- [Narrator] Walk into any supermarket
and you're sure to find an aisle dedicated to soda,
an ever evolving rainbow of colors and flavors.
- Cola, vanilla cola, cherry cola,
sugar free, no caffeine.
I mean, heck, there's even a CBD soda now.
- When you look at the amount of variety we have
in terms of soda flavors in the modern marketplace,
the 1920s seemed like the dark ages.
- If people were talking about soda,
it primarily meant a liquid that was brown.
- Coca-Cola and Pepsi were the soda giants.
They controlled the soda market,
- [Narrator] But a small-time bottler
dares to dream big.
- 7UP single-handedly introduces the entire country
to a unique lemon and lime flavor.
- [Narrator] Turning the beverage world on its side.
- A clear soda?
- [Narrator] And opening the floodgates
to a limitless market.
- The Uncola.
- The name Mountain Dew refers to moonshine.
- Yahoo, Mountain Dew!
- [Narrator] These daring pioneers
will take the market to new heights.
- Imagine, like, a madman's laboratory.
They're willing to really keep upping the caffeine.
- Mountain Dew was the godfather
of the energy drink movement.
- Delicious, what's in it?
- More sugar than you could possibly imagine.
- There is no such thing as too much sugar,
but he learns very quickly that there is such a thing
as too much caffeine.
[dramatic music]
- I guess that's what you call doing the Dew.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] In the early 1900s,
America's soda market is ruled by two cola kings,
Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
- These two companies are massive
and it's them battling it out for control
of the entire industry.
Anytime someone else enters, they get crushed.
- [Narrator] Small-town bottlers and soda makers
have little hope of breaking through
and are forced to concoct non-cola sodas
for their local pharmacies to sell.
- They just started making syrups.
They'd have whatever was local.
They'd have lemon, they'd have lime.
- [Narrator] Then, the onset of World War I
offers new opportunities.
- President Woodrow Wilson feels like he needs
to allocate resources towards the World War I fight.
And in the process, he takes away production
and resources that would otherwise be used
in the production of alcohol.
Because of that,
the temperance movement finds ammunition
in moving their cause forward.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In 1920, the Prohibition era begins
in the United States.
- The 18th Amendment specifically prohibits
the transport, production, and sale of alcoholic beverages
in the United States.
- [Narrator] As Americans search for a stand-in for booze,
soda sales leap by 200%
and soda fountains pop up across the country.
- After Prohibition,
there were 100,000 soda fountains in the United States.
Before Prohibition, there were 4,000.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Smelling a potential windfall,
small-time soda maker, Charles Leiper Grigg,
opens a soda bottling plant called Howdy in 1920.
- Charles Leiper Grigg had humble beginnings.
He lived in a log cabin, grew up in a small town,
and for many years, ran a general store.
But he had gumption, he had stubbornness.
He wanted to move to the city and run his own business.
- He started out working in the advertising field
where he became introduced
to the world of carbonated beverages,
and he started tinkering around with formulas of his own.
- [Narrator] Grigg is hoping that a new kind of soda
he's working on will help him break into the national market.
- He's gonna use the zest and oils
from real orange peels to flavor his soda.
- [Narrator] Grigg calls his soda "Howdy",
after his bottling plant.
- There wasn't a leading brand in orange soda.
So that's what they were really trying to do with Howdy.
They thought, there's an opportunity
to become the Coca-Cola of orange soda.
- [Narrator] In 1921, after securing large bank loans,
Grigg prepares to launch his soda nationwide.
- And in the landscape of just colas,
the first orange soda is bound to be a massive hit.
And they are right.
The only problem is, it was made by somebody else.
- [Narrator] Howdy is beaten to the market
by a new soda called Orange Crush,
and a recommendation from the U.S. government
is about to spell disaster for Howdy.
- So the FDA comes along
and they start recommending people
to take in vitamin C in their diet.
- The problem was, because Howdy used orange essential oils
and zest, it didn't actually contain any vitamin C.
- Orange Crush contained actual orange juice,
and that gave it such a competitive advantage.
- So Orange Crush literally crushes the competition.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] It's a devastating blow for Grigg,
who's not only invested time and energy,
he's also now in debt.
- So Grigg realizes with Orange Crush,
he just doesn't have a chance.
