Maggie Original Jamaican Pouch "Cherry Tonic Wine" - Review

Video Review of Maggie Cherry Tonic Wine

This review has been written without the assistance of AI.

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I like to consider myself up to snuff, if you will, with regards to all things nicotine. I know the names and manufacturers, and most of the tastes, of any Swedish snus produced prior to 2020. If, in conversation, the name of a nasal snuff is dropped, I can usually summon up my memories of the aroma of that snuff, and if I can't, then there's a good chance that it hasn't been manufactured past the day I came of legal age. I can list off every single brand of American dipping tobacco ever produced at the drop of a hat; in short, with regards to smokeless tobacco, I now consider myself an expert. I used to feel corny when people called me one, and I still kind of do, but I can count on my fingers the people I know who can match the depth and breadth of knowledge I've accidentally accumulated on this subject, and half of them don't live in the United States.

With that being said, some products escape me. This isn't always unintentional, nor is it always a bad thing; for example, I try not to dig too deep into information about pipe tobacco and cigars, as not only are there people who have, and continue to, document those things that not only have better credentials to me (for whatever credentials are actually worth on this topic in the age of the internet), possibly with better noses - and not to mention, they have simply been alive for longer, and have had both better and more frequent chances to sample the subject of their documentation, but also I must admit that there is a lovely mystery to those things if I don't dive into the arcane knowledge written about them and spoil all the surprise and fun of a cigar when I do have the rare mood to enjoy one.

Nicotine pouches, however, are a serious gap in knowledge that I really haven't had the ambition to remedy, until now. At the start of their market conquest, it was easy to avoid them: snus was still shipping freely and without restriction to the USA, and I could reliably get my hands on my favorites without much effort. High-quality nicotine pouches that I might have actually been interested in were absent from the local market as well, meaning that any can of nicotine pouches I had on hand was intentionally bought as a tag-along with a larger and more eagerly awaited shipment of snus.

Times have changed. Snus is now basically contraband as far as our customs agents are concerned, and nicotine pouches of good make have showed up on our shores. It's my duty to cover these products as well, for the sake of thorough documentation, and to satiate my own interest.

What's going on in Europe? Changes as well. Once upon a time, snus manufacturers experimented with "all white" snus and nicotine pouches, basically bleached tobacco with nicotine reintroduced, or cellulose with the same amount added, in order to broaden the market. Traditional, strong snus remained king. Slowly, though, pouches with outrageous claims of nicotine strength entered Western Europe, and users who would ordinarily purchase Siberia or Odens were buying Kurwa or what have you; a market shift. You had hundreds of different manufacturers appear almost overnight, offering super strong nicotine pouches in any flavor imaginable, assisted by the simplicity of the product they were making: instead of blending up to a dozen different tobaccos and casing them just so, you simply started with a universal unflavored nicotine substrate that could be dressed up with artificial flavor, put in a pouch, and sent to market. The bottleneck would be the graphics team, which is an outrageous thing to think about.

We're coming out of that era now, but there are still some stragglers. Maggie Original Jamaican Pouch's Cherry Tonic Wine flavor is one of them.

Maggie pouches claim 45mg of nicotine per pouch, and I believe them. Pouches and snus are not direct equivalents in terms of listed strength - nicotine in tobacco is bound up and releases slower, whereas the nicotine in many pouches is absorbed lightning fast in comparison and can feel overwhelming to even a seasoned nicotian. Every time I use Maggie, within minutes, I feel right on the verge of being overwhelmed, but for whatever reason Maggie is just shy of the point where nicotine pouches get seriously nasty for me. Nevertheless, I would advise caution - I am a confirmed snus user of over a decade, and I weigh 250 pounds as of the time of writing.

The can is friendly looking and does little to warn you about the surprise inside. Green and yellow decoration over a red plastic can give off a pleasant, relaxed Caribbean vibe that is very different from the usual decor we see on ultra-strong nicotine pouches, which usually have a beheading or a cartoon drug lord on them and are named after a demon or a foreign slur. The plastic is cheap feeling, probably some kind of HDPE. It feels like a toy. I really like the can, despite its simplicity.

I have never had tonic wine before. From what I've been told by Jamaicans, it's a fortified, spiced wine meant to help one induce and maintain an erection. By the grace of God, it is absent from the drinks menu at Chili's. Don't take this as proof of the claim. Cherries, however, I have had, and the pouch has a pretty solid cherry lollipop flavor for about three minutes until it dissolves behind the bitterness of the nicotine and the sweetener. It's a pretty mild tasting pouch overall, but the off tastes appear pretty reliably.

The pouch is comfortable, plump, and a true slim. If this was a snus pouch, I would fall in love.

All in all, Maggie is really just alright. It's bitter, it's too strong, and the good flavor it has fades too quickly. If you're a strong pouch user and want to try something different, it's probably best to keep looking.