Mountain Dew was made as a whiskey mixer and named with hill slang for moonshine.
Barney and Ally Hartman, bottlers in Knoxville, made a lemon-lime soda in the 1940s to mix with their bourbon. When they showed it at a soda convention in 1946, as a joke, their friend John Brichetto drew a barefoot hillbilly with a rifle for the label. “Ya-Hoo Mountain Dew,” the slogan went. “It’ll tickle your innards.”
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