So for Grigg, it's back to the drawing board.
And he's looking at the landscape,
he's looking at the opportunities to do a drink
that's gonna incorporate vitamin C, right?
That's gonna sort of hit that FDA suggestion.
- So with orange out of the question,
he pivots to another citrus: lemon.
The thing is, there's obviously an appeal for lemon sodas
because there are 600 independent lemon sodas
on the market, but there's no market leader.
No one's really been able
to really break the stranglehold on the soda market.
- So Grigg starts work on creating his lemon soda.
It starts off with lemon flavor.
Obviously, you're adding sugar because it's a soda.
You need sugar to kinda help with the taste.
Putting in caffeine makes it a little more bitter,
which means, well, you know,
if we're gonna have caffeine in this,
we need to up the sugar content.
Well, sugar's expensive, let's leave out the caffeine.
- [Narrator] But despite weeks of experimenting
with various lemon soda blends...
- Still too sour.
- [Narrator] Grigg isn't convinced any of his formulas
have what it takes to compete with cola.
- [Charles] Good afternoon.
- [Narrator] Finally, he heads to a local soda fountain
in search of inspiration.
- What can I get you?
- Lemon soda, please.
- [Soda Jerk] We're all out.
- I'll try lime then.
- You got it.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Inspired by his trip to the soda fountain,
Grigg gets to work on an idea for a whole new flavor.
- So Charles said, let's come up
with something a little different.
Why not just throw some lime in there?
Everyone loves lemon.
Lime is great, too.
Everyone's going crazy about vitamin C.
- I think people very easily equate lemon and limes
as being essentially the same thing, but different colors.
But they do have remarkably different flavors.
Lemon has a much, sort of thinner taste.
Lime is way more substantial, a lot more bracing.
- The lime, it gives you an extra little pop
of flavor in your mouth
and it really sorta wakes up the taste buds.
- And obviously, the more taste buds that are activated,
the more alive with flavor your mouth feels.
- That's it, I think we have a winner.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] After landing on a formula
he believes will be a hit,
Grigg immediately calls his friend, Frank Gladney.
- Okay, what's so important it couldn't wait until morning?
- Frank Gladney was a successful lawyer.
He had argued in front of the Supreme Court.
- [Narrator] Grigg's hoping a taste of his new soda
will prompt Gladney to invest as a partner.
- A clear soda?
[tense music]
The lemon is...
- It's lime.
- Instead of lemon?
- It's both.
- [Narrator] After persuading Frank Gladney
to invest as a partner,
Charles Grigg now needs to convince a cola-loving nation
to try something new.
- Being able to go up against industry giants
like Coca-Cola or Pepsi
is not an easy feat for most companies,
let alone a small bottling company
competing in the same market.
And they have to be able to offer value, unique value.
- [Narrator] Grigg knows the caffeine
in cola provides consumers with an added pick-me-up.
- So what they said to themselves was,
"Let's do the opposite."
So what is he put in it? Lithium.
As nuts as that sounds, it was a real thing.
Let's put some lithium in there.
- [Narrator] Today, lithium is known as a powerful drug,
often used to treat mental health issues.
But in the early 20th century,
its medicinal values were less understood.
- Lithium, for a time, replaced table salt.
And the idea was that this was natural,
that this was calming, and that this was good for you.
And he thinks, wait, maybe a little hit of that
would be good to add to my soft drink formula.
- [Narrator] While there were some
small label seltzer brands that contained lithium,
no national soda had ever included it as an ingredient.
- So if you think of Coca-Cola as a drink
that would give you more energy,
Lithium makes you more mellow.
It gave you a good feel and it wasn't alcohol.
It was sort of temperance by technicality.
- [Narrator] Grigg doesn't know it yet,
but he's just found one of the key ingredients
that will crack the industry open
and leave the big cola kings
scrambling to compete with his revolutionary brand.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] In 1929, after two years of development,
Charles Grigg finally releases his new creation,
Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.
- Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.
Wow, sounds refreshing.
Said nobody ever.
- It's a tongue twister
and it's about as on the nose as you can get.
This isn't, like, the most genius of branding.
- At first, sales were really slow.
It's not really catching on.
- [Narrator] With little money for marketing,
Grigg and Gladney's plan
is to slowly build a word-of-mouth following.
