Bawls

Bawls (marketed as BAWLS Guarana) is a non-alcoholic, highly-caffeinated soft drink.

Created in 1996, the citrus-and-cream soda-flavored beverage leans heavily on the caffeine and natural flavor of the Amazonian guarana berry. Packaged in unique cobalt-blue bottles and cans, the drink was well received by gamers, to whom the company quickly began extensively marketing (through both sponsorships and video games themselves). The soda's name has an unclear provenance, and as of July 2023 is still sold alongside six other flavors.

History

In 1994, Hobart C. Buppert III (born 1974 (age 24)) was a student at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. While traveling through Vienna, he found club dancers were paying for cans of non-alcoholic, highly-caffeinated, "sludgy brew" derived from guarana beans. Himself unable to tolerate coffee, Buppert saw potential in refining the drink he saw in Europe and received permission from Cornell to develop a business plan as an independent study.

Buppert graduated from Cornell in 1995 with a degree in finance. In 1996, he took out a loan for to launch Hobarama in Miami Beach, Florida. In South Beach on November 14, 1996, he launched his first product: Bawls Guarana, a soft drink with three times the caffeine of Coca-Cola Classic.

Marketing

By 2002, Bawls was focusing its marketing on gamers, who amounted to 50 percent of the drink's consumers, and were "typically males between 18 and 34." Eschewing the health-benefits claims of other energy drinks of the time, Bawls instead focused on just being a soft drink with lots of caffeine, earning "an almost cult-like following among computer addicts looking for a source of energy to keep them awake for gaming binges lasting 15 to 24 hours straight." That year, the company sponsored 2500 LAN parties.

To capitalize on the connection, the national chain CompUSA began selling the soda in its stores "to court the hard-core gamer market" (those who played PC games for more than 40 hours per week). From 2004 through at least 2008, Bawls was featured at the Penny Arcade Expo, which brought the drink "a huge amount of attention". Bawls partnered with GameFly in 2008 to cross-promote each other through mutual discounts. In 2014, Bawls was still marketed to gamers, including sponsoring QuakeCon 2014 where 4799.9 USgal were drunk.

In the mid-2000s, while Bawls had difficulty securing distribution in regular grocery stores (like Meijer) due to its name, the unique packaging worked in its favor.

Name

In a 1998 interview with CNNfn, Buppert said of the name, "[it] represents a state of mind. Bawls is a very common slang term—to be bold and daring—and that's how we see the product. […] I think it's very difficult for a consumer to forget a product called Bawls Guarana."

In 2002, The Mercury News reported that BAWLS was an abbreviation for Brazilian American Wildlife Society, "intended to promote sustainable uses for the rain forest". Buppert repeated that story to CNN in 2003.

A 2004 article by The Cornell Daily Sun said Buppert was brainstorming to emulate the strong names of existing brands (Flying Tiger, Red Bull), when "Bawls" instead came from a friend's joke of "Why don’t you just call it Balls?" Buppert affirmed this origin in a 2020s interview.

When Gunnerson was asked about the name in 2015, he said, "Bounce like a ball. It gives you enough energy and fuel. That was really the inspiration of it from my understanding. […] Bounce with BAWLS was really our one key tagline for quite some time."

Product placement

Hobarama and Vivendi Universal Games made a deal in 2002 for cross-promotion. Bawls received product placement as a game mechanic in the 2002 video game, Run Like Hell: protagonist Nick Conner drinks Bawls from vending machines to boost his health. In exchange, cases of Bawls bore advertisements for the game.

In the 2004 video game, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a shakeup in the management of Interplay Entertainment led to the replacement of the Fallout franchise's iconic Nuka-Cola with the real-world Bawls for the franchise's first outing on consoles. The swap was not well-received by fans.

Bawls has also been featured in TV shows and films, including The Big Bang Theory, The Hangover, Silicon Valley, and Reno 911!.

Sponsorships

In 2002, the soda was the official soft drink of the Cyberathlete Professional League. Bawls has also been the official energy drink for the National Professional Paintball League (in 2004 and 2006), Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (2008), and Olympus Fashion Week.

type	Soft drink
manufacturer	Solvi Acquisition
origin	United States
introduced	November 14, 1996
flavor	Citrus and cream soda
ingredients	Guarana
variants	Cherry · Cherry Cola · Ginger · Orange · Root Beer · Zero
website	www.bawls.com

History

Production

Composition

Packaging

Marketing

Name

Product placement

Sponsorships

Reception

Variants

External links

References