Big Red Boots

Caffeine Examiner
Trying desperately to pull my overworked brain cells from their perpetual desire to slog off, I scour the aisles for the perfect caffeinated substance. From Korean Drink Cans to stomach churning bargain caffeinated malt liquor to organic hand picked beans from the Peruvian mountaintops, Ill help you on your journey through the world’s most popular psychoactive substance.

  

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Cinco De Mayo especial: Caballo Negro Bebida De Energia

May 5, 10:14 AM
by Big Red Boots, Caffeine Examiner
 
 
Black horse energy drink is possibly the most closely tied to the hispanic market - more than BOA, and 10 times more than Full Throttle Blue Demon. Everything about this can and the drink inside screams hispanic culture, enough that I was expecting the drink to be flavored with Tamarind.  The awesome can with the Mexican flag, the wild horse with the barbed wire and the Old West Font do wonders for this drink - whichh just happens to taste gread and gave me a bunch of energy. There are some missteps - but overall a solid drink.

Hispanic consumers are the group every beverage marketer wants to reach. A product of Distribuidores De La Energia, based in Burlingame, Calif., Caballo Negro was developed, from flavor to packaging, with Hispanic consumers in mind.

"Everything about the drink was done by Latino people," says company owner Arley Campbell, who says his product development partners considered a number of options for the product name and surveyed potential consumers on their preferences. Ultimately, the Caballo Negro name and the image of the black horse were chosen for the strong, masculine feeling they conveyed. “Every day we took new ideas and presented those ideas [to consumers],” Campbell says. “We’d go to swap meets, flea markets and shopping malls and sit down with people and talk to them about what they liked.”

Packaging:8
Caballo Negro is available in Mexico as well as the United States, with a few — perhaps unexpected — differences. The Mexican product is labeled in English as Black Horse, with Caballo Negro appearing at the bottom of the can — exactly the reverse of its U.S. packaging.
“In Mexico, people want products that are American,” Campbell says. “It was actually the people in Mexico who asked me to consider changing the name of our product.” the black horse and flag first turned me off, but on second look, the can had a lot going for it. IT was a really high quality printing job, the barbed wire worked well, and the outline of aluminum added the business needed to pull off the overall theme. Less 2 points because of listing a dead site, and not listing caffeine or guarana content.


Taste:8
sweet-and-sour flavor that is unique to the energy drink category. Campbell says the flavor has been tweaked several times since the product was created in order to achieve the perfect balance between sweet and sour. “In the very beginning, when someone would take a drink, they would do the whole pucker thing, like they just tried a persimmon that wasn’t ready,” he says. And while Caballo Negro still does not have a sweet profile, he says, “It’s not anywhere near that sour now.”

Buzz/Nutrition:8
n addition to traditional energy ingredients, the company also has incorporated ingredients that are well known in Latin American countries. Una de gato, or cat’s claw, is one of those ingredients. The Peruvian herb has long been touted as a remedy for countless ailments. Other functional additions to the beverage include taurine, glucuronolactone, pantothenic acid, inositol, ginseng, guaraná, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, niacin and horny goat weed.

Campbell says. “We put the maximum amount of energy ingredients in it that we thought were a good idea.” - and while it is not listed - I was bouncing off the walls for 3 or 4 hours - so it definitely has some kick to it

Website BebidaDeEnergia.com :0

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Topics: Energy Drinks
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