It was a popular drink on my campus, lots of programmer/engineer types. I'm actually still quite addicted myself, so I fit the stereotype.
I remember people talking up the caffeine content, and I think that's is part of the attraction. Programmers are renowned for crazy late hours. But I think good old fashioned peer pressure plays a part as well, because if it was just about caffeine, everyone would just have coffee, right?
I'm not sure I'd agree with "hillbillies" -- I think the other stereotype is more particular: the "extreme sports" types, skaters, snowboarders, WWF fans and the like (for example, the characters in the 4x4 pickup from Harold and Kumar). And I suspect that stereotype is entirely fed by the advertising campaigns promoting it as an "extreme" soda. In fact, I'd suspect the target audience of those ads is actually the programmers and couch potatoes, appealing to the fantasy of a more exciting lifestyle. Much like liquor or luxury car ads feature idle rich on the French Riviera, but are designed to appeal to
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I guess Mountain Dew goes out of its way to be a niche drink because it can't compete head on with Coke and Pepsi for mainstream sugar water cred.
Interesting that they target advertising to extreme sports people and hillbillies (or whatever you call the people in this ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xd8fzk8Rlk&fmt=18) but computer guys embraced it on their own.
Wow. I'd never seen that before. I didn't realize they originally tried to capitalize on moonshine as an image. (To clarify: that ad has hillbilly stereotypes, this ad is the kind of pseudo-white-trash character I was thinking of. Not really a "hillbilly", definitely not a computer programmer.)
Today someone in one of my classes saw me drinking Mountain Dew and was like "Code Red?" and I said "Mountain Dew: Hillbillies, computer programmers, and me." Thanks for invading my brain.
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I remember people talking up the caffeine content, and I think that's is part of the attraction. Programmers are renowned for crazy late hours. But I think good old fashioned peer pressure plays a part as well, because if it was just about caffeine, everyone would just have coffee, right?
I'm not sure I'd agree with "hillbillies" -- I think the other stereotype is more particular: the "extreme sports" types, skaters, snowboarders, WWF fans and the like (for example, the characters in the 4x4 pickup from Harold and Kumar). And I suspect that stereotype is entirely fed by the advertising campaigns promoting it as an "extreme" soda. In fact, I'd suspect the target audience of those ads is actually the programmers and couch potatoes, appealing to the fantasy of a more exciting lifestyle. Much like liquor or luxury car ads feature idle rich on the French Riviera, but are designed to appeal to ( ... )
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Interesting that they target advertising to extreme sports people and hillbillies (or whatever you call the people in this ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xd8fzk8Rlk&fmt=18) but computer guys embraced it on their own.
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Interestingly, some other other old ads show the morphology from moonshine to "simple country life", to "all-American country" (and the introduction of non-team, non-mainstream sports). The sports theme, absent any of the original "country" imagery, seemed to stick. Eventually that becomes extreme sports until finally admitting popularity among a more sedentary demographic.
And then there's this, which has got to be one of the most homoerotic commercials for any product ever aired.
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Thanks for invading my brain.
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