Pepsi's Bizarre History with Lemon Lime Soda 

So Pepsi struggles to compete with Sprite. Meanwhile Coca-Cola also can't compete with Mountain Dew as Mello Yello is slowly fading to obsolete.

When I first saw Starry suddenly appear in the grocery store, I thought "this will probably only be around for a few months and then disappear into oblivion and become a Mandela Effect" and I took a picture of it for proof it existed.

When I first saw Starry at the grocery store, I thought it was the store’s generic lemon-lime soda.

Working in a restaurant serving Pepsi, ever since Sierra Mist changed to Starry, so many people pick something else to drink. Many people ask what is Starry and even after you tell them it's Sierra Mist's replacement, they usually ask for something else. I feel like the rebrand or new soda, if you will, wasn't really promoted well at all. I remember when Slice was replaced by Sierra Mist too. People usually just said okay to getting Sierra Mist instead of Slice.

Starry tastes good, but whoever named it needs to be fired. "Hey I'm going to the store, want anything?" "Yeah, get me a Starry....." That just doesnt sound right.

Starry seems like a brand from GTA 😂

Sierra Mist started out fine until they messed with the formula, then it had an aftertaste.

Just call it Other Sprite and watch the money roll in, baby

When a restaurant would offer Sierra Mist or Slice because they didn't carry 7up or Sprite, I usually said "just give me water"

It’s interesting how after all these years, Pepsi still hasn’t found their niche when it comes to the lemon lime pop. Maybe Starry will take off, but if it doesn’t, I think Pepsi should stick to doing what they do well. They have the citrus flavored pop game IN THE BAG. People hardly recognize what Mello Yello and Surge are but everyone knows the name Mountain Dew. Also, Pepsi is a decent competitor for Coke. Some even prefer Pepsi.

I miss all the versions of Slice. When 7up changed their recipe, I switched to Sprite. Ive only had Starry once, not too bad.

I literally go to the college that's directly across from Pepsis HQ. So, naturally, it's sponsored by them. And Starry isn't actually half bad. Don't think it'll overtake sprite but it's not bad

Sierra Mist < Sprite < Starry. Starry has no weird aftertaste like Sierra Mist, refreshing like Sprite but tastes more like candy... which I'm totally here for.

Teem was really good - I liked it better than Sprite, but I don't think most commenters would be old enough to have tried it. Starry sounds close to "sorry", so maybe Pepsi is already apologizing in advance for its certain failure (haven't tried it yet).

This reminds me that in Peru, there's a lemon verbena flavored yellow soda called Inca Kola that has been so successful for many decades that Coca Cola partially bought it during the late 90s. It's one of the very few drinks that is able to genuinely compete toe to toe with Coke iirc, and it's still the most popular soda there. Also, many similar flavored, colored and even packaged sodas have been released over the years to directly compete with Inca Kola, though with just mild success. And just like with the Sprite-like sodas here, PepsiCo ended up buying one of those competing drinks, Triple Kola, in the early 2000s. But yeah, nice video. And kudos for that CN history video because it was really amazing.

I feel like 7Up is so underrated. It is SOOO much sweeter and fruitier tasting than Sprite. Sprite barely tastes like anything and the syrupy texture builds up in my throat like phlegm. Uck.

I remember serria mist as that soda my grandparents always had at parties for some reason.

Teem still sells here in Brazil for some reason (but is way less popular than Sprite and local brands)

In Argentina PepsiCo has owned 7-up selling rights for as long as I can remember and has always been neck to neck with Sprite when it comes to popularity

I do think that Starry is a huge step up in terms of branding and logo when compared to Sierra Mist

The irony is in some parts of the world like Venezuela, Pepsi owns 7Up...and even there Coke still has a stranglehold on the market with Chinotto, which is Sprite with a more South America-friendly name. It's amazing how they just can't figure out how to make lemon-lime work while Coke is just sliding their way to victory.

I give my pinky toe for dr. slice to be a thing again.

