Sun Tan Mango is the third juice I have tried and reviewed from Dinner Lady’s Summer Holiday collection, a range built around cooling flavors for hot weather. This one is mango with menthol. The name made me smile, because according to Snapple a mango really can get sunburned. So far the collection has been consistent: the flavors taste good and the menthol does its cooling job. Here is how the mango entry compares.
Verdict first
I give Sun Tan Mango a 7 out of 10. It is a sweet, ripe mango on the exhale with a strong menthol on the inhale, and it is very refreshing in summer heat. I marked it down because I wanted a lighter menthol that let more of the fruit through, and because the mango came across as slightly artificial.
How it tastes
Dinner Lady’s website gives the flavor as sweet mango and koolada. Other sites list honey mango, alphonso mango and a touch of citrus. Exact flavors in a vape juice are close to impossible to pin down unless somebody tells you. I found the same thing with Cola Shades from this collection, which I covered in an earlier review. To keep things simple I am treating this one as sweet mango with ice.
I vape at 120W on TFV16 coils. On the inhale the menthol arrived first, strong but smooth. The ripe mango showed up on the exhale. After breathing out, a tingle stayed on my tongue for several seconds; the cooling is fairly heavy without being unpleasant.
I am no authority on mango varieties, but I can see why people report more than one. The sweetness is clearly mango, just a little artificial, as if the flavor were pushed a bit too hard. I still enjoyed it. After several tanks there was no burnt taste, which is what I ran into with Naked 100’s mango juice. It also brought Dinner Lady’s Mango Tart eJuice to mind, a strong mango with a faint custard note underneath.
Even with those two reservations I could vape it comfortably all day, and on a hot day the cooling effect was exactly what I wanted. The clouds smell sweet too. Several people walking past asked me what the smell was.
Bottle and label
Dinner Lady used to pack its juice in painted glass bottles with glass droppers. I found them annoying: you had to keep refilling the dropper, which sometimes did not draw enough liquid or arrived broken, and you could not tell how much juice was left. The newer bottles are tall and slim, and they fix both problems.
- Size: 60mL
- Material: clear plastic with a paper label, so the juice’s color and level are visible
- VG/PG: 70/30
- Nicotine in my bottle: 3mg, shown in very small print to the left of the Dinner Lady logo
- Cap: child-proof
The label is orange to match the mango inside. It states that the product contains nicotine and that nicotine is an addictive chemical. An expiration date is stamped clearly just under the manufacturer details; our article on how long e-juice stays good explains why that date matters.
Filling the tank
With the cap off, the first thing I noticed was a smooth, sweet smell of ripe mango. The fill tip is narrow enough to go straight into my tank’s fill port, so topping up was fast and clean.
The liquid has a light yellow tint from the nicotine and flows freely in both bottle and tank. It did not seem thick enough to clog my coils, nor so thin that I worried about burning them.
Would I buy it again
Probably not, but only because it reminds me so much of Mango Tart, which I never really liked. That is a personal thing. I love real mangos, ataulfo especially, and mango e-liquids have often let me down by comparison, so this one was a pleasant surprise. It is a very good mango flavor that earns its place in the Summer Holiday lineup, and while I had it I kept picking it over my regular fruit juices. If you want mango with a firm menthol kick, Sun Tan Mango is one to consider.