Our Prime quest ended in disappointment for my son – but not for me

After being hounded to buy the drink that is the talk of the playground, Will Gore is surprised by what he found

Prime choice: there is the hydration version and fizzy energy version. Be careful not to cross the streams (AP)

My son’s obsession with Prime grew steadily through May and June. The drink was launched in the UK last autumn, backed by Logan Paul and KSI – two of the various, absurd YouTubers who seem to dominate the lives of so many children and young teens. By this spring, even Year 3 boys in our leafy provincial town had had their heads turned, and their mouths opened, by Prime’s apparent delights.

Certainly, my son seemed to know a lot about it. There is the still hydration drink, he explained – OK for kids and supposedly healthy because it is mostly just plain old H2O and coconut water; and then there is the fizzy energy version – not OK for kids because it has enough caffeine in it to provoke a sloth into running the 100 metres in ten seconds flat. Indeed, this week Canadian authorities announced a recall of the stuff for exceeding regulated caffeine limits.

My son’s mate Olly had apparently tried Prime Hydration, and was pretty sure you could buy it at Bobby’s convenience store, or possibly the petrol station at the bottom of the hill – the scarcity of the stuff seemingly a part of its attraction. One morning, in a show of great bravado, another classmate entered the playground with a bottle of the rare nectar, chugging it as heartily as those sporty boys necked their milk in the adverts of the 1980s. My son watched in awe.