- So having missed the boat with his orange soda,
with his brand new formulation,
Grigg is convinced he's going to have a hit.
It's meant to sort of relax you
and it's got a unique flavor profile that nothing else has.
But Grigg must have broken a mirror under a ladder
while crossing paths with a black cat,
because he launches his soda
at the single worst possible time.
- [Narrator] Just two weeks after its release,
the stock market crashes,
plunging America into what will soon be known
as the Great Depression.
- Most businesses across the U.S. are in
a complete panic at this point,
but especially the ones that are hoping to build
and grow their brand without a lot of marketing.
- [Narrator] But for Grigg and Gladney,
things take an unexpected turn.
- When life hands you lemons,
add limes, and lithium.
- [Narrator] Thanks to its antidepressant properties,
the soda's lithium becomes a big draw.
- It's sold during the Great Depression
and people wanted to sort of be lifted up emotionally
because what was happening outside their door,
maybe and inside their pocket books,
wasn't gonna make them happy.
But if this soda could make them feel
a little bit better, they were gonna take that.
- If you think about the context of the Prohibition
and the fact that Americans were struggling
through an era where they couldn't drink,
why not go to the soda fountain
and get your fix in a different way?
- [Narrator] But before Grigg and Gladney have the chance
to celebrate their success,
they're thrown yet another curve ball.
[tense music]
- Prohibition ends and that means everyone's drinking again.
So suddenly, the advantage that soda has
in the marketplace completely disappears.
- Alcoholic beverages are back.
So if you're adding lithium to your soda
to help people chill out, they've got other options now.
They've got wine, they've got beer, they've got vodka.
- Soft drinks had enjoyed a huge boom during Prohibition,
and now that could all come crashing down.
- [Narrator] While this could spell disaster
for Grigg and Gladney, it spells opportunity for others.
[tense music]
Two brothers, Ally and Barney Hartman,
relocate from Georgia to set up a bottling plant
at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains
in Knoxville, Tennessee.
- The Hartman brothers were bottling plant owners
and businessmen in Georgia,
and they were making Orange Crush.
It's going well.
Then the Great Depression comes and wipes them out.
- [Narrator] While their Georgia plant faltered
during the Depression, the new plant is a fresh start.
And with Prohibition lifted,
they can now bottle soda and beer.
- What do you think, little brother?
I'll tell you what, let's have a drink.
- Barney was the big brother.
You know, he was the leader.
And Ally, the little brother, looked up to him
and, you know, he would follow him anywhere.
And he followed him into the soda business.
- The Hartman brothers took their job seriously,
but they also really like to have a good time.
- And all of their business dealings,
soda and otherwise, usually involved
having a mixed drink at the end of the day.
- So back in Georgia,
the Hartman brothers really enjoyed having
this lemon-lime soda called Natural Set Up.
- [Narrator] While they've brought a limited supply
with them to Knoxville,
it's made by a small bottler local to their Georgia hometown.
- And they couldn't find an equivalent
to Natural Set Up in Knoxville.
- [Narrator] The Hartmans' passion for cocktails
will one day transform the soda industry
when the brothers create a whole new category of soda
and a brand worth $7 billion
completely by accident.
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
With alcohol now readily available,
Grigg and Gladney need a new angle to position their soda
as something that American people need.
- A hangover, hangover cure.
- A cure for different kinds of hangovers.
[tense music]
- The Hangover Cure.
- [Narrator] To reach as wide an audience as possible,
Grigg and Gladney come up with a list
of all different types of hangovers
their soda could cure.
- Over-drinking. [laughs] - Over-drinking.
- And they weren't just talking about alcoholic hangovers.
- [Charles] And, naturally, overeating.
- Overeating.
- It was basically saying that it's a remedy
to any ailment you might have.
- Over-smoking.
- Over-worrying.
Mental lassitude.
Over-studying.
- What about under-drinking?
- [Narrator] While no one knows for sure,
legend has it that their list
of seven ailments is the inspiration behind the new name
they decide to give their soda,
7UP.
[intense music]
- Well, one thing is for sure, 7UP is a hell of a lot catchier
than Bib's Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.
- [Narrator] Grigg and Gladney prepare
to relaunch as 7UP,
hoping their unique drink will corner the national market.
What they don't know is that 500 miles away,
competition is brewing.
