A big thank you to my cousins in Georgia who kindly played along and shipped up a bottle of Mello Yello for us to evaluate.
It’s been a long time since Mello Yello was available in the Northeast and while their logo has changed through the years, I think they had it perfect with the first one. I’d say the same goes for Mountain Dew. I don’t know about Mello Yello, but from my observations, Mt. Dew is mostly popular with males who are under 30 years old. I’m not sure what it is: the intense sweetness, the elevated caffeine, the vibrant yellow #5?
I also thought it was kind of interesting that Mountain Dew’s angle for a while was “Do the Dew!” which included skateboarding, mountain climbing and riding sharks. In comparison, Mello Yello does indeed seem more mellow as the commercials I found are uncomfortable situations between males and females asking “How would you stay smooth?”.
Ethan and I tasted this and then I brought the rest of the Mello Yello bottle into work to be tasted by our resident everyday Mt. Dew drinker, (who is a 24 year old male) Brendan.
Mello Yello:
We were out of our usual plastic tasting cups so we used wine glasses. It’s kind of funny how this almost looks like chardonnay (or pee).
The color was a little brighter yellow than how the picture came out. Ethan and I felt this was extremely sweet and syrupy. Brendan’s notes on this were the same, he felt it was okay but also said it was more syrupy than Mountain Dew and that dominated the flavor. I thought it tasted a lot like sprite and wondered if that is the base for this soda.
Mountain Dew:
This was very similar to Mello Yello, almost undetectably different but it does has a very lemony flavor that I felt tasted like those free lollipops you get at the bank.
Ethan said this was very citrusy but didn’t really see why he used to like it so much in college. I guess its worth noting that both drinks have orange juice in them too which probably helps add to the strong similarities between them.
Wrap up:
We really didn’t notice much difference between the two and I can see why in some areas of the country only one of them is offered. I will say that Brendan, being a hard core “Dewer” prefered Dew and felt Mello Yello was sweeter but he didn’t say he would never drink it again, if offered. In fact, he finished the rest of the bottle. I’d be interested to know which is more popular in areas where both of these are sold, which as the Coca-Cola distribution rep told me, is only in the south.
Loading ...
This has a nice firm center that makes a pretty clean break wether breaking in half or biting into. The peppermint center is just sweet enough to compliment the cool peppermint. The balanced coating of dark chocolate adds a little sophistication and decadence. I like to eat these by taking a little bite and kind of swishing it around in my mouth to disintegrate it and let the flavors merge. Ethan is more straightforward and just bites into it and chews like a normal person.
Breaking these in half we were greeted with a bright pink center which had the same consistency as York’s. The chocolate on this seemed to be of a lesser quality and I guess was kind of dark but it was like a mix between milk and dark. There was not a lot of chocolate flavor in the coating. The center was not favorable at all, wintergreen does not seem to work well at all. We summed this up as tasting like chocolate covered toothpaste.
As all four of us tasted this we noticed that the noodles were pretty flavorless, like cardboard. The broth was pretty decent but the vegetables were duds. Sarah said the corn wasn’t “corny” tasting and she didn’t like the mushy peas. I never really expect much of the vegetables in these things, only that they at least resemble what they once were, and they barely did that. We all agreed that the broth just didn’t make up for the bland, paper-flavored noodles.
This unsurprisingly looked similar to Instant Lunch but we found the broth was not as salty. The noodles looked deceivingly underdone but had a great texture and a nice buttery taste. The vegetables in this were not quite as sad and held up to the re-hydration better. We all agreed that the noodles are what make these and found ourselves enjoying this more.
I wanted to like Instant Lunch more because I’ve always like their packaging. The colors, font and design are so pleasant. And their logo looks like my brother-in-law, Zac. But Cup Noodles really were the better noodle of the two and since it’s the main ingredient (besides sodium) I agreed with everyone that Cup Noodles won this round.
The popcorn was covered with a coating of medium/dark brown caramel that was kind of like shellac, but in a good way that provided a hard shell that crunched nicely against the fluffyness of the popcorn. There was an enjoyable contrast between the caramel and peanuts and it had an overall toasty quality. I thought it was lot better than expected, we both gave this the thumbs up.
The first thing we noticed was the color, this was much lighter and a shade of yellow. Also, the caramel was considerably thicker. The taste was much different with it’s strong buttery flavor. Another difference is that was popcorn was fluffier and the peanuts were “glued” onto the popcorn pieces with the coating. Ethan liked this and I did at first but found the flavor so strong that it was a little overwhelming after a few handfuls.
These had a nice clean break when snapped but crumbled like a cookie when chewed. The sweet milk chocolate had a good flavor and went well with slightly saltiness of the toffee. It kind reminded us of Twix. Also the softness and thickness of the chocolate was a nice compliment to the texture of the toffee.
The toffee in these was darker and a little “deeper” in flavor. Although the amount of chocolate and toffee was well balanced, the quality of chocolate didn’t seem as good as Heath. Ethan described it as bland and “gross”. The toffee was stickier too and really made a home for itself in the grooves of my teeth, so I had to bite lightly.
Ethan thought these had a nice density to them and described them as having an “honest crunch”. He also thought these had a nice tang. There is something “earthy” about these, which is good when you’re in the mood. I like the crunch of these but the taste is just okay. I thought it was kind of interesting that these had more fiber, but also more sugar and fat.
You can’t tell from the picture but these were a little smaller than Sun Chips. Ethan thought they smelled weird and that the crunch was disappointing. These lacked “substance” and were very airy like 
These had a sweet smell and Marc described them as “Eastery”, I asked him to elaborate and he said they were malty. The cake was spongy but firm, maybe just a teeny bit dry but not too bad. The creme was light and airy and had a nice hint of vanilla. Sara described it as tasting like marshmallow. In all, this wasn’t too bad and we all agreed this was very similar to a Twinkie.
These had a very strong, sweet smell that seemed to be waiting to jump out of the wrapper. The cake was denser and the exterior is kind of greasy. We noticed the filling was heavier than Gold n’ Creme’s and was almost gluey in comparison. With the intensity of the smell, cake and filling, Marc said these seemed like they were made more for kids than for adults.
Fresca seemed to have particularly big bubbles and had a very nice grapefruit smell. We all agreed the taste was a nice balance of sweet and tart and seemed “full-bodied” because it actually tasted like fruit and not just artificial sweetener that sometimes diet sodas tend to do. This was light, refreshing and very grapefruity.
We found this to be more sour tasting than Fresca. The flavor seemed more muted somehow, but it did smell pretty good. Zac thought it was very watery and we felt the aspartame was a little too much since it wasn’t offset by much fruit flavor. It was almost like watery, sour, lemonade (with bubbles) and tasted harsh.
Ethan and I first noticed these had no smell. The second thing was the hardness of these little nuggets when bit into. They had very little give and the chocolate was pretty tasteless. The caramel was my worst nightmare (as far as caramel goes) it was hard and viciously stuck to my teeth like superglue. I asked Ethan what he thought of the caramel flavor and he said he couldn’t taste it because he was too busy trying to get ot out of his teeth. At one point I was actually afraid the dud was going to steal one of my teeth – it was definitely an effort to “enjoy” these. I will say though, that through the fear I think I tasted some good caramel flavor.
These were round instead of flat and also didn’t smell like anything but the huge difference was that they were very soft and such a welcome contrast to Milk Duds. The chocolate had slightly more taste although it may have masked the flavor of the caramel which was slightly sticky but again, it was such a relief not to be fighting with it, that it was much more acceptable.