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Hillbilly Holler and other Mountain Dew generics

Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm Tue, Jun 19, 2012

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Wikipedia's "Generic citrus sodas" lists 27 (as of this writing) generic equivalents to Mountain Dew/Mello Yello/Sun Drop. "In deference to Mountain Dew's leading position in the market for citrus sodas, most brands of generic citrus soda have the word 'Mountain' in their names." Read aloud in a rush, they're a kind of tone-poem about marketing, dental caries, and caffeine shakes.

1 Citrus Drop/Citrus Drop Xtreme
2 Citrus Pop
3 Heee Haw
4 Hillbilly Holler
5 Kountry Mist
6 Mountain Breeze
7 Mountain Drops
8 Mountain Explosion
9 Mountain Frost
10 Mountain Fury
11 Mountain Holler
12 Mountain Lightning
13 Mountain Lion
14 Mountain Maze
15 Mountain Mellow
16 Mountain Mist
17 Mountain Moondrops
18 Mountain Roar
19 Mountain Rush
20 Mountain Splash
21 Mountain W
22 Mountain Wave
23 Mountain Yeller
24 Mountain Rush
25 Mt. Chill
26 Ramp
27 Rocky Mist

Generic citrus sodas (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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  • http://twitter.com/pishabh pishabh

    But only ‘the Dew’ flows through smoothly, if you know what I mean

  • Jorpho

    This is even more creative than the list of Dr Pepper knockoffs.

    • Toby

       I lived on 2 liters of Dr. Perky in college.

      • http://twitter.com/trempls tré

         Just two liters? You must not have been in college very long. Either that, or you spent a lot of time thirsty.

    • niktemadur

      Speaking of which, why doesn’t Dublin Dr Pepper just start calling itself “Dublin’s Original”, or something along those lines, and goes national with its’ elixir of the gods?

  • John Napsterista

    Pity the poor generic citrus drink that lacks the universal name recognition and market penetration of mighty Sun Drop®!

  • http://www.facebook.com/ThomasHCampbell Thomas Campbell

    Ummm… excuse me.. but this is NOT a list unless Ale-8-One is at the top of it.  Can’t believe it’s not there.

    • justgrimes

      Ale-8 isn’t some generic citrus soda; its a caffeinated ginger ale that predates most of this generic citrus crap; ale-8 is from kentucky; not making fun of kentucky

    • http://twitter.com/EllieHerring Ellie Herring

      agreed. (i live 30 mi from where they bottle the stuff)

    • http://twitter.com/ComicBookCandy Comic Book Candy

      Gotta agree with justgrimes on this one. It’s defs a Ginger Ale.

  • bo1n6bo1n6

    Hillbilly Holler?! I needs me some.

  • Ambiguity

    Hate to nitpick, but that list is horribly incomplete without the addition of the greatest citrus soda of them all: Wink!

    (But I actually haven’t seen it sense to 80′s, so if it’s still around, it problably doesn’t taste the same :( ).

    • Tarliman

      Wink is specifically grapefruit soda, though, and not a mixed-citrus beverage.

      • voiceinthedistance

        Make that “grapefruit soda/household cleaner”

        • Ambiguity

           And that’s what makes it so special.

          (According to Wikipedia, it is mixed citrus, but “primarily” grapefruit.)

  • http://twitter.com/JohnStatic John Static

    In Michigan, we have Moon Mist.

    • http://twitter.com/zaren Jim Schmidt

      And I added it to the list before I even saw this comment. It’s currently entry #6 :)

  • Tarliman

    Singapore has Kickapoo Joy Juice, just for the extra copyright violation. It’s pretty good, too.

    • http://devojane.blogspot.com devophill

       THAT’S the one that was missing! I knew I’d had a hillbilly-themed soda that wasn’t on the list but I couldn’t remember the name. I don’t know where it’s from but I got mine from Galco’s Soda Pop Shop. (They have a website but I’m not looking for it right now.)

      • fredh

        The phrase “hillbilly-themed soda” made my day.

    • http://www.misscellania.com/ MissCellania

      Kickapoo Joy Juice came out in the 60s, not long after Mountain Dew went nationwide. It was a real battle there for a while, but Mountain Dew won out. I though the Joy Juice was gone forever, but I just learned a few weeks ago that it’s still being bottled here and there.  As a kid, I preferred it to Mt. Dew because I was a Lil Abner fan, although it wasn’t much help to the company, because my parents never bought soda pop.

      • Gary61

        ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’ was the concoction made in the moonshine still in the Lil Abner comic strip, and because of the ingredients list for the juice, the still area smelled sumpin’ terrible – which is why they named it the ‘Skonk Works’ – which, of course, is where the famous ‘Skunk Works’ aeronautical division had gotten it’s name (designers of the U-2, F-117, and the fabulous SR-71).
        This endeth the lesson.

