I don't profess to know everything but I do try to keep up.  This one somehow got past me.  The first time I heard of Gookinaid Electrolyte Replacement Group was 1975 on a Mule Deer hunting trip with my Dad.  Talk about your Bataan Death Marches.  His theory about hunting deer in our newly adopted home state of Arizona was that you walk them to death ...or at least try and he rougher the terrain the better.

Anyway, we were using green plastic military issue canteens to carry our water.  Some of them had little black "XX" written in Sharpie on the bottom.  XX marked the canteens that had the magic elixir my Dad called ERG.  I did not know what electrolytes were but I liked the ERG and it gave me a little pick me up or at least I thought it did.  I used ERG for a long time but eventually found other things that supposedly did the same thing.

I recently heard about a product called Vitalyte and what a wonderful performance drink it was so I went to REI and bought a few packets.  Hey, guess what?  It is freaking Gookinaid Electrolyte Replacement Group.  Good old ERG! 

OK, so why would you take an established product with a known albeit funny name and change it to something totally different that nobody has ever heard of?  Only a VP of Sales and Marketing, most likely with a Wharton School MBA, could make such a brilliant but completely unnecessary decision.  Their website says that they were looking for a new name and that the name is as important as the product it represents.  So Vitalyte is what they came up with?  Stupid.  Sounds like a vitamin for people over 50.     

Whatever you call it, Vitalyte Electrolyte Replacement Solution "Developed By Gookinaid E.R.G." is still good stuff.  It has a subtle taste that goes down as easy as water and helps put back the things you sweat out over the course of a good work out.

I like it.  Check it out, you might like it too.   

Wade Nelson
Editor

Sorting through the fads and fashion of the outdoor equipment industry to identify and promote the very best wilderness gear for high end recreational users, backcountry professionals and government agencies. 

We can be educated and persuaded but not bought, bullied or bs'd. 

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