- Delicious, what's in it?
- More sugar than you could possibly imagine.
Lemon, of course, and I also added lime.
[dramatic music]
[glasses clink]
music]
- [Narrator] The Hartman brothers' plant
is up and running
and they've settled into life in their new community.
- The Hartman brothers regularly hosted drink nights
at their factory, right?
So with their employees,
and their specialty was a whiskey plus a mixer,
a drink that everybody just really enjoyed.
- [Narrator] Having gone through their supply
of their favorite mixer from back home, Natural Set Up,
they turn to local flavor expert Billy Jones
for help making a new one.
- Bill Jones would work with a number of bottlers
throughout the region for all sorts
of different flavors and sodas.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] They call their unique mixer, "Personal Set Up".
- The drink that the Hartman brothers created,
albeit a little bit sweeter,
really was quite similar to 7UP.
- The Hartman brothers didn't really have any grand ambitions.
They wanted it for their back bar
for them and their friends.
The idea that it would ever go on
to become this juggernaut of a soda empire
was the furthest thing from their imagination.
[glasses clink]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In 1936, Grigg and Gladney are ready
to relaunch their soda nationally as 7UP.
- So, their strategy for breaking in
and succeeding in the national cola market
is do everything differently than cola in every single way.
- What are these?
I asked for clear.
Clear soda, clear bottles.
- So he knew if he put it in a clear bottle,
people would be able to see that this is a clear soda.
- This is what was left.
- So in the 1930s,
in part due to this pent up demand for alcohol,
there's actually a shortage of clear glass
because there's so much bottling being done.
- He wanted the perfect bottles for this new launch, right?
But they couldn't afford to lose any more sales.
- [Narrator] In 1936, Grigg and Gladney launch 7UP
in green bottles,
marketing it as the ultimate hangover cure.
- So at this point, they're not really perceived as a threat
to the other soda manufacturers.
Like, Coke's ignoring them.
You know, Orange Crush is ignoring them.
And this is actually a really big competitive advantage
for them 'cause they don't feel pressure via competition.
And also, there's really no lemon-lime soda out there.
So they can just go out there
and sorta grab up this market as they build it.
- So 7UP grew really organically,
and before they knew it,
they were on grocery shelves right next to Coke and Pepsi.
- [Narrator] In its first year,
7UP sells over 2 million gallons.
And while it's still a ways
behind Coca-Cola's 27 million gallon sales,
they've got the lemon-lime market fully cornered.
- So 7UP single-handedly introduces the entire country
to a unique lemon and lime flavor.
Look, it would've been crazy to think a new soda could break
in on the national stage, especially one so different.
But they did it.
[relaxed music]
- [Narrator] By the early '40s,
the Hartman brothers are enjoying the success
of a thriving plant selling beer, Orange Crush,
and now, Pepsi.
- They saw the factory as not only a place to work,
but to really have your friends around to hang out, right?
[drinkers cheering]
- [Narrator] The Hartmans' signature drink is whiskey
and their lemon-lime mixer, Personal Set Up.
But that's not the only thing they offer.
- They also had plenty of moonshine around.
And often, folks would ask for moonshine
in its little localized slang.
- Lemme have some mountain dew.
- So mountain dew refers to moonshine,
because when moonshine was made,
it was made up in the mountains of Appalachia.
And in the mountains in the morning,
there's dew everywhere, hence mountain dew.
- [Narrator] As an inside joke,
the brothers rename their mixer, "Mountain Dew".
But others take the drink more seriously.
- They'd always seen it
as just their own kind of personal drink.
Now, people were asking to buy it.
- The Hartman brothers,
kind of upon the urging of their friends and family,
decide to do a soft launch of their Personal Set Up
at a local bottling convention.
And the Hartman brothers decide
to name their drink Mountain Dew.
- [Narrator] Mountain Dew is a hit at the convention,
not just as a mixer, but as a regular soda.
- It's really after the convention,
they begin to make plans to market and sell Mountain Dew.
- [Narrator] But an unforeseen tragedy
will soon change both Hartman brothers' lives
and the entire formula of the beverage they created.
- [Narrator] In 1946, the Hartman brothers
begin planning a regional launch of Mountain Dew,
playing off the name in the marketing around it.