  • Traska

    I’ve tried Mountain Holler and Mountain Explosion.  I still prefer Mountain Dew Throwback (but oddly, I don’t care a great deal for HFCS Mountain Dew), but my SO swears by Mountain Holler.

    • bcsizemo

      Throwback is excellent.  I’m also highly fond of Dew in glass bottles.  It can be hard to find, but when drunk ice cold….it’s like the nectar of the gods (IMO).

      • Donald Petersen

        Picked me up some MD Throwback at the Smart & Final last week, but now I’m down to my last can.  Stopped by yesterday for some more, but it was all gone.  They did have some Pepsi throwback in those cans that scream 1978 to me, but I can’t get aboard the straight-cola bus anymore, not without some added artificial “cherry” flavor.

        Now I feel like I should keep my last Throwback can for a special occasion, but it’ll probably be gone by 4:30 this afternoon.

    • http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

      I tried Moutain Explosion once. There was an explosion, all right, but not in the mountain.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=744804703 Billy Davis

    I seem to remember “White Lightnin’” from my childhood. It had hillbillies of the can. I always figured (or “figgered”) that is was a Mountain Dew knock off.

  • http://www.facebook.com/nick.fidler.9 Nick Fidler

    No Mountain Madness, or Mountain Mania? I just picked up a case of each!

  • fredh

    You SAY you’ve had Mountain Rush, but that was probably just the #19 version. Now the #24 version of Mountain Rush? That makes Mt. Chill taste like Citrus Pop.

  • bcsizemo

    I hate to say it but the only other citrus soda I like anywhere close to Mt. Dew was Surge.  Perhaps it had something to do with the amount of free ones they gave out in college…

  • wileyprojects

    Mountain Mellow may be the laziest and best name for a generic Mt. Dew/Mellow Yellow ever.  Yellow Dew would’ve been gross.

  • Jonathan Badger

    The original name of the citrus drink Mountain Dew and many of its knockoffs are referring to moonshine (illegally produced alcoholic beverages traditional to hillbillies). But why? What does citrus have to do with moonshine? As far as I know, citrus plays no role in it.

    • EH

      I think it’s more likely that “Mountain Dew” was a name that a lot of people already knew and so could be repurposed in an innocuous way. Cheap branding.

  • Dolphin Bunnywolf

    Where is “Kickapoo Joy Juice” (a real product) in this list? Are you going to deny me my childhood memories? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickapoo_Joy_Juice

  • penguinchris

    “Mountain W” is from the grocery chain Wegmans; their entire line of sodas is whatever known brand name there is with “W” put in wherever it fits (they have a bunch that aren’t the same as well-known sodas too actually; for generics they’re very good). Dr. W is my favorite. 

    The cola variants used to be “W Pop” and “Diet W Pop” etc. but now it’s just “W cola” with a bland description of each variant. The many different ways to pronounce “W Pop” amused us as children (I think we ultimately settled on “wuhpop”). Their 7-Up variety is still “W Up” so that one can still be fun to say, anyway.

  • http://twitter.com/TOSkeet TO Skeet

    Slurm?

  • pjcamp

    Heee Haw? Is that a typo, or a sad attempt to avoid trademark infringement?

  • http://www.facebook.com/bleepingmeteorsalad.oJAMMER.DOGoDOG.balast.trap23 Casey Holcomb

    I remember the house brand rip off from Eckerd Drug Store (now CVS pharmacy) was just called “Mountain.”  My friends from high schools drank cases upon cases of that before we discovered alcohol as the preferred object of mass consumption.

  • Amy Macpherson

    Don’t forget “Ski” and “Squirt”!  

  • http://plagmada.org Tim H

    They need to add the Korean “Mountain High” to the list.  It looked and tasted so much like Mountain Dew that I thought it was just the Korean form of the stuff, except that it was sold next to the actual Mountain Dew. 

    And:

    http://softdrinkreviews.blogspot.com/2008/09/rocky-mist-meijer-store-brand.html
    http://softdrinkreviews.blogspot.com/2008/09/faygo-moon-mist.html
    http://softdrinkreviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/mountain-rush.html

  • http://twitter.com/ComicBookCandy Comic Book Candy

    I can attest to the delicious quality of Citrus Drop, the Kroger brand knock off. 

  • http://twitter.com/Niemanator Luke Nieman

    In Canada, Co-operatives have the deliciously named “Mountain Mojo”

  • yobar

    We used to have the Kickapoo Joy Juice until the late 70s here in central Illinois.

  • sno

    What are “dental caries”?

    • Antinous / Moderator

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_caries