TFTP Will Return After These Messages: Evolution of Mountain Dew Ads (1960s-1980s)

Posted to YouTube by user 'haikarate4' (top), 'I Love TV Commercials' (middle), 'PeterMacca88' (bottom)
Length - 0:58 (top), 0:30 (middle), 0:30 (bottom)

Every Wednesday, TFTP takes a break from regular programming to bring you a selection of classic commercials. We will return after these messages...

The nature of advertising campaigns for a particular product sometimes shifts drastically over a long period of time, but often there is a discernible evolution that can be traced. Such an evolution is evident across these three ads for Mountain Dew--spanning from the product's national introduction in the mid-1960s into the early-1990s.

The first ad (top), from 1966, heavily emphasizes the beverage's "hillbilly" origins--Mountain Dew originated as a regional soda in Tennessee in the 1940s that was named after a slang term for moonshine. The animated ad exploits hillbilly stereotypes that were prevalent in the 1960s and before, from sources such as the "Lil' Abner" comic strip and "The Beverly Hillbillies" TV show. This hillbilly stereotype has mostly disappeared in today's culture, but Mountain Dew capitalized on it to the hilt in its early advertising--right down to the slogan "It'll tickle yore innards".

The second and third ads show a clear evolution from this hillbilly origin to the extreme sports emphasis that is still a focus of Mountain Dew advertising today. The middle ad, from 1977, has a wilderness setting like that of the hillbilly era, but the focus has shifted to an activity like kayaking within that setting. Other Mountain Dew ads from the 1970s and '80s follow this same trajectory, featuring activities like offroading and cliff jumping in outdoor settings.

The final ad (bottom), from the early-1990s, completes the shift by showing extreme sports such as sailboarding, motocross, and others. Tracing this evolution across these three ads (and others) shows how this carbonated beverage that ended up with a connection in its ads to extreme sports had its origins in hillbilly stereotypes--and how it got from the one to the other.