If Pepsi had brains they would have called it Mountain Dew Citrus

Just Me and my RC

I remember Storm (was in Omaha at the time). I did have to laugh tho as the fast food places specifically noted that the Storm in their fountain machines was caffiene-free. So yeah at one of your major distribution points your big distinctions gets removed...awesome.

slice was great. sierra mist was awful. if i drink lemon/line it will be sprite, but i was buying more slice than sprite back in the day. starry is ok, much better than sierra mist, but my family prefers sprite, so i'm stuck.

“I’d like a Sierra Mist, please.” ‘Is Starry ok?’ Actually, I want to try this, but I can’t seem to find 2 liter Diet Starry/Starry Zero anywhere.

I lived in Denver when Storm was a thing so I wasn't even aware that it was a limited test market. Count me as one of the twelve.

Wow, towards the end Sierra Mist was only selling to German tourists who wanted the can as a joke item.

I’m one of the ones who loved Sierra Mist, I was sad when it was announced it was being discontinued, I went to every grocery store in my area and bought as many 12 packs as I could, I ended up with about 15 of them by the time starry started to appear on shelf’s, I currently only have 2 cans left, I have them so well hidden cause my family will get to them if I don’t, I will get around to drink them eventually but for now they will remain a time capsule of by gone era 😢

Pepsi actually has the Rights to sell 7 Up outside of America

I remember drinking Storm many times in the late 90s (I must have been one of the 12) and remember it being really good. Although I can’t remember if it was actually good or just the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia.

Squirt is the leader in grapefruit soda. Nobody is even trying to compete

I honestly really like Starry, it's a soft lemon-lime flavor with some nice sweetness. I still prefer A-Treat over all of them though

Great to see another great appetizer, while we wait for the main course. (That being the Nickelodeon video.) Awesome video!! 👌

i had starry at a theater, i really thought it was some cheap off brand soda from the branding

Pepsi's biggest asset was right under its nose the whole time and it was never enough for them! The Citrus soft drink Mountain Dew, which in some markets, is an even bigger seller than Pepsi itself! No need to go out searching for a "green labeled" drink that starts with the letter "S" to compete with Sprite! Also, I'm glad you mentioned Teem. That was one of those drinks that was never sold in stores where I lived, but like Mr. Pibb, it was a regular fountain drink at my local Whataburger, and would get it every time I saw it available. Methinks they should have stuck with Teem!

I'm a bemused UK inhabitant. Can someone explain how this history and the history of 7up fit together? I was especially confused at 2:28 with the "Slice" advert with Fido Dido, wasn't he the 7up mascot??

hyped for the nick story 💥💥 btw great vid bro

Tbh never liked Sierra Mist. It tasted too "flat" Also Coke>>Pepsi!

In my country, Greece, Pepsi's lemon-lime soda is actually 7up. It's always been CocaCola/Sprite vs. Pepsi/7up here. I'm 45 years old and only recently did I realize that 7up isn't actually a Pepsico brand in the rest of the world.

Yeah Pepsi never got it right with the lemon lime. And I generally prefer their products. Meanwhile 7up is still holding its own

pepsi can’t except the fact nothing is dethroning sprite as the best lemon lime soda

Seems like Starry is as popular as Crystal Pepsi

Starry's probably the best one they've made, it's really good.

Sierra Mist made with real sugar was actually great and the holiday cranberry version was even better! Idk why they tried to change everything.

I loved strawberry slice as a kid. Wish they would bring that back so I could make ice cream floats with it.

this is going to sound strange but i was at a church even well over a decade ago when pepsi first launched sierra mist. they were promoting it everywhere offering free cans and shirts. so every easter sunday i remember when soda usurped the resurrection in terms of interest since it was quite hot outside.

When I was a kid, our area Pepsi bottler didn't distribute Teem. It had a license with Dad's/Bubble up. It's been decades, but Starry seems to me to be reminiscent of Bubble up. Can't predict if the market will agree, but I like it.

