How About That Thing?

Yes sir, we’re talking about Mountain Dew Pitch Black. If ever there was a variety of Mountain Dew I was obsessed with, it’d be this one. I was even more obsessed with this flavor than I was with Voltage, and I fucking love me some Mountain Dew Voltage.

When I was a kid in that grim time we call “the 90s”, there was only one flavor of Mountain Dew: greenish-yellow citrus fuck Mountain Dew. And maybe DIET greenish-yellow citrus fuck Mountain Dew, but that’s beside the point. There was only one flavor available to anyone at any given time, and by god, that’s the way we liked it! Okay, maybe we didn’t LIKE it, per say, but we definitely didn’t know any other way.

Compare it to now, where there’s, like, fifty god damn flavors, with new flavors being added every other week, most of which are only around for X amount of weeks, so you better drink up, asshole! Yeah, I’m not exactly sure this is the best version of things.

So what happened between 1990-whatever and now? Well, it all began with Code Red. Cherry flavored Mountain Dew: a concept that seems dull as dirt nowadays, but around the extremely early 2000s, this concept was revolutionary. Not only did everybody I know who was doing the Dew like me love the stuff, but we began speculating on which flavor would be next. On one hand, I TECHNICALLY predicted there’d be a blue Mountain Dew one day… Though I remember naming it Code Blue. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be till, like, 2008-2009 or so when that one would come out.

So what did we get as the next flavor. Why, good old Mountain Dew Pitch Black, of course. And boys and girls, let me tell you something: I was obsessed.

Why? Hell if I know. Lord knows it was far from the first grape soda I’d ever had at the time.

In my preteen years in particular, I was a huge fan of Grape Crush. Mom liked it because it was caffeine free, and relatively cheap. I mean yeah, the store brand stuff was the cheapest… But Crush didn’t taste like grape-flavored cough syrup like the store brand stuff did. Also Shasta. Fuck Shasta.

I also loved Mountain Dew… But yeah, good luck convincing my mom to buy anything more than a twenty-ounce bottle on special occasions. Apparently, I was already loud, dumb, and annoying as it was. The LAST thing I needed was a can or bottle of good ol’ insomnia juice on the regular.

But then, in 2004, they went and combined the two things I loved: grape flavored stuff, and Mountain Dew. And at that point, I had money from my summer job burning a hole in my pocket. Plus, as much as my mom hated the idea of me buying the stuff, it’s MY money, and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted with it. As long as it wasn’t cigarettes. She really had it out for cigs. And rightfully so. But I digress.

So what was it about Mountain Dew Pitch Black that has me so obsessed to this very day? I mean yeah, it’s grape flavored Mountain Dew, and it actually wasn’t bad, as memory serves… But it wasn’t exactly what I’d call life-altering. The label was pretty cool, the name was pretty cool… But none of that really makes me think it was worth stopping just two steps away from starting a religion over.

So what was it about this drink that has me so fascinated?

The only thing I can think of, off the top of my head, has less to do with the drink itself, and more to do with where I was in life when it came out.

When Pitch Black came out, I was living what I considered the good life. I had graduated high school, I was going to go to college, I had a summer job lined up, and I even managed to steal my arch rival’s prom date. Hell, we even started dating shortly after prom. Everything was coming up Milhouse!

And as if life couldn’t get better, look what showed up at the local Quiktrip! Grape flavored Mountain Dew, you say? The expression “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” didn’t exist yet, but… Well… That!

Fast forward to 2016, when “DewMocracy” started up. It was far from the first DewMocracy event, but it WAS the first time I took part as frequently as I did. The options were:

• Bring Pitch Black back for a limitted run.
• Make Baha Blast more accessible to people who didn’t want to go to Taco Bell.

Suffice to say, I voted Pitch Black. And it won. And it… Was… GLORIOUS!

Of course, my life in 2016 wasn’t as glorious as it was in 2004. That bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, optimistic college kid who saw the world as a place full of opportunity and possibility had his ass thoroughly kicked by two years in retail, several years on the verge of flunking out of college, and winding up back at his mom’s house thanks to some… Questionable, financial decisions on my part. Also, the whole financial collapse of 2008 and what not. But hey, PITCH BLACK IS BACK! WOOOO!

So yeah, maybe not EVERYTHING is associated with warm fuzzy nostalgia. But even in 2016, when I drank it, I often associated it with a better time. It was the taste of a future that wasn’t going to suck. It’s a reminder of a simpler time, when artificial intelligence was just something onboard starship computers in space operas. When McDonalds still had a one-dollar menu, and Chipotle burritos were still the size of bricks. When the internet was this vast plain of insider jokes and passion projects instead of, like, four or five websites that make you say words like “unalive” and “Pew pew” on the count advertisers are pussies. A time when video games were actually FUN, and not half-assembled gambling machines designed to milk you for every dollar you’re worth. A time when superhero movies were a fun novelty as opposed to the exhausting cinematic universe it is now. Back when anime was cool, and that fucking Isokai JRPG crap was limited to Hacksign at worst. Back when vocalists annunciated, and didn’t mumble, or do that equally obnoxious Billy Ilish whisper-sing. Good times, man. Good times. I miss those times.

And when I think of Pitch Black, I think back to those times.

I mean hell, what else could I possibly say that other, more qualified nostalgia sites have already said? Hell, there were comedy sites that were making fun of Pitch Black’s ultimate failure TWO YEARS afterward! Christ, man, maybe wait for the soil to settle before you start dancing on their grave?

I don’t know, man, food reviews have always been hard to stretch into nostalgic articles like this. Not without copious amounts of oversharing, anyway.

So yeah, it was