Drink Review: Mountain Dew Kickstart

Did you ever wake up in the morning and wish there was a way to have a huge jolt of caffeine without all the coffee breath? Did you ever think that Sunny Delight would be better if it increased your heart rate? Ever wish Tang would mix a little white powder in with the orange powder? Are you like me and wondering why Mountain Dew caught on to this idea a scant decade after Monster did it?

I'm a Mountain Dew drinker, because somehow that's just what white people do. It's in the DNA somewhere. In the last couple of years, the folks over at Pepsi have let the flavor monkeys run wild. Hell, they even let Dew drinkers pick what flavors would be manufactured on more than one occasion. There are exclusive flavors, like Taco Bell's Baja Blast or the Halo inspired Game Fuel. Honestly, outside of the Amp sugar-free lemonade, I haven't had a bad run-in with the folks over at Mountain Dew. Now, they want to enter the breakfast arena with two Kickstart flavors: Orange Citrus and Fruit Punch. I don't know how I feel about this, though I do consume a fair amount of coffee each day. Regardless, I had to give these a shot.



First off is Orange Citrus. This makes sense for breakfast. It's your typical orange flavored drink. In all honesty, it wasn't bad, but it had a chalky aftertaste, especially at the bottom of the can. I thought I might have gotten a can that settled, but I tried it two different times, and both were chalky. It didn't really taste like orange juice, but that makes sense considering the fact that it's made up of only 5% juice. It is, however, much better than the alternatives. It blows the horrid Sunny D and Tampico out of the water, and it is a little better than it's Monster and Rockstar counterparts.

Fruit Punch isn't something I think about at breakfast, but it was actually the better of the two flavors. It was much smoother, and it didn't have the chalky taste. Again, it was better than its competitors in the energy juice arena. I'm not a huge fruit punch fan in general, but the Dew version is pretty good.

Overall, I say you could do much worse, though this isn't high on my list of favorite Dew products. They didn't dehydrate me like energy drinks tend to do, and you don't have the acidity of coffee to worry about. If you want a little morning buzz or want something non-carbonated and smoother than soda, you could do much worse than Kickstart. I say give it a try.