Yello, Mello Yellow. Yello.

As a resident of suburban Long Island, I see certain foods and the like that seem to be only available in my neck of the woods like Drake's Cakes, Friendly's, Checkers, Shop Rite, Saranac Beer, and, of course, White Castle.

But with such exclusivity, you can expect that we don't have some stuff that people in other parts of the country are blessed with, like Rally's, In'n'Out, Hardees, Chik-Fil-A, Krystal, Cracker Barrels, and even Sonic. As you know, this pisses me off big time. Hell, we got our first Denny's back in March, for God's sake!!

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that my CVS began carrying this last week:

Mello. Fucking. Yello. The poor man's Mountain Dew and even referred to by Lisa Simpson as Mountain Dew's arch-enemy, much in the strain of Bart/Skinner, Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Moriarity, and Maggie/Gerald, The One-Eyebrow Baby. I wasn't even aware that this soda still EXISTED, let alone being sold in Northeastern US. This was, honestly, the very first time I had ever laid eyes upon this drink in person.

As my research shows (Wikipedia counts, I'm not in college anymore!), I was right about its presence here being an enormous fluke. It seems that since its inception in 1979, it's mostly been sold in the Midwest, the Southeast, and Southern Florida. Not only that, there used to be three other varieties: Cherry, Melon and Peach, which have long since been discontinued. And thanks to a recent re-branding campaign, they decided to start shipping the stuff to the rest of the country, which seems to include Long Island. That's certainly worth a sarcastic "raise the roof" celebration in my book.

So, of course, I had to take a swig of it for myself. Imagine Sprite and Orange Soda, mix them together in a huge jug and pour the results together in a can, and you've got Mello Yello. Overall, it's not bad, but I'll stick to hunting down Vault, thank you very much. It, too, is a more Mountain Dew-like soda, yet...better.