Bud pulls a 180 with Blue Acai Energy

I wonder if the 180 drink family will get more prominenece from Anheuser Busch now that they were forced to pull their malt liquor energy drinks from the market by those jerks at the CSPI. This drink is filled with Acai (pronounced Ah-sigh-ee) berry juice, a small, dark, purple fruit from the palmberry tree. It usually grows in the wild Amazonian jungles in Brazil, is rich in B vitamins, minerals (particularly iron), fiber, proteins, omega-3 fatty acids and anthocyanin (member of the flavored class of antioxidants). I found this drink to be a tasty and pretty decent energy drink - very different than what I was expecting to come out of this cheap can put out by a huge manufacturer. While not a Steaz, I certainly found this one better than a Full Throttle Mother.

packaging:7
Great look - and I enjoy how one side of the can is upside down - although I kept wanting to open the wrong end. The can itself looks great - with a very cool and explosive graphic on front. I wish it were printed in a higher quality. For the company who deals in so much volume, I am surprised they did not spend more money on producing a higher quality can or a higher resolution graphic.I don't like that the can does not list caffeine content, although there are quite a few energy drinks out there that don't.  If this were printed on a better can I would say this was really excellent, however the flimsiness of the aluminum left alot to be desired.  If I were the designer I would be frustrated that my great can design was printed out so badly.

Taste:8
I found the taste pretty pleasing - as the sweetentener and flavors are are mde from real, non-lab foods. The flavor was not acai hovever. I was a very nice juicy flavor, tasting of the grape and blueberry juices. If you are looking for an acai flavor you will be disappointed, but if you were just wanting a tasty energy drink this is fantastic.  I was actually surprised at how good an energy drink put out be the same people who were responsible for Tilt Malt Liquor eneregy drink could have done so well with this flavor.  I would definitely pick this up if I were looking for a smaller 8oz energy can.  If this came in a bigger 16oz can it would be a real challenger to the other distributed Monster line.

Nutrition/Buzz:8
Through a little reserarch I found this drink has (probably) 90mg of caffeine, better than what I expected. In terms of energy, I got about 2 hours of energy from this. This is sweetened with sugar , red grape and blueberry juices wchich I thought was pretty fantastic. Nowhere to be found from this major manufacturer is High Fructose Corn Syrup - another welcome surprise.  There is a ton of godd stuff in here, and while not top shelf, you would not know that from the ingredients list.  Of course, with any drink using actual sugar, the calorie count is a little high, but I would rather get it from sugar thasn HFCS, or using a non-natural sweetener.

Website: http://www.180.com/ newest incarnation gets a 9
This website has just about everything you would want in a site. Lots of nutritional info, and product info up front and center. The site also has a bunch of games, downloads etc that you would expect to find in a very nice clean corporate ad site. While this version is bunches better than other incarnations, you could tell that this is built by a major ad agency. It is hip and cool, in a very clean and safe way. The logos and backgrounds all look taken directly from an istockphoto.com illustration. While very very nice, there is something completely antisceptic and stock about the UI.

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