The Sh!t List
I know I’ve been promising this for a while, but I avoided this for a while because it looked momentarily like the supplement industry was somewhat kinda sorta heading in the right-ish direction. It seems very clearly that this is not the case and since there is very little barrier or entry into it, bull**** mish-mashed together can be mistaken for things of quality. Some think we should let this **** slide and just consider it part of the territory and par for the course and that can be done, I suppose, but I’m not wired like that, I guess.
I’m going to keep updating this (and if you want to submit someone for future/further consideration, drop me a PM and a start spot) as the situation warrants. This is not intended to represent companies with questionable or bad formulations (oh HAI Nutrabolics), but the worst of the worst…this means nothing of any value in their respective lines and everything that is there carries my Recommendation To Avoid.
1) S103/Syntrax and all related companies, ZIMA Nutrition, Forge Nutrition, Creative Compounds, Thrive and Source Nutrition. Here we have a company that has created products that killed and badly damaged many people. When news of an FDA ban was coming because of this nagging aspect, instead of pulling the product, as a respectable company would do, they dumped it to distributors at a "fire sale" price. That distributors were stupid enough to fall for this is perhaps partly due to the former aura surrounding Derek Cornelius, architect of death and damage and ace supplement formulator. After losing a number of lawsuits in relation to this, the company promptly declared bankruptcy to avoid paying those pesky judgments and resurfaced under a variety of different companies, which has not stopped them from being in repeated lawsuits, including one filed by their former legal team for non-payment (shocking, I know). The most recent brilliant move by tacticians who would probably struggle with hopscotch conceptually was to sue a number of bb.com posters and then bb.com itself. If you buy anything from these disreputable ****heads, that is what you are supporting, a company that poisons and abandons their customers and tries to SLAPP anyone who points this out.
2) SSE/Supreme Sport Enhancements has finally made it into the bb.com store, after making endless threads with RANDOM and POINTLESS capitalization about something called Androgenerator. The only product is Omnibolic, which is evidently a direct ripoff of Thermolife’s E-BOL with the trendy supplement du jour, citrulline malate added in. Whoo, stop me now before I order the entire run of a handful of bottles…if you support this company, you support a little rich kid’s hobby horse. You also support someone who is not innovating anything, but merely copying existing supplements, stealing write-ups and who is perhaps a chronic fabricator. In short, you support disingenuous with every purchase. Ross Erstling, proprietor of this mess, represents everything that is the very worst of this industry and is, in fact, the poster child of the adage about knowing enough to be dangerous; he knows a little, very little, but not enough to be selling products to impact the health of consumers. He is the exact wrong person to be selling supplements as he formulates apparently by putting ingredient names on a wall and throwing darts at them, then quickly guessing or writing down whatever amounts his competition is using. Very clearly, he is just trying to make a buck and its at the expense of whoever is gullible or ignorant enough to buy into his noxious capsules.
3) IBE still gets to make the list. Supposedly, they are turning the company around, which only mark the 40 thousandth time I’ve heard that. Their formulator is "Phat Daddy" Steve Dunlop, who deserves his very own Google search. Once again, we have a company ripping off other stuff and behaving in general like a bunch of disgraceful cretins. Their antics richly deserve a bb.com Forum search, so you very thoroughly witness what kind of company you support if you buy anything from them.
4) Garbage is one of the reasons that a good majority of the masses out there think the entire supplement industry is full of ****…well, that and the before/after pics taken in reverse order that dot so many of the ads out there. Perhaps the most aptly named product on the market, yet someone is buying enough of this to keep them around. It should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t, buying from them means you get EXACTLY what you pay for. At least they are truthful, if probably unintentionally.
5) Fizogen should not be around and I’d like to know which one dumb ****er out there is still buying their stuff. One look at their product line should be all you need to know to understand the contempt in which they hold you and if you don’t believe me, take a look into a little something called "The Strap." If you support this company, you should shoot yourself for being stupid.
6) MuscleTech would have made my "Questionable" list, had I ever gotten to it, for making products that contain very dubious attached claims. I have found their product line to be basically overhyped, overpriced nonsense that does not deliver anywhere near to claims. This is not to say their products are junk or unsafe, but I would put them solidly in the middle of the field in terms of effectiveness. The reason they make this list is not because of their duplicitous claims in advertising, but rather because they are pricks in suing Forum members and I will not now, nor will I ever, support that. If they feel other companies are engaging in predatory tactics, they should do the proper thing and sue the actual companies, not individual Forum members. It is stupid **** like this, spurious laws devoid of merit, along with gross hyperbole in ad claims, both of which MuscleTech is now guilty of, that will eventually derail the supplement industry and screw it all, as we know it. In fact, my prediction as of today, 01/03/09, is that MuscleTech will be the death of bodybuilding as we now know it…
