Packaging:3
It is a good thing I found this for about a buck - I am not sure I would have paid much more. The can reeks of cheap knockoff - which is unfortunate. There is no real reason this has to be such a badly designed can - but it just has too many mistakes. The design has some background issues and is a bit fuzzy. the basic art is ugly, and it is made worse by the bad printing job. The only way you could tell Luis has anything to do with it is his name written in small block letters with the number 20 underneath, and a scrawled signature in the middle of the bare aluminum baseball. The strangest part of the design is a big white block on the back with a small X, like a place where you would sign your name. Should Luis has signed there? Are you supposed to find his signature or sign your name on it?
Functionally, it does well enough, listing the caffeine and being double faced, but the quality of the design and print job is very hard to ignore. IT also looks exactly the same as their regular version, not really separating this one from their calorie full version. From pictures I have seen of this online, it looks like maybe they have two versions - a better one they save for places like Walgreens with a white background and looking like an actual fastball being thrown, and this half done bare aluminum version they must save for the discount grocery stores like Save-A-Lot. If this were like they pictured it being in their promo spots I would have liked it much more.
Taste:9
For as bad as this looked, I assumed this would taste like a crappy Red Bull Knock off barely worthy of drinking. To my happy surprise, it was a Fruity Punch, and a tasty one too! Unlike a lot of fruit punches, it tasted very full of flavor, but still did not get heavy and thick. this was the low calorie version, but they did a great job in balancing the ultra sweetness fruit punch drinks have and the medicinal quality of energy drinks. This was really a refreshing flavor, with just enough sweetness to harmonize all the berry notes. For being designed so badly, I would still be happy having these in my general stockpile.
Buzz:7
The same goes for the energy in here - clocking in at 80mg per serving, or 160mg per can. While this is not blow-you-away amounts of energy, it ain't bad. The only other energy ingredients in here are an undisclosed amount of taurine and some vitamin B complex too. I got a couple hours of energy drink this - and it was a decent buzz too. The fade was pretty gradual, and I did not feel much crash.
One of the coolest things I found in here is a liberal use of dextrose for the non-nutrative sweetener, which worked amazingly well. there is also some sucralose buried deep within the ingredients list, but compared to the usual sucralose Ace-K mix that most diet energy drink have, I really liked the change-up.