- It sounds kind of funny to think about,
but America had a little bit of rural rage at that time
and a little bit of a fascination with hillbillies.
- The Hartmans didn't shy away
from their Appalachian traditions.
In fact, they embraced the fact that they were from Appalachia,
the stereotypical hillbilly country,
and they made it a lot of fun.
- [Narrator] The Hartmans create a Mountain Dew mascot
called Willy the Hillbilly,
based on a real-life local.
[glasses clink]
- William McFalls was considered
sort of the hillbilly James Dean.
He was considered a a backwoods philosopher,
a little bit of a musical savant,
and he was known to enjoy a little bit
of the Mountain Dew at the end of a long day at the plant.
Famously would exclaim while drinking it,
"Yahoo, Mountain Dew!"
- Yahoo, Mountain Dew!
- And it was different than Coca-Cola
and 7UP that were marketed as patent medicines,
things for your health.
- So, Mountain Dew never really kind of went in
for this soda as a healthy option.
It's kind of a drink to have fun with.
- [Narrator] But despite their unique marketing strategy,
the Hartmans don't rush to officially release Mountain Dew.
- You have to remember,
Barney and Ally Hartman weren't trying
to become soda moguls.
The other factor is that they are bottling Pepsi products.
And they've got a good thing going,
and they don't wanna upset the apple cart.
- The Hartman brothers have this genius creation
in Mountain Dew, but they're kind of just sitting on it.
They don't really do anything with it
for about two years,
it takes them to even trademark the name.
- [Narrator] But in 1949,
Ally Hartman suddenly finds himself dealing
with a family tragedy.
- While they are trying to figure out next steps
for Mountain Dew,
Barney has a heart attack and is hospitalized,
and unfortunately, eventually passes away.
- [Narrator] Now, any potential future
for Mountain Dew lays squarely on his shoulders.
- And Ally Hartman does not really know
what to do without his brother in terms of his own life,
let alone the direction in which to take the soda.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] By the late '40s,
7UP is the number three soda in America,
only behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola.
- What I especially loved about the rise of 7UP
was the hand-to-hand combat,
and the patience of distribution.
First, they went kind of hand to hand, mom-and-pop local,
but then they went premium.
A lotta country clubs, a lot of hotels.
And so they started to get the bougie movement,
and they were winning on two fronts.
And that's when they finally showed up
on the supermarket shelves and were able
to actually compete with the Pepsis and Coke,
'cause they had demand.
- [Narrator] But they face yet another bump in the road
when the FDA bans lithium use in food and beverages.
- A year before, an article was written
about the many uses of lithium
in treating psychiatric disorders.
At this point, the U.S. government realized
they had to start regulating the use
of this substance in food and beverages.
- So crazy as it seems now, at this stage,
they have to really figure out, what is 7UP without it.
- [Narrator] 7UP is also left to figure out
what it is without its founder, Charles Grigg,
who's recently passed away,
leaving Gladney to forge 7UP's new path
with marketing exec, William Winter.
- So, lithium was banned and 7UP needed to rebrand.
So you've got the colas and the orange drinks,
which have the caffeine and lots of sugar,
and they decided to do something different again,
to differentiate themself in the marketplace.
- What if we focus on what's not in 7UP?
- In the 1950s,
concerns about sugar consumption beginning to bubble up,
7UP actually has lower sugar than some other soda does.
- [Narrator] In addition to being lower in sugar than cola,
it also has fewer additives.
- So they had a clean soda, a healthier soda,
that didn't have the high levels of caffeine
and the lots of sugar.
- A soda so pure a baby could drink it.
[pensive music]
- Let's move on this.
- In the wake of 7UP having this reckoning,
they start marketing 7UP as, well,
very, very, very, very safe.
- [Narrator] 7UP is rebranded
with a new campaign as a wholesome
and pure health drink.
- So 7UP started doing adverts showing
they are actively pushing the idea of giving 7UP to babies.
It's suggesting mixing it in with their milk.
And this was to reassure people
that it was healthy and pure and good for you.
No harm would come from drinking a 7UP.
- [Narrator] Through this clever rebrand,
7UP manages to maintain its dominance
in the lemon-lime soda market.
But they have no idea just how much competition
is on the horizon.