I never saw Teem in stores; it was only available at one local restaurant in the early-1980s. My Mother was a huge fan of Diet Sierra Mist. Since it was not sold here in Canada, we would bring back large quantities of it. On one trip, we had like 10 or 12 cases of the stuff -- I feared that we would considered commercial importers.

So back in the 1920's-1970's there was a soda company here in Niagara Falls, Canada called Niagara Dry Beverages. They mostly produced Niagara Dry Ginger Ale but also produced other sodas such as a Triple Soda, a Ginger Beer, and a Lemon-Lime Rickey. They also produced a side-brand called Sky-Hy which included a Ginger Ale, an Orange soda, a Cream soda and Root beer. Pepsi later purchased the company in the late 1970's, but ended up phasing it out entirely. I am a local Niagara Falls resident and an avid collector of Niagara Dry/Sky-Hy items. I've got a wall full of bottles, cans, some wooden crates, some cardboard carriers, a small bit of signage/advertising pieces, and a bunch of unused labels. I also run a "book of faces" page as a historical archive of it.

Sierra Mist, while not being popular with all, was probably the best thing they had going. The official bottled and canned sodas claimed to use normal sugar as opposed to the hfcs that's in every soda nowadays.

Starry showed up one day instead of Sierra mist. We'd sell out of Sierra in about a week (2 weeks between stocks), while starry sits for months. No one knows what it is, where it came from, or why it's there. I tried it too, and it tastes like someone took carbonated water and put not enough lemon juice in it with preservatives.

I cant wait for the Nickelodeon video! Keep up the good work Luis!

I was salty when MTN DEW ICE was discontinued, it was my favorite soda at the time.

Pepsi is like Pokémon, they keep on trying to make a successful thing again when they made that successful thing.

Storm by far was the best also if u want to try the best lemon lime soda try Mt. Sprecher it’s by far the best lemon lime soda and they have a non caffeinated and a caffeinated version that has 90mg of caffeine which is more than Mt. Dew also it tastes different from Mt. Dew it dosent taste like a knockoff and instead of using sugar or high fructose corn syrup they use organic honey

Cranberry Sierra Mist was the best soda ever to be made and I miss it so bad. My family used to buy out all of aldi's stock before they stopped selling for the season which would last us about 3/4 a year to the next selling period

Pepsi also lost the Sierra Mist trademark apparently, so I guess they had to rebrand.

Slice was the best. Unfortunately someone else bought it and turned it into an all natural diet soda. The lemon-lime version tastes like mildly sweetened lime juice - not good. But neither Sierra Mist nor Starry holds a candle to the old Slice. I actually liked the short-lived Mist Twst which tasted a lot like how I remember Slice, but from a branding perspective it was just confusing. Really, Pepsi should just strike a deal to distribute 7 UP nationally. Just like in other countries, and like what they do here in the US with Crush and Schweppes.

Honorable mention needs to go to 7Up. Although not technically a Pepsi product, many Pepsi distributors (especially in the 70's/80's) were also distrbutors for 7Up, and thus 7Up was offered alongside Pepsi as a fountain drink.

To me, this is hilarious, because my area's (Southern Illinois) local Pepsi bottler, Pepsi Mid-America, has also been the local Dr. Pepper/Seven Up bottler for years.

Storm was also test marketed in Fort Wayne, Indiana - which is not the same market as Indianapolis. I quite liked it back then TBH.

I completely forgot about Slice, that’s crazy. Slice seemed like such a staple when I was a kid but now I remember Storm better than I remember Slice, and nobody remembers Storm.

I actually liked orange slice, I kind of got ticked when they discontinued it. Probably one of the better orange sodas readily available outside of Dollar store brands.

I hate that every soda now has to be healthy like bro lemme do what I wanna do

I’ll never understand why Pepsi got rid of Slice. That stuff was good. Especially the orange and apple varieties.

"MOUNTAIN DEW IS THE BEST SODA EVER MADE" truuueee I'm literally drinking a voltage rn 🔥🔥

All this time, I never knew Pepsi has been screwing around with the formula. Explains everything. Sierra Mist always bugged me.

