Why Would Anyone Drink Mello Yello?

I was going to say who likes Mello Yello, but apparently people in the Midwest and Southeast areas of the United States love the stuff because it's the only place it's still sold.  Clearly that means these people will drink just about anything.

If you're not familiar with Mello Yello, it's a disgusting citrus-flavored soda that's was in introduced by the Coca-Cola Company's in 1979 as a way to complete with Pepsi's Mountain Dew.  In reality, it's the answer to the seemingly impossible question: "Is there a worst tasting soda than Mountain Dew?"  Yet it's like the mentally challenged sibling of Dew.


There had to be a deranged bet between a Pepsi employee and a Coke one to see who could make the worst tasting beverage and convince people to drink it.  Mello Yello wins on taste, but inexplicably Mountain Dew is the 4th best selling carbonated soft drink in the United States as of 2007.

Let's start with the name Mello Yello.  It's possibly named after the song "Mellow Yellow."  Anytime a drink is named after a crappy song you know you're in trouble.  Even worse, the first liquid that you think  as yellow is pee so you can't help thinking that you may be drinking bottled piss.  Based on the taste it might actually be.

Although I'm pretty sure if you distilled your urine properly and  drank it, the pee would still taste better than Mello Yello.   I suspect Bear Grylls from the show "Man Vs. Wild" is always drinking his urine because they gave him a choice between that or Mello Yello and he said "That's disgusting,  I'll take the urine."

Mello Yello knows it tastes really bad so that's why they used advertisements telling you to drink it fast. Most of the time you chug something because you can't stand its horrible taste.  Here's an Mello Yello commercial from the 80s:



The only redeeming thing about Mello Yello is that Tom Cruise's character Cole Trickle from the awesome NASCAR-themed movie "Days of Thunder" wins the Daytona 500 in a Mello Yello sponsored car.

Drinking Mello Yello says a lot about a person.   I'm not saying that I wouldn't trust someone or immediately dismiss someone that drinks Mello Yello, but it's not exactly the best way to make a good first impression on me.