The Flavor of VooDew 2 Is...

The Flavor of VooDew 2 Is…

Derek Laganelli

Skittles.

In all honesty, I can’t blame you if you taste Skittles in VooDew 2. I also get those vibes! But here’s the deal - everyone in 2019 was guessing that the original VooDew was an amalgam of all the Skittles flavors too. It turned out that good ol Pepsi Co. was pulling a fast one on all of us when they finally revealed that it was a Candy Corn flavored soda. Once I knew that, if I focused really hard on what I was actually tasting...sure. I guess technically it did have a very faint taste of candy corn, but you really could only “taste” it lingering on your tongue long after your sip of soda had finished. This is important to remember.

Fast forward a year, and here we are with VooDew 2 in hand. We crack open our first can and it tastes...the same? At least from what we’re able to remember. So similar in fact, that all of us here genuinely thought that Mountain Dew was playing a prank on all of us. But after much pondering and re-tasting, I know now that this isn’t the case at all. It’s subtle, but VooDew 2020 really is a new flavor, and that flavor is…

CARAMEL APPLE.

I’m warning you all now, we’re about to take a trip down the rabbit hole. This is only a theory after all, and quite frankly I am making a lot of leaps to come to said conclusion. I ask only that you keep an open mind as I Rain Man my way through this completely trivial and meaningless process. Let us begin.

TASTE

Perhaps the most important part in determining the flavor of VooDew, is tasting it. I know that sounds stupid, but let me explain. There is a difference between drinking and tasting. Think about it from a wine perspective - the greatest sommeliers aren’t chugging bottles of wine, they’re carefully & thoughtfully deconstructing each subtle flavor that the vintner has dreamt up. Then they’re hocking it into a spit bucket. Think of me as a soda sommelier - I have the same careful palette, but for corn syrup and red dye #40 instead.

When I first drank a can of this year’s soda, all I really got was an intense sweetness. So sweet that truthfully, I didn’t even want to finish the whole thing. But this is Halloween dammit, and there was no way I was letting a limited edition soda go to waste. Upon revisiting, I decided to take things a bit more slowly, as I really wanted to get what they were going for. After about half the can was gone, I took a long break from drinking, and that’s when that caramel apple flavor finally popped in to say hello. 

It took a bit of imagination at first, but the lingering taste on my tongue was not unlike the taste of a caramel apple. Not just your standard caramel apple mind you - to me it was very specifically slices of granny smith apples that had been dipped in that Marzetti Caramel Dip you find at the grocery store. The tartness of the apple flavor is what I think a lot of people are mistaking for Skittles. Like I said, Mountain Dew is trying to trick all of us so you do really have to envision a caramel apple as you drink.

CONTEXT CLUES

This is the big one folks; the piece of the puzzle that went over all of our heads last year, but was right out in the open taunting us the whole time. Take a look at the original, Candy Corn VooDew label.

Get it? Okay, here comes that Rain Man breakdown that I was talking about earlier.

Mountain Dew is so confident you’ll get wrapped up in the gorgeous artwork, that you’ll end up dismissing the VERY intentional color palette as being “just Halloween colors”. If we were paying attention last year, the colors were trying to tell us the flavor all along. So why would it be any different for the sequel soda? It wouldn’t be! Just take a closer look at the label.

I don’t know about you all, but those colors absolutely SCREAM Caramel Apple to me! I suppose due to the red color you could also try and make the argument of the alternative Candy Apple, and with a flavor that is so subtle, I’d be hesitant to call you flat out wrong. I’m sticking to my guns on this one though...we’re totally looking at a Caramel Apple soda.

No not Candy Apple soda, woop woop.

IN CONCLUSION

This is all just one meticulously and tediously calculated guess on my part. VooDew 2020 isn’t what I’d call a dead ringer for a caramel apple soda, so there is still a chance that come the end of October we could get one hell of a shocking flavor announcement. When that day comes, this article will be rendered worthless anyways, so I guess this is really more of an example of how to waste some time. Life is short, do dumb shit. Who cares.

FOLLOW UP: I was wrong.