Orange slice was my jam in middle school. So good.

I always thought Mountain Dew ice was a rebrand of Storm, yes I remember and liked storm ! It was pretty good so was ice.

I actually went to a pizza place back in April and they still had Sierra Mist on their soda fountain.

I liked Citra, that was a great drink imo. Also I talked to a guy who delivered Coke to the school I worked at and he said the only thing pepsi out sells coke with is Mountain Dew, Coke out sells Pepsi in everything else.

I'm so confused by this video???? Here in mexico 7up is and has always been owned and produced by Pepsico since the 90s, it has always been known as the best version of lemon-lime soda over coke's sprite, i see no reason they would want to create another one, but the video makes it look like 7up is it's own brand and company in the US, is this true?

Well.. to be fair, PepsiCo owns 7-up internationally.

I’m old enough to remember all but Teem and Storm (because I wasn’t in a test market). Most of the time, like my approach to Coke/Pepsi, I could go either way between Sprite and the Pepsi alternatives, but I definitely lean towards Sprite. When it comes to cola, I lean towards Pepsi, but some of those limited Coke flavors are pretty good, like the Spiced. Mtn Dew Ice was pretty good, but it probably failed because it was Sierra Mist in costume.

I never realized I was in a test market for storm, but I drank a bunch of it in middle school

So far, at a convention, people were like what the fuck is starry?

I live in Milwaukee and your photo for it had me rolling. 🤣🤣

I love the Cola Battle.

Only thing i hated worse than Sierra Mist was having to chug a load of it mixed with basically chalk powder when i had a scan to see if my gallbladder had failed, it had. They mixed the medicine that was meant to protect me from radiation and was like drinking liquid plaster mixed with Sierra Mist. Bonus a few hours later you poo out mildly radioactive bright yellow Nickelodeon slime. On a happier i note i really miss Dr. Slice. It was more like Cheerwine, a regional soda, than Dr. Pepper and i loved it. Cherry Dr. Pepper comes close now days.

Out here in the west coast, we don't got no Starry. We still drank Sierra Mist. Liked and subbed.

That mandarin orange Slice was the best damn fruit soda ever made.

“Starry: it’s different” is funny as fuck bro it’s literally just sprite

I feel like Slice was a perfectly good brand name. maybe they should just bring back Teem

I live an hour north of Philly and we had Storm. Loved that soda.

Idk if its like the hidden mid 2000s ed mom in me but I miss sierra mist a lot a lot of times, I find things too sweet and idk if it was just the packaging (I never even realized mist twist was it but that was a horrible rebrand!!!!) or the regular sugar but it felt so refreshing in comparison to other sodas. I feel like starry won't catch on either, idk why, I feel like the black outlines as the tertiary color makes it seem to stuffy and I just assume its gonna be too strong or sweet to enjoy

i remember briefly when they renamed sierra mist to twist mist, and then shortly after reverted back to sierra mist

I loved Sierra mist. I'm legitimately disappointed that it's gone

Dr Slice is the ONLY Dr soda.

Could only get it seasonally, but cranberry sierra mist was one of the best sodas.

I grew up in Sacramento and very clearly remember Storm. I never knew I was being test marketed.

Not their own version of Sprite, but their own version of 7-Up. Sprite is Coke’s own version of 7-Up.

I was surprised Storm was only available in 9 cities (my area being one of them) I thought that was everywhere. I also remember Coke’s version of Squirt called Citra around the same time Storm was around.

Surprised you didn't mention that the name "Sierra Mist" sounds like a generic Mountain Dew knockoff. Confused branding from the start

I actually really liked Mountain Dew ICE but it wasn't sold in my area, there was some weird agreement with the bottlers in my area that made it so that only certain lemon lime sodas could be sold in the area. So if I wanted it I had to go like an hour plus away to another county to get it

I am going to start to make my own lemon lime soda at time.

Orange slice was delicious… twister orange is amazing

Sierra Mist natural was amazing... I was so sad when it was discontinued.

Starry is just a real weird name for a soda