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Today, we're chugging the history of Mountain Dew
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Soft drinks were all the rage in 1930s Appalachia. But for Knoxville brothers Barney and Allie Hartman
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none of the existing sodas were cutting it. They'd moved to Tennessee with a love for natural setup
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a soda brand that, back home in Georgia, they'd love to mix with bourbon
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But they couldn't find any natural setup anywhere in their new city. And they were presumably drinking the kind of bourbon
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that could power a Model T. So sipping on it was out of the question
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So they set out to make their very own natural setup-inspired lemon-lime whiskey mixer
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And by the end of the decade, they'd created just the thing. They called it Mountain Dew, an old slang term for moonshine
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And it wasn't until the 1946 Gatlinburg Bottling Convention, where Barney and Allie unveiled their fully rebranded product
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that Mountain Dew finally went into production. With this rebrand came Willie the Hillbilly
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a barefoot, rifle-toting, usually bearded cartoon mascot, along with their infamous Mountain Dew Tickle Your Ennard slogan
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But with stiff competition coming from the already well-established 7-Up, Mountain Dew was slow to take off
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And in the 1950s, the Hartmans decided to part ways with their struggling brainchild
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In came Marion, Virginia's Tip Corporation. Under this new ownership the Mountain Dew recipe was reworked to include either Tri Lemonade or Tang depending on who you ask and it re on the market in 1961 The tip corporation reign did not last long though And in 1964
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the Pepsi Cola Company bought the entire corporation outright. When PepsiCo acquired Mountain Dew
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the Beverly Hillbillies TV show was still at the peak of its popularity
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Likewise, the first cans and bottles of Pepsi's Mountain Dew featured Willie the Hillbillies
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shooting at another man. In 1974, though, PepsiCo changed the Mountain Dew recipe once again, adding in orange flavoring and at last giving it
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its infamous neon green hue. They then moved Mountain Dew away from its hillbilly vibe and
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began to feature a wider array of outdoorsy lifestyles. But they slowly started adding in
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all sorts of other more extreme sports as the decade wore on. In 1992, Mountain Dew finally
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changed its slogan to the action-oriented Do the Dew. In 1995, Mountain Dew then became one of seven
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sponsors to support the first ever X Games. From that point forward, the brand would forever be
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associated with high octane daredevils on skateboards, BMX bikes, and base jumping
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Mountain Dew proliferated in the high caffeine days of the 1980s. Today, a can of Mountain Dew
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has a whopping 54 milligrams of caffeine. What's more, Mountain Dew today has over a dozen flavors
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that are each individually exclusive to specific stores and restaurants across the U.S. Mountain
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Undue moves billions of dollars of product every year, making it PepsiCo's second most popular beverage
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Behind, you know, Pepsi. Barney and Allie Hartman would be tickled
