Something random/weird I realized while watching TV last night. Tell me what you think.

[rvablue]

I realize this is kind of unimportant but it struck me as very weird last night and I'm just wondering what people think.

I was watching 20/20 last night. It was a special edition with Diane Sawyer going to Appalachia and following the lives of four different kids.

It seems to be that folks in the Appalachian region have a thing for Mountain Dew. They are addicted to it. Experts seem to think that the high caffiene and sugar content serve as some kind of anti-depressant.....there was even a shot of a guy pooring into his baby's bottle?!?!?!

SO.....ANYWAY...mulling on this, which seemed kind of bizarre to me I started to think about MD's marketing campaign of young, happy kids jumping off of water falls from years back.

AND....(bear with me)...that led me to the realization that you NEVER see an ad for soft drinks anymore. A few years ago, you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing one for Coke, Pepsi, 7-UP, MD, etc.

It's not like I miss them and I know this subject is of little import. But it did strike me as odd.

Any theories? Is it because they now sell soft drinks in schools everywhere and get kids hooked early? Is it because parents now are more permissive with serving soda? Are their sales so high as to not have to advertise anymore?

I know. People are dying in wars and the economy is tanking and this is a silly question. Just made me go, Hmmmm? for a moment.

[crim son]

1. I bet your two suppositions are correct: one, that soft drinks are

everywhere and advertising may be an expensive redundancy, and also that parents seem to have forgotten that soda is not damned good for you, and it's in virtually every household. Then again, I have no idea what their sales track record looks like. Interesting question!

[peace13]

2. Interesting observation.

My son used to really drink up the Mountain Dew. Funny, because he tends to be on the depressed side form time to time, especially when he was in school. He has given up pop all together now.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Just last night,

I saw an ad for Diet 7-Up With Cherry (I think), and it was touted for its antioxidant properties. (I wasn't paying much attention.)

There are ads for all kinds of sports drinks, which, with their equally high sugar content, may have replaced soft drinks as the product to push these days.

That's an interesting observation, rvablue, the kind of thing that slips right by and later just might turn out to have some kind of major cultural or social or medical significance.

[baldguy]

4. The first time I saw pepsi's new logo was on the internet.

Thought "wtf it that?". I didn't make the connection until I went to the market.

The target demographic is different from 5 yrs ago. Maybe they're just advertising on different media.

[rvablue]

8. That's a good point...maybe online they are reaching their demographic at a smaller cost. n/t

[DesertFlower]

5. interesting. i never noticed that

they were gone. i tend to "tune out" to commercials.

[Warpy]

6. Mountain Dew is loaded with both sugar and caffeine

and folks who are on the bottom look for any way to feel better and the temporary lift that combination gives them is one way. They also drink it because it harkens back to the glory days of Prohibition, when producing mountain dew whiskey back in the hollows made them relatively flush.

Unfortunately the stuff will rot teeth even faster than meth does.

[LiberalEsto]

17. It's not even plain sugar, it's high fructose corn syrup

and in my mind, that stuff is just plain garbage.

[femmocrat]

7. They do not sell soda in our schools anymore. Not for years!

The machines have water and fruity drinks instead (which are probably as bad as soda, but I don't know). There are no machines in the elementary schools and the secondary schools turn them on after school, for the students who stay for sports practice.

I live in a rural area of SW PA and yes, kids do love their Mt. Dew and Red Bull here. It annoys the crap out of me when I see them bring cans of that sugar-and-caffeine poison in their lunches.

The only TV ads I have seen for soda are the Coca Cola ads on American Idol.

[rvablue]

11. Well, that says something...

when I was a kid the only time I got a soft drink in my lunch was when we went on field trips.

And I wasn't the only one.

Very interesting that parents are packing Mountain Dew and Red Bull in kids lunches. Must be really fun for the teachers who have them after lunch period!

And the AI ads are something I forgot. Since they have 30 million pairs of eyes twice a week, maybe they focus the ads during that time rather than spreading them around on different shows with much smaller ratings.

[ananda]

9. Mountain Dew is VERY bad for kids!

And all those power drinks with so much
caffeine and other gunk.

[NV Whino]

10. There's more money in drug advertising these days.

[October]

12. No need to market the product if you're addicted?

Just a thought.

[Horse with no Name]

13. I am hopelessly addicted to caffeine in the form of Diet Dr Pepper

I can't give it up--it is too much suffering. Seriously.
I won't even allow my 6-year old granddaughter a single indulgence of it.
Every few weeks, she can have a Sprite, but that is it.
Mountain Dew? That crap is evil. Way too much sugar. Way too much caffeine.
It should be forbidden in schools.:(

[kickysnana]

22. I am addicted to nutrasweet.

Seriously. There is only one time in my life I felt unreasonably suicidal and ended up heading to the ER because I was afraid to face another night feeling like that.

I had given up soda, I only drank diet, not always caffeinated on New Years and this was the end of February. The wait was long into the night but there was a soda machine in the waiting room and I was trying to stay alert enough to explain myself. I bought a diet Mountain Dew. Within an hour the suicidal feelings that had been building for weeks went totally away. I had been drinking coffee so I knew that it wasn't the caffeine.