[dramatic music]
is on the horizon]
- [Narrator] By the early 1950s,
Mountain Dew is finally being sold
to the public in the Appalachian region.
- So after mourning the loss of his brother
and his business partner, Ally sees a way to honor him
by finally getting Mountain Dew off the ground.
- It was a local drink.
It wasn't necessarily making its rounds across this nation.
It was kind of in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia,
and a few other surrounding states
was kind of its main target audience.
- [Narrator] But even as a local offering,
sales of Mountain Dew are dismal.
To figure out what's wrong, Ally hires an agency
to run focus groups around Mountain Dew.
- What's the headline?
- They all see Mountain Dew as a knockoff of 7UP.
- When the Hartman brothers first started making batches
of their Personal Set Up mixer,
7UP was really a pretty small, regional soda.
But it takes more than a decade to get Mountain Dew to market.
And in that time, 7UP becomes a major player.
- No one's interested in it.
It's just another lemon-lime soda
with some hillbilly imagery
and it just goes nowhere.
- [Narrator] Ally Hartman realizes
if Mountain Dew is going to survive,
it needs a big change.
And he believes it starts with the man
who first created it, Billy Jones.
[pensive music]
- Billy Jones had helped Ally and his brother
early on as they were kind of trying
to figure out the flavor for Mountain Dew.
So this is someone that he trusts
that he's worked with in the past.
- I want you to have it.
- What?
- Mountain Dew.
- Ally had always seen Mountain Dew
as something he did with his brother.
And once his brother passed away,
Ally just didn't want to invest the energy
and time reinventing this drink
that had been a passion project for him.
- It's yours if you want it.
- You can't just give it to me.
- Then I'll sell it to you
for the cost of the check.
[tense music]
- Ally Hartman sells the rights to Mountain Dew
to Billy Jones, the man who helped create a flavor formula
for them for the price of a $7 dinner.
- It's a little bit of a legend.
But it's also kinda, in a sense,
when you look at the history of Mountain Dew,
there is a little bit of this casual flair.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Jones and his team must now figure out
how to give Mountain Dew the overhaul it needs
to set itself apart.
- Something that won't taste like 7UP,
something extremely different than a cola,
and something that will definitely stand out
in the marketplace.
- [Narrator] Since 7UP is now marketed as a pure
and healthy drink,
they go in the opposite direction.
- Imagine, like, a soda laboratory,
like a madman's laboratory.
They're willing to really keep upping the caffeine.
- And I've actually tasted caffeine powder in a food lab,
and it is extremely bitter.
[dramatic music]
It is not a pleasant taste at all,
and you have to balance that with a lot of sugar.
- [Narrator] Jones ultimately lands on 55 milligrams
of caffeine per serving,
twice the amount of caffeine as Coca-Cola.
And with it, twice the amount of sugar.
- And the caffeine-spiked Mountain Dew was born.
- It was kind of, you know,
yeah, we're junk food and we're proud of it.
- [Narrator] But there's still a major problem.
- It definitely makes you feel different from 7UP,
but it still looks the same and tastes the same as 7UP.
- [Narrator] Until they decide to add a whole new flavor
to their lemon-lime recipe.
- It sounds crazy,
but he has the idea to add orange juice to the lemon lime
so that their soda is no longer considered
a lemon-lime soda.
- Mountain Dew reminds me of something
kind of like orange sherbet.
- If I had to describe it,
tastes like a really bright, sunny day.
- I think you'd be hard pressed
to find any other soda anywhere in the world
that really tastes quite like Mountain Dew.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] And to complete Mountain Dew's reinvention,
they give it a bold new color.
- Mountain Dew, it's the color
of something from an alien spaceship.
- [Narrator] In 1960, the new Mountain Dew is released.
[cartoonish sound effects]
- [Jason] It turned out to be this sort of magical alchemy
of its color, and its name, and the marketing.
- Mountain Dew! [cork pops]
- But that caffeine level, that was a really key part
that made Mountain Dew such a provocative
and compelling brand.
- [Narrator] But just as Mountain Dew starts
to make waves in the non-cola market,
a new challenger is about to shake things up.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] By the dawn of the '60s,
7UP is still considered the top lemon-lime soda in America
and has gotten closer than ever to the cola bigwigs.
