There's a Party In My Mouth...

Watching TV these days, one runs across all sorts of silly advertising, from Blockbuster's dancing baby to the Energizer bunny. In some cases, like Energizer's battery-powered rodent, there might be a remote connection between the gimmick and the product. But, as the ubiquitous dancing baby proves, this need not be the case. So what is one to expect when seeing half a dozen crazed men hurdling couches after some strange guy yells "Surge!"?

Like its ad campaign, Surge is a bit of a puzzle. True, the new Coca-Cola product is often likened to Mountain Dew. But its sudden appearance on the market, weird after-taste and suspicious propensity to turn the drinker's mouth green, all deserve examination. Is this simply, as Maximillian Gomez-Trochez '00 put it, "The Coca-Cola attempt to put down those irresponsible Mountain Dewers"? Another example of "porcine capitalism at its worst"? Garish vocabulary aside, Gomez-Trochez has a point which no survivor of Ec 10 can ignore. Surge may just be Coca-Cola's attempt at a "substitute good" for Mountain Dew, an attempt to shoulder its way into the strangely-tinted-and-highly-caffeinated soft drink market.

Could that really be all there is to the Surge phenomenon? A visit to the drink's website (www.surge.com) suggests otherwise. The site is little more than a Surge fan club which visitors are encouraged to join. Teasers for the happier life that awaits the Surge Club member entice the unwary web surfer. But an all-too-brief browse is enough to show that these Surge-clubbers are not to be envied. To join, one enters, along with the requisite vital statistics, the answers to such "No Fear"-esque questions as "Do you have a life? If so, what do you do with it?" The responses given put the visitor in contact with other Surge-ites, allowing a special sort of connection through shared caffeine addiction and a hyperactive, adrenaline-driven lifestyle.

What, one would ask, is the appeal of this bastard child of 7-Up and Jolt? A sinister picture is painted by Elliot T. Weiss '99. "Maybe in another attempt to corner some area of the market, they left some ingredient off." The hypothesis hearkens back to the rumors that the soft drink Coca-Cola had a little something extra in it's original formula to attract and then addict its buyers. "Maybe it's some government conspiracy tested in small towns," Weiss adds. "I suddenly saw Surge a year ago in a rural town in the Carolinas." It seems the drink was given a trial period in small towns to see if it would catch on. Or were these towns really just ground zero for some twisted experiment on human lab rats?

A concerned First-year Anne M. McLaughlin has another, though no less disturbing, theory on what might be an extra ingredient in Surge. "Some sort of hormonal drug that really makes you horny, because that's a side effect." She continues, "And notice it says 'fully loaded' on it." So it does; the implications are numerous.

McLaughlin is somewhat of a Surge connoisseur herself. "I drink about one a day. But the count goes up when I run out of Mountain Dew. Then it's three or four times a day." By way of explanation, she offers, "I guess I like lemon-lime caffeine things." Gomez-Trochez also consumes the beverage on a fairly regular, though less frequent schedule. "Every time I have to pull an all-nighter or orgo problem set...so one every two weeks on average." And as for the side-effects McLaughlin describes? Gomez-Trochez only notices that he is "peeing a lot and feeling really awake." Taking a cue from the TV commercials, he adds, "Well, every time I drink Surge, I feel compelled to ball my hands into fists and shout "Surge!!!!" to anyone I know who is passing by." Weiss, a pre-med student, also remarks jokingly that Surge may cause "short-term memory lapses may be..."

But Surge's effectiveness as a highly caffeinated beverage should not be doubted, (loose bladders and increased libido aside). Weiss recalls, "It did work driving from Boston to Miami straight." No-doze in a bottle, perhaps? Those more accustomed to caffeine might find the drink less potent, however. McLaughlin reports little effect on her alertness after drinking Surge. She notes, though, that her "caffeine tolerance is ridiculously high."

So if the need to pull an all-nighter arises, Surge may be the answer. But be fore-warned. As McLaughlin cautions, "It's an acquired taste--it doesn't taste like Mountain Dew." The prevalence of the drink's trademark green and red bottle in vending machine campus-wide, however, means that it's a taste Harvard students may soon acquire.