Prime Hydration craze: The hype and the herd mentality

Being old and doddery, I was initially puzzled when I heard folk were coming to blows over getting Prime from Aldi.

Don’t they have it on their tellies already, I wondered before waking up to the latest social media sensation.

Turns out, Prime is a hydration drink and one that sounds no different to any other hydration drink except it has been launched by a couple of Youtubers.And so, the generation which likes to think it is cool and different did what every generation before it has done, and became a herd of sheep, storming Aldi for bottles of the stuff launched and promoted by KSI and Logan Paul, who could be a firm of accountants for all I know.

The media hype that followed then did the rest of the job for them so they could sit back and laugh as the cash rolled in from their 63 million mugs. Sorry, followers.

There were reports of folk arm wrestling in the aisles, shoving grannies out the way, and one parent buying £1000 of the product to delight his kids.

Of course, the gullible flocked to ebay and other online platforms where bottles which retail at £1.99 were getting touted for £10 to £15 with one sensing easy money pitching his one at £2000.

Sadly no-one was auctioning off skelps round the lugs. I’d have bought a couple of boxes and happily administered them to everyone who started acting like entitled eejits as they stripped the shelves faster than locusts with the munchies.

I think I may have wandered past a stack of Prime completely unaware it was anything special or remotely interesting. It was just another coloured bottle on a shelf.

One glance at the products and it really doesn’t have me throwing bairns under shopping trolleys to grab a few bottles - 10 per cent coconut water, electrolytes and B vitamins and BCAAs. Could someone translate that into English for me?And, has anyone got a clue what it actually tastes like? Y’know - the important thing, or is it just enough to be seen with a bottle in your mitt?

Of course, Prime comes with a range of cool choices including Meta Moon which has to be the ultimate meaningless-but-in-a-trendy-way name ever to emerge from one of those soul-less focus groups where great ideas go to die.

If it takes off then a tip of the hat to its creators, but, social media has created a generation with the attention span of goldfish, one which will abandon any unsold Primes the moment the next thing goes viral.

Ah, life used to be much simpler. I’m old enough to remember when drinks such as Sarsparilla and Dr Pepper first hit the market. Pretty sure we didn’t roll around the aisles of Presto in a fight for the last can – not even in Wester Hailes Shopping Centre.

Had we done so, a muckle big security guard would have kicked our backsides out the door.