I tried Aldi’s new pre-drink that’s only £2.99 — and is Gen Z’s surprise favourite

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If you haven’t heard of BuzzBallz, you might want to lift up that cocktail umbrella you’ve been living under.  

These vibrant boozy balls have gone more viral than videos of cats with Hitler moustaches back in the day. My TikTok FYP is groaning under the weight of posts featuring people tasting, collecting and ranking their favourite flavours, while discarded neon-coloured plastic spheres litter the pavements outside off-licences like forgotten memory orbs in the Disney movie, Inside Out.

Why are they causing such a stir? Like the recent Labubu craze, they feature the perfect storm of cutesy, eye-catching packaging. But instead of a little monster with spiky teeth, in this instance it disguises some fairly potent pours, containing between 13.5 and 15% ABV.

Factor in that the spherical cocktails have the convenience of nesting in the palm of your drinking hand and there’s a ring pull for dangerously easy access and it’s not hard to work out why they’ve become Gen Z’s go-to pre-drink.

The other main draw is that they’re cheap – costing just £2.99 each if you buy them from Aldi. Elsewhere they’re a little pricier at £3.95 from Sainsbury’s and £4 at Tesco.

Pretty much every corner shop stocks them too, but be warned you might find yourself paying as much as £5 per ball, depending where you buy them from.

I will say, for something so ubiquitous, they were almost impossible to get hold of for a taste test. For the last month, every off-licence I’ve visited has told me they’d ‘recently run out’ and the nearest Aldi had fully sold out too. I’m beginning to think they withhold them from people over 40, ahem I mean, 35.

When you do eventually manage to get hold of them, they come in a decent range of flavours, from Choc Tease, Chili Mango, Lotta Colada, Espresso Martini, Tequila Rita and Strawberry Rita. There’s also a Pornstar Martini, but alas, it’s so popular we couldn’t get hold of one.

So, the obvious next step is for me to try the drink that’s lured the famously dry Gen Z crowd into profligate ways. I’ve been warned about the sugar content of these deceptively punchy little globes, ranging from 11.7 to 30g per serving. Given the NHS recommends no more than 30g of sugar per day, it’s goodbye wellness and hello tooth decay, blood sugar issues, energy spikes and crashes, oh and weight gain. The things I do for Metro readers.

Here they are, in order of preference, and remember to shake them well before opening…

1) Lotta Colada

A pretty decent Piña Colada, actually, and I’m not even a fan of the cocktail. Creamy and tropical with a generous thwack of alcohol to offset any coconut-cream-pineapple soupiness

2) Espresso Martini

Not a bad expression of the classic cocktail on the tin, with an intriguing smoky, bonfire note that makes it a bit different.

3) Choc Tease

Chocolatey, smooth, sweet and creamy. Can’t complain, but isn’t it really just Bailey’s?

4) Chili Mango

Sweet and creamy, like a boozy Solero ice cream (more generic tropical fruit than overtly mango) with a decent kick of chili heat that really comes through

5) Tequila Rita

You can actually taste the tequila here, a novelty for an RTD cocktail in my experience (MOTH excluded). Think a very sweet Margarita and you’re in the right ballpark.

6) Strawberry Rita

Strawberry slushy-flavoured (or Mr Frosty, remember those?). Very candied and artificial-tasting, though its evident booze content salvages it slightly.

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