First and foremost, I am a marketers dream. If you give me a new flavor of almost any soda or candy, I will be there to purchase it. Limited editions are even worse for me. Of course it has to be good if you want me to continue to purchase whatever product we are talking about, and if I am being honest, there haven’t been a ton of new products that have held my attention past the first try. In my recent memory Pepsi Max is the only soda to win me over with the exception of 2 limited editions that SHOULD NOT BE LIMITED EDITIONS. Those 2 products would be Pitch Black Mountain Dew (grape flavored, LOVED that stuff) and Pepsi/Dew Throwback, the stuff made with natural sugar. I didn’t think sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup would make that big of a difference but then I drank a Pepsi Throwback and my taste buds quickly told me what an idiot I was for liking HFCS.
The ease at which I can get sucked in by a new package isn’t really the point of this post, the real point is that Mountain Dew’s experiment from last year, it’s DEWmocracy (yes, that is a stupid name) is back. PepsiCo intros 3 new flavors of Dew and we all vote on which becomes the new, permanent Dew flavor. Last year gave us the choice between Supernova (strawberry-melon), Revolution (berry) and the eventual winner Voltage (raspberry-citrus). I, of course, tried all three flavors like a good boy and didn’t really care for any of them. Honestly I don’t think Dew has ever topped its original flavor. Code Red is terrible, High Voltage is OK but Orange isn’t my favorite and their Gamer Fuels have all been pretty so-so.
So here we are, in 2010 with 3 more flavors to pick from. Before I get into my personal thoughts on each soda, understand I am not a food critic and I assume my descriptions will be less than professional. Thankfully this is the internet and stupid people get to have stupid thoughts, so here I go…
Lets start off with White Out, the whitest soda that I have even put into my body. Squirt does come a close second, but this stuff is white like snow. The soda actually tastes a whole lot like Squirt as well, which is a good thing in my book. This stuff is labeled as “light citrus flavor” and I guess that’s correct. Before tasting it, all I could think was “Isn’t Mtn Dew already a citrus flavor?” I guess it is, just think of White Out as a different citrus flavor. Think grapefruit crossed with Mountain Dew and that’s what this tastes like. I, personally, quite enjoyed this one, probably mt favorite off flavored Mtn Dew since Pitch Black.
The second flavor I had the (dis)pleasure of trying was Distortion, the “lime blasted Dew”. The color reminded me of the short-lived (in my area anyhow) MDX, Dew’s “energy soda” that was released with some of my favorite ads of the decade. If it would’ve tasted like that, I would’ve been pretty happy. Instead it tastes like a soda with way too much lime. I guess that’s why Sprite/7up stick to the lemon and lime combo, picking one or the other clearly isn’t a good decision. The one good thing I can say about this flavor is that it is very unique, I can’t really come up with a good flavor comparison. I think the best I can do is imagine any of the lime flavored colas out there. Now imagine that they put so much lime flavor in that it overpowers everything else. That’s the taste I get from this stuff. There really isn’t a Mountain Dew taste in there at all, it’s very much so lime all the way and it’s got a bitter taste while swallowing. It’s not awful by any means, but I don’t really like it enough to try it again. I don’t think my vote will be going here.
That leaves Typhoon, a very pink soda that would lead you to belive that it would taste like something pink, but instead it tastes a lot light pineapple. The color is a curious choice, but I guess it’s better than blazing yellow, which is what I would expect a pineapple soda to look like. Goya does a Pina soda, a soda that is indeed blaze yellow. Back to the Dew… Typhoon is going for a tropical taste and it achieves that pretty well. Pineapple is the most obvious flavor but there has to be a mix of other tropical fruits that I am not refined enough to pinpoint. I’d guess some passion fruit or papaya or something of the sort. This is just as good as the White Out so it’s going to make my final vote a little difficult.
With a gun to my head I think I go with Typhoon as the best of the bunch, with White Out a very close second. By comparison, Distortion is awful. It’s bitter and sour while not offering any sweet. I’m always glad to try new soda, so I already can’t wait until next year. In the meantime, it’d be great if they could re-release Pitch Black this Halloween. Do it Pepsi, I beg you!
