Something worth mentioning about Mountain Dew’s commercial alignment with World of Warcraft, sticking some characters or other on their cans and bottles, and having some sweepstakes or other, with the words “Game Fuel”:

Way back in the 1970s, and I believe from its inception, Mountain Dew was marketed with a decidedly hick-ish flair, the commercial campaign rhyming “Mountain Dew” with “Ya-Hoo!”, and bridging the two phrases with the word “It’s”.

Case in point:  this.  OR this.  Mountain Dew:  the favorite soft drink of Snuffy Smith.  Or, he trio of tv programs The Dukes of Hazards, Petticoat Junction, and Hee-Haw?  After that era of celebrating southern culture was passe, the search was on for more marketable pastures.

Flash forward to the 1990s.  At this point in time, the soft drink marketed itself tying itself to”Extreme Sports”.  Climbing a Giant rock, dangling over the edge on a thin rope, you reach into your climbing supplies and take a giant gulp of this caffeinated beverage.  Coca Cola introduced “Surge” to compete with this, I guess on a bargain basement version of putting yourself in barrels and rolling yourself down hills.
Come to think of it, maybe Surge bridged the two eras of Mountain Dew marketing?

One thing that needed to be saying, and it was pretty clear in the 1990s — Mountain Dew?  The province of video gamers and role playing gamers.  I don’t know if this was the case in the 1980s — somebody ask old Dungeons and Dragons masters.  But I gather they thought the association would chafe the cool lads with Tony Hawk posters.

The color of Mountain Dew has some vague remnant to the color of urine rolling down a mountain stream — such that the first of the three marketing connections makes some sense.  The caffeine is necessary to keep a person upright through 30 straight hours of rolling through imaginary medieval creatures on their computer screen — such as that piece of marketing makes some sense.  I don’t quite understand the logic of the Extreme Sport-ers — but whatever works for them.

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