Eat me, drink me, buy me

I'm kind of a sucker for good marketing. It's both conniving and direct; sleazy and pure. It says: I want you to do something, but I need to figure out exactly what to say and how to say to not only get you to do it, but make you feel like it was your idea in the first place. Really, it's an art, and no matter how much greed is it's motivator, it's still pretty impressive when someone hits that bullseye.

It was this admiration for advertising that made me give more than a passing glance to the new Mountain Dew product: Game Fuel. At first, I thought that the obvious conclusion must be the wrong one; that it was maybe Mountain Dew's attempt at a sports drink.

No, it's exactly what you think: it's a drink marketed for video gamers. The mind reels. I know it's a tie-in with Halo, but the subtext of the product is hilarious: "Listen. We know you're a fat dude who loves video games. All you want is for someone to wrap your head in a caffeinated glow that assures you there's nothing wrong or unhealthy about playing video games for days at a time and sustaining (barely) on nothing but Mountain Dew and Doritos. And it's true: There is nothing wrong with it. No one else understands you. But we do. We even made a special drink that will let you continue on your glorious lives and avatars in a way that you never were before."

All the drink is, of course, is Mountain Dew with some extra artificial flavoring, though I don't know how you could taste anything through the normal Mountain Dew flavor of nuclear waste. But I wonder how many people are actually buying that this new flavor has been chemically calibrated to help them sit on their couches and control cartoons with their thumbs. What's next? Pepsi Porn Surfer? Dr. Pepper, Trek Conventioneer?

Anyway, I'm impressed. I hope their sales are through the roof.