica claims. "He was a victim of people who tried to make money off a product without worrying about the health consequences," his attorney told the Newark Star-Ledger.

More >>

​Just when you thought the outrage had calmed, Four Loko is implicated in a pair of teenage deaths in California. Aaron Saenz, 15, and Chelsea Taylor, 16, were found dead in a Huntington Beach apartment, an empty can of the highly caffeinated, very alcoholic Four Loko close by. Police are saying the pair died from "drug- and alcohol-related causes," though results of the autopsies have not been released. Parents groups and screenwriters must already be furiously working.

More >>

NEVER FORGET.

​Four Loko, the nectar of the gods, is now doing something else besides making people break into houses naked. A lot of the leftover-Loko in Virginia is being turned into gasoline by a company called MXI Environmental Services. Jalopnik reports, "MXI distills the ethyl alcohol in the drinks, then ships it to gasoline blenders. It's chemically identical to ethanol from corn." Yeah. We drank that. Anyway, now Al Gore has to shotgun a Four Loko in celebration -- it's the rule of the game.

Via NYU Local

​Tonight, as we light the sixth candle on our menorah, one Jewish household will be drinking their sixth Loko -- at least, metaphorically. NYU student Samantha Jinishian and her roommates have constructed a work of art (religious iconography?) they've dubbed the "Four-Loko-norah." The environmentally friendly recycled ceremonial candleholder is constructed out of nine empty Four Loko cans.

More >>

​And to think people were worried about what The Kids would do drunk on Four Loko! It would appear the State Liquor Authority drank so much Four Loko (or so much of the Four-Loko-as-Reefer-Madness craze-flavored Kool-Aid) that they raided accomplished restaurateur, chef, blogger, and boozing revolutionary Eddie Huang's downtown dining spot Xiao Ye to such an extent, he was forced to close it down. Rebecca Marx at Fork In The Road has the whole story. It's worth noting that somehow, the Bros of Bros Icing Bros have yet to earn retribution even remotely on this level for their crimes against the (drinking) humanity. [FK]

Consider the shark jumped. The $3 canned beverage, both caffeinated and alcoholic, has already been banned in New York, with distributors halting their local deliveries on Friday, and now we here at Runnin' Scared are moving to ban the drink from the internet. Our teeth are shivering from the sugar and it's starting to stink in here. The joke is over. More >>

I'm not sure if the Taiwanese think Americans are categorically insane, or if all the people who work in Taiwanese television are categorically insane, but yet again, those wacky Taiwanese folks at Next Media Animation have succeeded in both animating and (kinda) capturing the insanity of the Four Loko saga. In fact, imagine coming up with this, and you kind of have a decent idea of what 3/4ths a can of Four Loko is actually like. It is, if anything, a decent meta-PSA. [FK]