- Agency: PepsiCo Design
- Client: Mountain Dew
- Category: Packaging Design — Beverage
- Location: Purchase, New York, United States
- Project Brief: Design a limited-edition commemorative can that celebrates Mountain Dew’s 1948 origins while creating a collectible brand experience for fans.
Beverage packaging rarely tries to time-travel. Mountain Dew's 1948 commemorative can does exactly that, reviving the brand's Tennessee origin story for the "American Original" campaign and printing the founding history right on a heritage-styled label.
The design leans hard on nostalgia. A finely detailed green engraving of mountains, pines, and a winding river fills a cream panel, topped by the hand-brushed green-and-red "MountainDew" script and a gold "The Original" banner.
The throwback is real, with a twist. The original 1948 can showed a cartoon hillbilly and the words "yahoo Mountain Dew," so this revival keeps the script and outdoorsy spirit but trades the rustic mascot for a cleaner, premium woodcut scene.
That choice tells the brand's whole story at a glance. Seen against the logo's decades of redesigns, the can reaches past the recent angular look back to the folksy roots, and a nickel price tag on TikTok Shop turns the packaging itself into the campaign.
