Are they worth buying?
Button Junkie definitely deserves the title of a premium juice brand: every single flavor is a knockout, with excellent fruit replications all-round, expert balancing of flavor components and some interesting combinations too.
Some extra nicotine levels would have been a good addition for those who’ve made the switch recently, and the descriptions may slightly overstate the complexity of the flavors on occasion, but on the whole you get exactly what you’re looking for: delicious fruity and dessert flavors with top-notch presentation.
It’s a fantastic line-up of juice for long-term vapers, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a new all-day vape among the selection. (Available from EcigWizard.)
Full review
In the early days of the industry, much of the focus for e-juice companies was on having a ton of different flavor options, but this variety often came at the expense of complexity in taste. In the modern age, with the rise of the premium juice brands, the most widely-recommended lines of e-juice have reduced the number of flavors on offer but put the emphasis on multi-tonal, expertly-crafted juices with fanciful descriptions and higher price-tags.
Button Junkie takes the latter approach, with a line-up of four lovingly-crafted flavors presented with exceptional style and priced fairly highly – at £8.48 (around $12) for a 15 ml bottle or £15.49 (around $22) for a 30 ml bottle – although still about what you'd expect to pay for premium juices. They’re shooting for quality over quantity, and for vapers in constant pursuit of a new all-day vape, the line-up is definitely appealing.
The only problem is that it’s easy to present the appearance of high-quality, premium juice, but much harder to actually pull it off. So are the juices all they’re cracked up to be? We’ve had a vape for our Button Junkie review to find out.
Packaging and Design
The first thing you’ll notice about the Button Junkie juices is that the design is really excellent. The labels have heaps of personality, with well-animated animals on each bottle, including the gun-toting gorilla with a finger absent-mindedly stuck up its nose on Gorilla Trigger, the crack-addled panda vaping from a box mod on Crack Panda, the vulture licking its beak while perching over a bubbling cauldron of blood-red liquid and human remains on Vulture Punch, and the pyromaniac tiger clutching a Zippo lighter and guzzling gasoline on Tiger Fire. All of them manage to look fantastic while still closely fitting the name of the flavor.
From a more functional perspective, the bottles do everything you need them to (and more): the back label shows the nicotine level, the expected warnings, the ingredients, the best before date and a batch number. The bottles are glass, and they have high-quality child-proof caps –they’re easy to open when you know what you’re doing, but good enough to slow down any kids who’ve somehow gotten access to your liquid.
Overall, it’s a great offering in this department; both the aesthetic and functional elements of the design are hard to fault.
Mixing Options
The juices from Button Junkie come in a fixed 30/70 PG/VG ratio. This is roughly in line with the standard in the industry these days, a little heavier on the VG than many blends but close enough to 50/50 to satisfy most vapers. The additional VG aids the vapor production nicely, and the small amount of PG means that there is a light throat hit, though not as much as some may prefer. The wicking is also pretty good, but it’s better to use a sub-ohm tank, rebuildable or other atomizer that can cope with the more viscous nature of the VG.
For nicotine, the Button Junkie juices are available in 0, 1.5, 3 and 6 mg/ml. This is tailored towards the long-term vaper, and again, those using more efficient atomizers. The juices are really designed for dedicated vapers, but it wouldn’t have hurt to include a 12 mg/ml option for those still looking for a bit more nicotine. It’s not a huge deal, but some vapers would have appreciated the option.
Button Junkie Review: The Flavors
Tiger Fire – Rating 4/5
Accuracy: Tiger Fire is billed as a mixture of oranges, lemons and grapefruit with a rich cream and cheesecake base backing. The orange is the dominant component of the flavor, but it’s closely accompanied by the lemon, which adds an extra-strong hit of citrus. Both of these are well-captured and complement each other nicely, providing a realistic fruity base to the juice. The grapefruit is hard to pick up, though, seemingly settling into the mix too much to be easily identifiable. You do notice the creamy elements, which soften the flavor and add a rich thread of sweetness, but the cheesecake base doesn't come through very much.
Overall: This is a very enjoyable juice: it has a sharp bite from the citrusy components that’s balanced by the cream, producing a great mixture of fruitiness and sweetness that makes for a fantastic vape. I might not have been able to pick up every flavor component advertised, but the ones that do come through do an excellent job. Although it might not be my favorite from the Button Junkie line-up, it’s a delicious juice that could easily be your favorite from the bunch if orange-citrus e-liquids are your thing. It’s definitely one to pick up a bottle of if you’re placing an order!
Gorilla Trigger – Rating 4.5/5
Accuracy: This is a pineapple and buttery cake e-juice, another that blends fruit with dessert elements to produce a unique and delicious e-liquid. The pineapple comes through strongly, and is another well-replicated fruit flavor from Button Junkie, with an understated sweetness and impressive accuracy. The buttery cake is present throughout your draw too, backing up the pineapple without detracting from its impact and adding a gentler, more all-day-vape friendly element to the juice.
Overall: This is an excellent offering. The pineapple is so delicious that it could have carried the juice all on its own – it’s realistic and sweet without being overpowering – but the addition of the cake really takes it to the next level. The result is a juice that has the warm, soothing backdrop of a light dessert-style e-juice with the robustness of a flavorful fruit to provide the character. Perhaps it could have been improved with another fruit element, but this criticism probably comes more from my expectation that any juice with “Gorilla” in the name will have a banana component than anything wrong with the flavor as it is. This is an all-day vape for me, and one of my favorites from the selection from Button Junkie.
Crack Panda – Rating 4.5/5
Accuracy: Crack Panda is an apricot, peach and tropical fruit e-juice, with a particularly awesome label design. The apricot and peach hit you right away, with the apricot dominating the flavor through most of your draw but notes of peach periodically poking through the mix, and both elements playing off each other well. The tropical fruits in the blend aren’t easy to pick out individually, but the combination of additional fruits takes center-stage on the exhale and adds another dimension to the taste. This is definitely accurate to the description, and sees Button Junkie continuing to produce very authentic-tasting fruity juices.
Overall: This is a crisp, refreshing type of flavor that goes down really well. Unlike the other Button Junkie juices, here the fruitiness stands alone without the support of a dessert element, and this makes the flavor clean and pleasantly light. The result is another beautifully-crafted flavor that fits in well with the line-up but also offers something unique. This is one I vape occasionally rather than all day, and it isn’t the best of the bunch for my tastes, but it’s an excellent flavor for any lovers of fruity juices.
Vulture Punch – Rating 5/5
Accuracy: This is a blend of creamy custard, strawberry, caramelized brown sugar and vanilla e-juice, tipping the balance a little further towards the dessert end of the spectrum than the others in the selection. The custard and strawberry hit you clearly and are very true to the intended flavors. The custard is creamy and impressively realistic, and it forms the bulk of the taste. The strawberry follows it closely, fairly understated but still prominent enough to be easily identifiable. The sugar adds to the dessert-sweetness of the blend, and although the vanilla isn’t easy to pick out, its subtle flavor undoubtedly lends a hand to the overall impact of the juice.
Overall: This is my favorite of the bunch from Button Junkie. The sweetness from the custard, sugar and vanilla is just at the right level to prevent the flavor from becoming sickly when you vape it at length – with the creaminess of the custard having a big role to play in this – and the beautifully executed strawberry is the icing on the already-amazing cake. The decision to shift the balance more towards the custard than the strawberry might seem like a mistake, but the custard is delicious enough to justify the choice, and the juice would likely still be my pick from the line-up even without the strawberry. It’s an all-day vape for me, and a really solid take on the creamy, custardy strawberry e-liquid flavor that many brands offer.