I try to limit myself to one can a day now but if I was still craving it after 8 1/2 weeks I wonder how long it would take to get over it and how one would get through it.

Damn Rumsfeld and the FDA.

[Horse with no Name]

23. I had to be NPO for a surgical procedure

that kept getting pushed back on the schedule due to traumas and emergencies...it was originally scheduled for 8 am and ultimately it was almost 5 pm before they wheeled me back.
I was literally in a cold sweat and suffering withdrawal symptoms by the time I made it to the OR.
I don't know if caffeine alone is the culprit and I never thought of the Nutrasweet being an accomplice. Thanks for the heads-up.

[roseBudd]

27. You might try dark chocolate to wean yourself, I have to drink coffee daily or I get a

headache, but if I decide I don't want to do coffee, dark chocolate does the trick.

And dark chocolate is good for you.

[kickysnana]

29. I will try it. Great cure. Thanks. n/t

[SheilaT]

14. Since I don't have a TV

I don't know what is or is not advertised there.

Many years ago I stopped buying soft drinks to have at home because my younger son would consume them almost to the exclusion of everything else. I probably drank one or two a day at that time, and now if I have one a week it's a lot.

They are just empty calories, and consuming diet drinks is just as bad. Soft drinks, whether full sugar are so ubiquitous that I doubt any studies have really been done to assess their impact.

But putting Mountain Dew (or any soft drink) in a baby bottle? That borders on abuse.

[lunatica]

15. The advertisers target their ads now

If you watch children's progamming or blue collar programs the ads are very different than they are for cable stations like Animal Planet etc.

I didn't watch the program so I don't know what it showed but someone on DU posted that meth is a pretty bad problem for the poor there. I've also read that the use of meth makes people have dry mouth and that they drink sugary sodas which is the thing that messes up their teeth so badly.

Meth mouth photos (warning graphic)

http://www.mappsd.org/Meth%20Mouth%20Photo%20Gallery.htm

Here's some shocking meth faces:

http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugIssue/MethResources/faces/photo_5.html

[rvablue]

16. Thanks for the links. But I don't think I can bear to look!

The moms on the show last night were all years younger than me but looked like they could be my mother!

So sad. Looking at the young, cute girls and boys they featured, one can't help but wonder if that will be their fate as well?

And interesting point on the targeting of specific audiences. I don't have kids and I don't watch sports, so maybe that's why I'm not seeing them anymore.

[lunatica]

24. Meth ages people very very quickly. The photos show how long between shots

One side by side photo is of a pretty young woman in her late teens or twenties and the other photos is three years later. She looks like she's in her late 50s after a very hard life.

[dkf]

18. My drug of choice is coffee with a boatload of sugar and creamer.

Addicted? Yup. Depressed without it? You could make a case for that. I do know I'm not perky until I have mine.

[conscious evolution]

30. Drink Coffee

So you can do stupid shit wide awake and with lots of energy.

I saw that on a bumper sticker today.

[grilled onions]

19. So If There Are Few Ads For, Say, Mountain Dew,

How can they explain it's popularity in places like Appalachia unless it's almost tradition passed down from parents to children? If that's the case then those who try to ban such ads are wasting their time more then they realize and if they truly want kids to start weaning back on soda(or even smoking,drinking) etc they may have to go more to the kids enviroment rather then the tv channels!

[sutz12]

20. It's called addiction...

Once you sink the hook, you don't need to entice them any more. They come looking for you.

:shrug:

[mitchum]

21. My students try in vain to get me to buy soda for them...

hell, I may as well buy them cigarettes

[Two Americas]

25. haves versus have-nots

Fashion trends and fads of the upper class are all we ever see. When the upper class tires of something, then it becomes "bad" and is attacked, as in the anti-tobacco insanity. Too many here, who are not actually upper class but who are from the gentrified palace guard and the upper 10% income bracket or are sycophants and wannabes, dutifully fall into line with the upper class fashion program. The common denominator is that of it maligns and attacks "them" - losers, blue collar people, poor people, recently the "angry gays" and always the "lunatic left" who speak for the have-nots - that becomes the basis for the "progressive" program.

If the upper class was drinking soda, smoking, having babies, hunting - whatever - the "progressives" would switch all of their positions on those issues in a heartbeat.

But class is off limits and not to be discussed. So we need to make up convoluted explanations for everything and debate them endlessly and wander around in a continual fog of confusion and hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

[Stevenmarc]

26. Because the kids in the old soda ads now have Erectile Dysfunction

[vanlassie]

28. Might be generally true that there are far less ads, butI recall

that there was just a few weeks ago (SuperBowl?)that campaign by Pepsi that morphed their logo into something very similar to Obama's... So I think it is just more focused nowadays.

[SoCalDem]

31. "Uppers" kill the appetite..for FOOD..

and they make people able to work longer, harder..

Andean people chew coca leaves so they can work hard in high altitudes.

[surrealAmerican]

32. The relative lack of ads might have more to do with ...

... the era just past, when they were advertising like crazy. It seemed they were losing market share back then, and the soda companies were "retaliating" with extra marketing. Now that they've joined those markets (bottled water, "sports" drinks, bottled "tea", etc.), they no longer feel threatened by them and don't need as many ads.

[rvablue]

33. Good observation...

hadn't thought of that!