The Wide World of Dirt

On my cross country road trip back home, I went into a Kwik Trip to grab some snacks and drinks for the road.

Because Wisconsin is a wonderland for niche beverages, I always make sure to check out all the pop they have in the fridge, and to my surprise, I found the holy grail.

Mountain Dew. Pitch. Black.

I did a triple take and immediately tried to find my fiancé to show her, more so to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

They weren’t! So, I started chucking them into my basket, and I left the store with four 20oz bottles of my all-time favorite soda, something I hadn’t seen since a chance encounter at a gas station in Dubuque in the fall of 2020.

Soon as I buckled myself in, I sent out a tweet expressing my shock and surprise as I giggled like Ron Swanson at the mention of Lil Sebastian.

Noticing the packaging was different from its previous iteration, I assumed Pitch Black was back as part of some sort of new initiative for the absolute titan of a soda that beat the formidable Baja Blast in the 2016 DEWcision.

Here’s why I love this drink so damn much.

It’s got the best grape flavoring of any caffeinated grape product, hands down, and its mixture with the citrus is exquisite.

In addition, it’s got a good carbonation level, so good to the point that I forget how much of it I’ve had until, oh no, I’m at the bottom of the bottle and sad I’m out of Pitch Black.

I know that Pepsi noticed that after voting it in as a permanent flavor in 2016, we didn’t do our part as a society to keep it on the shelves in perpetuity, and that includes me.

For the first year or so, I bought a 12-pack every time I went to the store (which was like, once a month because I lived in a dorm.)

Around the time I was exiting college, I noticed I didn’t see it or White Out in stores very much, and that made me sad. Two flavors rightfully voted into permanent existence getting the axe.

This is one of the reasons I hate the “free market”: even if something is good, it’ll get KO’d if you don’t buy enough of it.

Pitch Black fills a vital hole in Pepsi’s competition in the grape soda market, and frankly, Crush and Fanta ain’t got shit on Pitch Black.

With all that said, we should bring back Pitch Black full-time. It defeated Baja Blast in an election for god’s sake. It has earned its rightful place in the pop economy.