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Mountain Dew

Mountain Dew, stylized as Mtn Dew in some countries and colloquially known as Dew in some areas, is a soft drink brand owned by PepsiCo. The original formula was invented in 1940 by Tennessee beverage bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman. A revised formula was created by Bill Bridgforth in 1958. The rights to this formula were obtained by the Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia. William H. "Bill" Jones of the Tip Corporation further refined the formula, launching that version of Mountain Dew in 1961. In August 1964, the Mountain Dew brand and production rights were acquired from Tip by the Pepsi-Cola company, and the distribution expanded across the United States and Canada.

Between the 1940s and 1980s there was only one variety of Mountain Dew, which was citrus-flavored and caffeinated in most markets. Diet Mountain Dew was introduced in 1988, followed by Mountain Dew Red, which was introduced and discontinued in 1988. In 2001, a cherry-flavored variant called Code Red debuted. Expansions of the product line have continued to this day, including specialty offerings, limited time productions, region-specific and retailer-specific flavors of Mountain Dew.

Production was extended to the United Kingdom in 1996, but was phased out in 1998. A similarly named but different-tasting product, with a recipe more similar to the original American product has been sold in the U.K. under the name "Mountain Dew Energy" since 2010 and in Ireland since the spring of 2011, but in 2015 it was changed to "Mountain Dew Citrus Blast" to shift away from the energy drink marketing. As of 2017, Mountain Dew represented a 6.6% share of the carbonated soft drinks market in the U.S., and is the leading soft drink brand in several states including almost the entire Midwestern United States. Its competition includes the Coca-Cola Company's Mello Yello and Surge, and Keurig Dr Pepper's Sun Drop; Mountain Dew accounted for 80% of citrus soft drinks sold within the U.S. in 2010.[clarification needed]

Tennessee bottlers Barney and Ally Hartman developed Mountain Dew as a mixer in the 1940s. Soft drinks were sold regionally in the 1930s, and the Hartmans had difficulty in Knoxville obtaining their preferred soda to mix with liquor, preferably whiskey, so the two developed their own. Originally a 19th-century slang term for whiskey, especially Highland Scotch whisky, the Mountain Dew name was trademarked for the soft drink in 1948.

Charles Gordon, who had partnered with William Swartz to bottle and promote Dr. Enuf, was introduced to Mountain Dew when he met the Hartman brothers on a train and they offered him a sample. Gordon and the Hartman brothers subsequently made a deal to bottle Mountain Dew by the Tri-Cities Beverage Corporation in Johnson City, Tennessee.

The Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia, bought the rights to Mountain Dew, revising the flavor and launching it in 1961. In 1964, Pepsico purchased the Tip Corporation and thus acquired the rights to Mountain Dew. In 1999, the Virginia legislature recognized Tip Corporation president Bill Jones and the town of Marion for their role in the history of Mountain Dew.

"Mountain Dew" was originally Southern and/or Scots-Irish slang for moonshine (i.e., homemade whiskey or poitín), as referenced in the Irish folk song "The Rare Old Mountain Dew", dating from 1882. Using it as the name for the soda was originally suggested by Carl E. Retzke at an Owens-Illinois Inc. meeting in Toledo, Ohio, and was first trademarked by Ally and Barney Hartman in the 1940s. Early bottles and signage carried the reference forward by showing a cartoon-stylized hillbilly. The first sketches of the original Mountain Dew bottle labels were devised in 1948 by John Brichetto, and the representation on product packaging has changed at multiple points in the history of the beverage.

PepsiCo (then The Pepsi-Cola Company) acquired the Mountain Dew brand in 1964, and shortly thereafter in 1969 the logo was modified as the company sought to shift its focus to a "younger, outdoorsy" generation. This direction continued as the logo remained the same through the 1970s, 1980s. In 1996, PepsiCo began using a strategy it was already using with its flagship cola Pepsi, changing Mountain Dew's logo every few years. New logos were introduced in 1996, 1998, and 2005. In October 2008, the Mountain Dew logo was redesigned to "Mtn Dew" within the U.S. market, as a result of PepsiCo announcing that it would rebrand its core carbonated soft-drink products by early 2009. Returning flavors were given redesigned packaging and logos when re-released.

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