drink was being produced by Solvi Acquisition, and Bon Appétit reported on both Buppert's prediction that Bawls was in its twilight, and that the drink was "nearly impossible to find in stores". Production Composition The Baltimore Sun described Bawls' taste as citrus-flavored cream soda, and the soft drink gets its caffeine from the Amazonian guarana berry. In 2002, a bottle had of caffeine, and cost about . In 2004, a bottle had as much caffeine as 1.5 cups of coffee, and cost between (equivalent to $– in ). In 2015, the can of original Bawls had , and both the composition and guarana suppliers were yet unchanged from 1996. Packaging In 2003, Bawls sourced its cobalt-blue bottles from Germany, and the bottle caps from Ecuador. They came together in Hillside, New Jersey where Bawls was bottled with guarana from Brazil. Circa 2005, Buppert described the drink's brand identity as based on the unique bottles, where the raised bumps "convey the idea of 'bouncing balls inside the bottle punching their way out. In 2006, Hobarama developed a canned variant of Bawls both for shipping to overseas fans serving with the United States Armed Forces, and distribution at events prohibiting glass containers (e.g. paintball tournaments). The company partnered with Crown Beverage Packaging to develop a can that would evoke the uniqueness of the textured bottles: the aluminum cans are the first to feature foaming ink, a new and then-unused technology that applies a low-gloss print that swells when heated, giving the cans a surface akin to the bottles'. In Montreal, Crown's manufacturing of these new cans took 18.6–30 percent longer than traditional can-printing processes. The can was one of Brand Packaging selections for "best new consumer package goods packages of 2006." 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 healthy-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