- The Coca-Cola company recognized that 7UP
had carved out a successful position in the market
and was not going to be erased by colas.
- [Narrator] For Coca-Cola, it's too close to ignore.
- So, the Coca-Cola company really is looking at this,
going, "Well, there's many millions here,
and those millions aren't going to us."
It doesn't see it as a threat to Coca-Cola sales,
but sees it as a part of the market
that it has no presence in.
- [Narrator] The cola giant wants in
on the lemon-lime craze.
- And they already had the ace in the hole.
That ace in the hole was Fanta.
- During World War II,
because of the conflict with the U.S. and Germany,
German cola distributors were unable
to get the syrup to actually make their Coca-Cola.
And so they had to develop their own soda line,
and that is the world-famous Fanta.
- [Narrator] Fanta already has a lemon-lime soda.
In 1961, Coca-Cola rebrands it for the American market
as Sprite.
[dramatic music]
- So, Sprite takes off like a rocket.
It really rips away lots of sales from 7UP.
And part of that is because the Coca-Cola company
has such great distribution muscle,
it can really just elbow 7UP off the shelves
to make way for it.
- [Narrator] While Sprite eats into 7UP's market share,
Mountain Dew, with its unique formula, is flourishing.
By 1964, it's selling roughly 10 million cases a year.
- Bill Jones was supplying all the concentrate
for Mountain Dew.
And at the time, Mountain Dew was getting very, very popular.
- [Narrator] The growth of Mountain Dew has been bigger
and faster than Billy Jones had ever imagined.
- Bill knew that they couldn't grow it anymore.
He simply couldn't produce what he needed to produce.
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Pepsi,
now also looking to get in on the lemon-lime market,
makes Jones an offer for Mountain Dew.
It sells for $4 million,
equivalent to 39 million today.
- And it's just this really beautiful passing
of the highly-sugared,
highly-caffeinated torch.
- I guess that's what you call doing the Dew.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But while Mountain Dew thrives,
7UP is being steamrolled by Sprite.
- People kept forgetting that it was there.
They would do focus groups
and they'd ask people, "What are your five favorite sodas?"
And no one would name 7UP.
And they're asked, "Well, why didn't you name 7UP?"
And everyone would go, "Oh, we forgot about 7UP."
- [Narrator] To fight back,
7UP once again taps into the cultural zeitgeist.
- So the 1960s was a really turbulent time
and all of these different counterculture movements
started cropping up.
- [Narrator] The movement rejects
anything considered mainstream.
This includes the well-established colas.
7UP creates a bold, new marketing campaign,
redefining its identity yet again.
- The Uncola.
- 7UP launched their Uncola campaign,
which was a counterculture movement.
- [Announcer] 7UP, from sea to shining sea.
- It took a brand that was starting to lose its appeal,
starting to be forgotten, and gave it a new life.
- So many brands hold onto the one thing they were
and don't actually react to the market.
The 7UP story and journey is a perfect indication of,
you've gotta change with the times and consumer truths.
- [Narrator] Within a year, they're up 56%,
reclaiming their throne as the leading lemon-lime soda.
- 7UP held onto that title for a decade,
which when you consider that they're an independent company
and they're up against Coca-Cola,
is pretty amazing.
- [Narrator] While 7UP lags behind Sprite today,
it is still one of the top 10 most popular soda brands,
bringing in almost a billion dollars a year.
- There is always a way to position your product
to be the perfect product of the age.
And so if people are depressed,
your product being an antidepressant.
If they're drunk, it's a hangover cure.
And if they are neither, it is simply an alternative
to colas that can still bring you refreshment and enjoyment.
And without the advent of 7UP,
we never really could have seen
what the soda marketplace could be.
- There is something to be said for Griggs
and all the other kind of lemon-lime,
Mountain Dew kind of people pushing these drinks.
They were facing an uphill challenge.
Coca-Cola was so big, so dominant,
that it seemed very unlikely
they could ever create a big, successful brand.
[glasses clink]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Mountain Dew is now the fourth selling brand
in the country behind Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper.
- Mountain Dew is almost like the forerunner
of the energy drink movement in so many ways.
- Tons of sugar, tons of caffeine.
Mountain Dew was the godfather of the energy drink movement
that we've had over the last 30 years.
They came and went into everyone's faces,
and it worked.
[dramatic music]