THS: Doin' The Dew, For Real.

Have any of you looked really closely at a bottle of Mountain Dew lately? I mean, really look (If you find yourself without the Dew, please feel free to look at the left. Nevermind how many photos I took to get the picture perfect. It's fucking 12:15 on a Friday night and I'm taking pictures of an empty MD. Yes, this is what my life's boiled down to. If you want to know more, let me tell you. I'm just now going through my digital music collection and adding album covers to the file and categorizing them. I have no friends). You know, I never really noticed the changes over the years, but by golly, how they've changed. Kudos to the Design department at the Dew, though. They sure know how to make a statement, yet appeal to the general population. With quotes such as, "Same Dew, New View," a complex rhyme scheme that can only be equaled by such great lyric masters of the 90s - Vanilla Ice (Choose your weapon but don’t slip/Vanilla’s in control with the flex of the mic grip), Snow (Yes the one MC Shan and the one Daddy Snow/Together we-a love 'em as a tornado) and of course, MC Hammer (Too legit...Too legit to quit). Serously, don't ask me how I know those quotes (and yes, I've just categorized them. If you must know, they're under bad 90s music for whenever I decide to put together that particular theme party).

But the designers took it a step further:
"Attitude Sold Separately" really speaks to me on the product. I didn't really know where the beverage stood as far as edginess, but right on the bottle, it declares itself boldly. I for one find this intriguing. I'm starting to wonder what kind of childhood did the Dew (or El Dewdirino) have. Well, I've done some reasearch for you folks that are yearning for some solid information, True Hollywood Story-style.

It seems that MD was born in the lonely mountains of the Smoky, Tennessee variety. He was born on a cold October morning in 1948, hence the reason for the name. It was a struggle early on for MD, as he was born with webbed feet. He was socially awkward when he first went to school and the kids, even his parents, ostricized him for his oddities. And so his parents, shameful and embarrased, hid him away from others and never sent him back to school. Instead he was homeschooled for the remaining time he lived with his parents. They thought that this was the life for their child and he would remain secluded from society for the rest of his life.

The Dew with his parents on Rocky Top. This place was a
refuge for the young Dew. Often he would go and
contemplate his life, playing Johnny Cash songs on his guitar.

But at age 16, MD snuck into town and went to a midnight showing of Rebel Without a Cause. The film spoke to him in so many ways. "I was at a low point in my life, and when James Dean walked onto the screen, I realized I had to be him," MD reminisces in a rare interview from Rolling Stone in 1986. And in a few short weeks, MD was catching a midnight train to California. "That was classic Dew, man. He always left with a statement. That's where his attitude came from, right there. That was the beginning of his career, when he left middle Tennessee," said Dr. Pepper, an old friend of MD, who took him into his abode in the 70s, when MD was trying to find himself as a beverage.

Nobody really noticed MD for the first two decades he was around. Even though he was established as a nationwide brand, with sponsoring by Pepsi, his popularity was never really close to being respectable. A lot had to do with his marketing gurus (gurus they were not). With slogans such as: "Yahoo Mountain Dew...It'll Tickle Yore Innards" and "Get that Barefoot Feelin' Drinkin' Mountain Dew." It was clear everyone saw him as that yokel from Tennessee still.

Plans to sponsor the trip to the moon fell flat when
word got out that Neil Armstrong preferred Mello Yello.
Buzz Aldrin claimed he liked the Yello too,
but only after they returned to Earth.

The 70s were the "Silent Decade" for MD, and he spent most of the time secluded in Dr. Pepper's mansion, doing heroin and cocaine, rarely seeing the light of day. MD thought his dream was over and there was no sense in living. Pepper recalls, "He was such a downer. I'd never seen anyone so pathetic. I came home one night and saw him with nothing on except a pair of gloves, standing on the balcony with a bottle of gin, singing, "A Boy Named Sue." That's when I had to kick him out." MD had nowhere to go and spent the rest of the year wandering the streets.

MD, seen here with Pepsi Max, around 1976.
Although Max didn't make a splash until the 90s,
MD and Max were good friends until Max filed a lawsuit
against MD in 2003, claiming the Dew stole the extreme
appearance from him back in the 70s. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

But as the 80s came upon America, MD came across an ad for the new Music Television Station, MTV. It was a jolt of motivation for MD. He knew he had to get into the younger kids scene, MTV was his gig. So MD called upon an old friend to hook him up, Dr. Pepper. "When I opened the door that summer, I was relieved and also a bit skeptical. I didn't know how real the kid was. But I couldn't turn him down," Pepper says. And so that was the beginning of what we come to know: "Do the Dew" was his new slogan and it made an impression on the yuppies of the 80s.

MD, seen here with original VJ Martha Quinn,
shocks the world by showing off his edgier look and chest hair.
He would later date Martha for a few years and they were
engaged briefly (the couple was fondly called Dr. Quinn), but was broken
off after just a year, Quinn citing personality differences as the main reason.

The ultimate measure of success:
You know you've made it big time when your
logo has been punned by the Christian crowd.

And MD has never looked back. He's caught the wave of late 90s Extreme-ism and his popularity has never been any higher. Many have tried to knock him down as the king of sperm-reducing, caffeine-inducing liquid, but Surge and Vault have proved they're not as real, or extreme. There was rumors Mello was trying to get Yelloer, but they've proved to be false. Rumors also abound that MD's seeking a political seat in the Senate. Sources indicate that he's running as an independent for the state of Tennessee.