The marketing geniuses at Razer are not averse to turning a good April Fool’s Day joke into an actual product (see “Project Breadwinner”). Toasters may seem like a bewildering decision for a company releasing bleeding edge laptops and PC peripherals, but this latest prank-turned-product? It’s a perfect fit for a company with a devout following of hardcore gamers. That’s right: Project Venom has spawned an actual energy drink called, appropriately enough, “RESPAWN.”
RESPAWN by Razer is an energy drink designed for mental focus
RESPAWN PTE. LTD
The press release is pure gold, so I’ll let Razer’s own words start us off:
“RESPAWN sits at the center of the gaming ecosystem by helping to enhance the gamers themselves. The mental performance drink mix keeps gamers’ minds at consistently high levels of focus and attention and taste buds activated, especially as they compete over long gaming sessions.”
A powder-based substance that enhances you! The wording may be aligning it too closely to other “performance-enhancing” products, but that is just a magnificent paragraph and I genuinely applaud the marketing copywriters who pulled that out of their imagination.
From Prank To Product
Am I being a little snarky? Sure. Am I dead serious that Razer producing an energy drink targeted at competitive and core gamers (“For Gamers, By Gamers” is the company’s tagline) is a brilliant move? You bet. This is a company which can inexplicably make a toaster look sexy and sells out anything available for pre-order in minutes. Imagine what it can do with a matte black, leak-proof metal thermos!
RESPAWN began several years ago, the byproduct of Razer’s annual April Fools Day campaign. The fictional “Project Venom v2” was an elixir injected with nanobots, designed to finally make humans as formidable as the awe-inspiring hardware (Razer’s hardware of course) they gamed on.
But then a very vocal and enthusiastic community stepped in, saying “hey, but what if you actually made an energy drink?” It wasn’t a far-fetched request, because Razer was already hatching that very plan in secret, according to today’s press release.
As time passed, the concept gained more traction at Razer HQ. The company evaluated all available energy drinks on the market and came to a conclusion: the majority of them were designed to manufacture a physical energy boost, but resulted in predictable energy crashes. Razer was intent on developing a formula more focused on mental awareness and alertness to benefit esports athletes and gamers.
Less Caffeine, More Focus
So Razer’s formula ended up including Choline, Green Tea extract, B vitamins, ginger, and 95mg of caffeine per serving (or per “stick” of powder). That’s less than half what’s present in a 5 Hour Energy (200mg), and 30mg less caffeine than a Starbucks Bottled Frappuccino.
Razer also says RESPAWN is a sugar-free drink.
RESPAWN will ship out in $25 boxes of twenty .22 oz single-serving sticks that you can add to water, and will be available in the following flavors:
- Pomegranate Watermelon
- Blue Raspberry
- Tropical Pineapple
- Green Apple
You know there has to be some hardware to compliment this, right? Razer designed a companion thermos that retails for $30 and is “constructed with a dual insulated matte black stainless-steel shell for a sweat-free experience.” It even has built-in grate on the underside of the locking cap that “ensures a complete mixing of powder.” It’s the little things, right?
Interestingly, Razer has spun off RESPAWN into its own entity under the name Respawn Pte. Ltd. RESPAWN will be available for purchase in the United States via Amazon.com and, obviously, RazerStore.com. Razer is clearly doing the initial marketing push, but the hope may be that RESPAWN succeeds on its own merits.
It’s a savvy move by Razer to tap into what’s expected to become a $72 billion industry by 2024. So, will you drink it?
[“source=forbes”]
