Once associated with late nights and stubborn deadlines. Reacquainting myself with the ProPlus brand at Cloud Twelve revealed a rather different proposition: 75mg of caffeine alongside vitamins and minerals, served with considerably more serenity than I remember.
Some products need only a name to return you to another decade.
For me, Pro Plus belongs to late-1990s journalism nostalgia: long shifts, unreasonable deadlines and the sort of working hours that made caffeine less of a lifestyle choice than office equipment. The tablets lived in a drawer. You were tired. There was still work to do. Nobody felt the need to involve the concept of wellbeing.
Meeting Pro Plus Immune Support decades later was therefore mildly disorientating.
The caffeine remains — 75mg per effervescent tablet — but it now shares the billing with vitamins A, C and D, zinc, vitamins B6 and B12, and iron. Drop a tablet into 200ml of water and the result is an orange-flavoured drink rather than the tablet I remember from deadline nights.
Even the surroundings have improved dramatically.
My reacquaintance with Pro Plus took place at Cloud Twelve in Notting Hill, a wellness club whose calm atmosphere bears almost no resemblance to a newsroom at an hour when sensible people have already gone home.
The caffeine is familiar, but the format is not
Strip away the nostalgia and the central proposition remains uncomplicated.
This is still a caffeinated product intended to provide alertness. The difference is that caffeine now sits within a broader formulation aimed at consumers who may also be thinking about everyday nutrition.
Vitamins A, C and D and zinc are included for their contribution to the normal function of the immune system. Vitamins B6 and B12 and iron contribute to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.
That distinction matters.
“Immune support” can easily be interpreted rather more generously than nutrition claims justify. Supporting normal immune function is not the same thing as promising protection from winter bugs, colds or anything else circulating around the office.
The more defensible appeal is simpler: Pro Plus Immune Support combines caffeine with selected vitamins and minerals in one effervescent drink.
That will make sense to some people and be unnecessary for others. Someone wanting only caffeine has simpler options. Someone looking purely for vitamins and minerals may have no desire to add caffeine at all.
The product sits in the overlap.
I have also started using it around sports games when I want an additional lift. In that respect, the old Pro Plus logic has survived rather well: sometimes the attraction of caffeine is simply that you would prefer to feel more alert than you currently do.
Cloud Twelve offers energy of a very different kind
@sustainhealth ♬ Inspiring Motivation for a Cinematic Background – AurbanniAudio
There was something enjoyably absurd about revisiting a product associated with working late in a place devoted to slowing down, chilling and relaxing.
Cloud Twelve is discreet from the street, but considerably more expansive once inside. The reception is warm without feeling ceremonial, while the ground-floor children’s club is sufficiently impressive to raise uncomfortable questions about whether adulthood was a wise career move.
Upstairs are another reception area, café, hair salon and treatment rooms.
My treatment was a lymphatic drainage massage. Claims about what massage may or may not achieve medically deserve considerably more care than wellness marketing sometimes gives them, so I will restrict myself to the experience itself.
It was extremely relaxing.
“Bliss” is one of those words wellness writing has battered almost beyond usefulness. On this occasion, it can have one more outing.
A spa designed to remove any sense of urgency
The treatment is only part of Cloud Twelve’s appeal.
Afterwards, guests can settle into comfortable loungers with headphones and a Cloud Twelve playlist. A central fireplace divides the circular space, with the thermal facilities on the other side.
Those include a rose sauna, Himalayan salt cave, steam room and ice bath.
The last of those requires a particular cast of mind after a massage. Some people apparently emerge from deep relaxation and think what the moment really needs is voluntary immersion in freezing water. Their courage is noted.
The changing facilities are equally considered, with the practical things needed before and after a treatment already to hand.
Yet the strongest feature is not a sauna, treatment room or piece of equipment.
Cloud Twelve is simply very good at making whatever is happening outside seem less urgent for a while.
Leaving is the least appealing part of the programme.
Pro Plus is following a wider shift in wellbeing
The location made an interesting backdrop because the newer Pro Plus formulation reflects a wider change in how energy products are presented.
The old proposition was almost aggressively functional: caffeine helped when alertness was required.
That purpose has not disappeared. Instead, Pro Plus Immune Support places 75mg of caffeine alongside nutrients associated with normal immune function and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.
It is also consumed as an orange-flavoured drink rather than swallowed as the familiar tablet.
That changes the ritual as much as the ingredient list. The product feels less like something retrieved in an emergency and more like something intended to sit within a daily routine.
Whether that is useful depends largely on what you actually want.
If caffeine is the priority, the added micronutrients may be secondary. If nutritional supplementation is the priority, including caffeine potentially makes the product less suitable for occasions when stimulation is unwanted.
The formulation becomes more logical when both needs happen to coincide.
An old name with a broader proposition
Nostalgia has a habit of simplifying products.
I remember Pro Plus as something associated with long journalistic shifts because that is where it fitted into my life. The product itself has now moved into rather different territory.
Pro Plus Immune Support is priced at £5.99 for 20 tablets and is available from leading retailers nationwide.
The element I recognise most readily remains the caffeine. That is still the part with the clearest immediate relevance when I want extra alertness during a demanding day or around sport.
The vitamins and minerals broaden the formulation, but their role should be understood on their own terms rather than inflated into promises they cannot reasonably make.
Perhaps that is the most striking thing about meeting Pro Plus again.
The caffeine has survived. The culture around it has changed almost completely.
And somewhere between a 1990s deadline desk and a Notting Hill spa, even Pro Plus appears to have discovered wellness.
