Mtn Dew: Frost Bite

Summer is peaking out, and while I welcome the warmer weather, I know it's a cruel temptress. Promising fun in the sun, but only delivering sweaty pits and stringy hair. Nonetheless, summer does bring things like BBQs, and sand toys, and bright neon picnic supplies. While Halloween and Christmas reign supreme, I get a special feeling when CVS stocks their center aisles with their colorful array of outdoor decorations.

But I never buy any of them. I have enough stuff, and I never host parties, so let's just stick to junk food. A short while back we were privileged to see the next few Mountain Dew releases, but I figured with the stay-at-home orders in effect, it would be hopeless to find them. Making matters worse, one was a Walmart exclusive, and the other was at Speedway. Now I have a Speedway nearby, which is very convenient, but they seldom have the new items. I managed to find exactly two of the VoodDew edition back in the Fall, but no dice one this current one.

So that leaves Walmart. While the Speedway edition was some sort of racecar theme, this one was an arctic shark lunging straight out of the SyFy channel and onto the can decor. I don't normally go there, and it's not really because I think I'm too good for it, or as a status thing. I just find Target or a regular grocery store to be sufficient. But my options were limited this time, so I figured I'd give it a go. Now as of the last few weeks, most stores are requiring face masks in order to enter, so I have a balaclava handy in the car for protecting the public at large safe from my grotesque germs and/or if I feel spunky and want to rob the place. But at this location, there appeared to be a line at the front door in addition to that, as they were limiting capacity. I was on a scheduled, but it didn't look too bad. Upon parking, I then noticed that it wrapped around the side of the building. Ah well, I'm here, may as well give it a shot.

The line moved, but at a snail's pace. It ended up being about 30 minutes before I was able to get inside. My nervousness about wasting all of this time, was quickly alleviated once I walked down the first main aisle, as I was greeted with a four foot pallet of Frost Bite cans. Another look down the dedicated soda aisle revealed quite a few of the bottles. Since I really didn't want to ever come back any time soon, I loaded up several of the cans and bottle packages, and somehow didn't drop them on the way to the register.

I probably should have grabbed a shopping cart, but I wasn't even sure that I would have luck finding anything. Eventually I got to the self-checkout and then managed to mess it all up by scanning each bottle in the 6-pack separately. After I realized that the bottles alone were pushing $40, I try to void it, and then lights started flashing which signaled that I was hopelessly inept. Someone went over and fixed it all for me and let me know that they were indeed only $2.50 for the 6-pack. I got out of there for about $16 total, and that's pretty much the going rate for just one box on eBay, so not too bad.

So what does it taste like? Well…um…blue. I dunno. All these limited flavors just taste the same after a while. It's like Mountain Dew with more berry flavor, and a lot of food coloring so your tongue will discolor and probably convince someone that it's a COVID symptom, thus placing you on a blacklist forever and prevent you from ever coaching little league. It's not a bad flavor anyway and worth picking up just for the artwork alone. I didn't pick up the Code Blue or Voltage to compare, so I sort of dropped the ball on that one. Sorry.

Back to the artwork though, I must say it's fantastic. I can't imagine the pitch meeting for this, but whoever is responsible needs to be promoted as soon as possible. Or maybe just allowed to work at this point, since we're all home with no way to burn off the 240 Calories in each of these bottles. That said, I'm not sure what to do with all of these. I know I wanted to taste one and have another for the collection, but most of the impulse purchase was to justify that half hour wait in disease infested air outside Walmart. Plus the risk of COVID too I suppose. I certainly don't want to ingest all that corn syrup, so I guess I'll find homes for them. Until then they make a nice stand for my shark puppet and help block out the light from the windows so I stop staring out, wondering when the Queen Governor will grant us the privilege of enjoying the outdoors again.