Yeah, so this is a thing that is happening.
MTN DEW/PepsiCo
Confession: I think Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are really hard to eat. Maybe it’s the unrelentingly red visual barrier, or the way they cake onto the fingertips. Perhaps Flamin’ Hot Mountain Dew will fix those issues for me. It’s in a can, no finger contact required.
Mountain Dew (branded these days as “MTN DEW”) is a caffeinated, citrus-flavored soft drink owned by PepsiCo, which also owns Cheetos. Put the two together and you get a soda described by a Mountain Dew marketing executive as “one of our most provocative beverages yet.”
The feisty new flavor, a combination of sweet and spicy, is set to arrive on Aug. 31 through the Dew online store, which already sells everything from Dew-themed Hawaiian shirts to Dew-bedecked shower can holders, in case you can’t be separated from your soda long enough to take a shower.
If the liquid lava wasn’t enough, clothing brand Broken Promises will also create a fashion collection to go along with it. The daring duds will go on sale in early September. An Instagram post gave us a sneak peak at the collaboration, which seems to include screaming-red sweatsuits, presumably to contain the sweat from drinking Flamin’ Hot Mountain Dew.
Dew has also teamed up with influencer Baddie Winkle to promote the new drink.
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos is already a cultural phenomenon. There’s even a movie about the spicy snack in production. Will Flamin’ Hot Mountain Dew rise to the cultural zeitgeist and feed the hunger for zesty junk food? I’m going to try it and will report back on the state of survival of my taste buds.