• Product Reviews

    Pepsi Throwback: Is It Good?

    UPDATE: It’s coming back! According to this tweet from Pepsi, Pepsi Throwback — and, I assume, the Mountain Dew Throwback as well — are coming back for another 5-week run, starting August 1st 2010.

    UPDATE 2: It’s back FOR GOOD (for as long as people keep buying it). According to Consumerist.com, “[t]he beverage company has announced that plans to sell its sugar-sweetened Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback sodas as long as people buy them.” Availability is still limited by individual bottlers, it seems.

    FINAL UPDATE: Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback are no longer a “Limited Time” product but are now a permanent part of the Pepsi pantheon, as reported by BevReview.com.

     

    pepsi & mountain dew throwback 

    If you’ve been reading this blog a while, you might already know my obsession with sugar-sweetened sodas (like Ting). So, last summer, when I heard Pepsi was coming out with a sugar-sweetened version called Pepsi Throwback, I looked for it everywhere. I didn’t find anywhere in NYC, so when we drove to Massachusetts for a wedding, I looked in every gas station mini-mart from New Jersey to the Mass Pike. Once it became fall, I stopped looking and eventually gave up.

    Then, last week, a friend posted a photo of a case of Pepsi Throwback she had just bought. According to Pepsi’s site, “[d]ue to all the Throwback tweets, Facebook fan pages, videos, blog posts, pics & pleas, Pepsi Throwback is back” — at least until February 28th.

    So… is it good? The Pepsi, definitely. The formula appears to be the same as a HFCS Pepsi (e.g. pretty sweet), so if you’re fond of that, you’ll love this. I sometimes wished I was drinking Coke Throwback instead, but it’s still very good. The Mountain Dew… a bit less great. It’s either sweeter than a regular HFCS Mountain Dew, or it’s less citrus, or both. Still, the sugar really makes all the difference in the world. There’s no filmy mouth feel, no glorky (yes, I say it’s a word) feel in your throat afterward. I’m already looking around my apartment to figure out where I can stash multiple cases of this stuff for the summer.