I tried the new soft drinks from Trump’s son and granddaughter. Bad!

Barron Trump has a new yerba mate and Kai Trump a ‘bold’ energy drink – would their offerings pass the taste test?

Do you like sugary soft drinks? Do you like Donald Trump and his family? Do you want to support nepotism?

If the answer is yes to all these questions, then have I got the products for you: a pineapple yerba mate co-founded by Trump’s son, and a syrupy, energy-drink-thing developed by his granddaughter.

Both endeavors represent the first steps by First Boy Barron Trump and First Granddaughter Kai Trump into the world of business. But how will they fare? Have the pair inherited Donald Trump’s famed business nous, a special kind of shrewdness that saw the president file for corporate bankruptcy six times and oversee the failure of numerous business interests? Or could their investments actually be successful?

Barron Trump’s effort, Sollos, came first. Sold with the vaguely threatening slogan “It begins where it ends”, Sollos says it is a “brand built around the Florida lifestyle”. Which lifestyle? Retirement home? Monster truck? It doesn’t say.

The drink’s “about” page does, however, claim that “SOLLOS is designed revolving around the cycle of the sun”, a phrase as grammatically incorrect as it is meaningless, while its creators – Trump, 20, is one of five co-founders, all of whom have spent some time in Florida – also say the drink “is built to move with your day”, a phrase I do not understand.

“Most brands launch with four flavors hoping you’ll like one of them; we have been obsessing over one flavor until it was flawless,” the website claims. The flavor they went with is pineapple and coconut, and it retails at an eye-watering $39.99 for 12 cans. It arrived, to its credit, in very nice packaging.

Excited, I opened a can of Sollos. It smelled like suncream mixed with pineapple juice. I took a sip. It tasted like suncream mixed with pineapple juice. I poured some out. It’s the color of a sort of posh apple juice, with the glass-staining sugariness to match.

It’s not for me. But then, I am not the target audience: I am neither seeking a beverage that will, in Sollos’s words, “truly fit how people in Florida actually live”, nor I am necessarily looking for something which “all started in a cabana”.

In fairness to Trump and his Sollos collaborators, their drink does feature some commendably natural-seeming ingredients, including organic raw honey and organic monk-fruit extract, neither of which I could taste.

So, what about Blue Raz Slush, the drink by Kai Trump?

It’s a collaboration with an existing drinks company called Accelerator, and is, according to Accelerator, “inspired by nostalgic blue raspberry slushies and summertime memories”.

“Blue Raz Slush delivers a bold, icy flavor profile designed to channel the feeling of summer while powering high-performance days,” the company said in a press release announcing the drink.

I bought 12 cans on Amazon for $24.99: about $5 more than the same amount of Celsius, a popular drink and likely competitor, but with slightly worse branding. The cans are in a sort of Sonic the Hedgehog blue, with blurry lettering claiming the drink has “clinically proven benefits” that include “sustained energy” and “enhanced focus”. It also claims that a study found it accelerates a drinker’s metabolism: the Accelerator website has a link to a page where that study is supposed to be available, but there is no study there .

So how does it taste? Bad. It is a bad drink. Like Red Bull but with a more chemical finish, it did not taste of summertime memories – none of my memories, anyway – although I suppose one could say that it does have a bold flavor.

Keen not to present as biased, I asked my wife to try the Kai Trump Accelerator. She refused, instead asking when I was planning to remove the 22 cans of Trump family drink from the corner of our living room.

“Working on Blue Raz Slush with the Accelerator team was such a fun experience because I was involved from the very beginning,” Kai Trump said in a press release accompanying the launch.

She said the team had “tested so many different versions to make sure the flavor felt authentic to my tastes”. The less said about that the better.

Accelerator contains 200mg of caffeine, which is three times the amount in an espresso, and the can warns that the drink is “not recommended for use by individuals under 18 years of age”. Kai Trump turned 19 in May.

While the move into the beverage industry represents a new move for Barron and Kai, it is far from the Trump family’s first foray.

Donald Trump launched Trump Vodka in 2005, telling reporters : “I fully expect the most called-for cocktail in America to be the ‘T&T’ or the ‘Trump and tonic’.” Trump Vodka was discontinued in the US in 2011 due to a lack of demand.

Trump Ice, a bottled water, was pushed by the president in the early 2000s. Trump described it as “one of the highest quality spring waters in the world”. It was reportedly discontinued in 2010.

It’s not the best track record, but perhaps Barron and Kai can shake off the failures of their ancestor’s past.

Maybe people want a drink designed revolving around the cycle of the sun, or a beverage inspired by nostalgic blue raspberry slushies and summertime memories.