When you go to PAX or Fan Festival, there’s often a shirt that can be earned for beating a Final Fantasy 14 “Boss Challenge.” It’s a three-color shirt, with a drawing of the featured FFXIV boss in one color, and “I Defeated [Boss]” in white, on a black shirt, meant only for those who can clear the “Boss Challenge” offered at the event.
I haven’t earned that shirt yet through any Boss Challenge, but I did drink Dew. And for our troubles, wallets, and digestive systems be damned, my roommate, and I earned that “boss challenge” shirt.
The Mountain Dew promotional collaboration with FFXIV was announced under the drink’s “Mtn Dew Gaming” rewards program. It works like any other classic rewards program: You buy the product, enter some kind of proof of purchase (in this case, a code under the cap), and tally up until you can get a prize you want. Technically, the program had already existed, but for about two months, players could earn extra FFXIV goodies.
One of them was the “I Drank Dew” boss challenge shirt, stylized after the previously described shirts, with a hand holding up a glorious bottle of the prolific mixer-turned-energy drink in lieu of the usual boss. And it’s fitting because, let’s face it—even in my best of times, drinking that much Dew is a challenge and, dare I say, a concern.
Yet, I saw that shirt, and it immediately became my goal to acquire it.
Not just my goal, to be fair. I sent it along to my roommate, who is essentially my co-conspirator in much of what I do, and we agreed that we’d go for it. We do at least wear the same shirt size, and we’re pretty close, so we could at least share it between us. As a guy with a full-time job, he also has a better budget for our Dew-ventures. It also didn’t seem like that much of a burden, anyway, as I used to guzzle the stuff down when I started raiding a few years back.
With this goal agreed upon, we sat down and ran the math as to how much it would take for us to nab the shirt. The “Marketplace” on the site listed it as “4000 points.” Each standard Dew cap earns you 100 points, with some rare exceptions for drinks with 200 points, exclusively from stores that we absolutely do not have in Manhattan.
We’d need to drink 40 Mountain Dews in just under two months. Okay, doable. We thought. So we started going to our local Duane Reades (and other “bodegas” in our NYC neighborhood) and picking up as many Diet Mountain Dew bottles as we felt were healthy, about four per trip to the store so we could skip a day of shopping.
Of course, it’s Diet Mountain Dew, because, let’s be honest, regular Dew kinda blows. The sugar gives it an extra kick in the taste plus an aftertaste, both of which are gross, not to mention it all leaves a film on the teeth. If my soda is going to slowly kill me, I’d rather not feel it like a toxic alien goop. There’s also the point that I’ve been trying to cut back on too many splurging sugars: fruit good, Mountain Dew bad.
There are two real highlights in this process leading up to our quickly approaching 4000 milestone. The first is when I was in Los Angeles for the Dawntrail Media Tour and decided to try to order a Dew from a 24-hour CVS out of walking distance. Unfortunately, the shopper made the mistake of getting a regular Dew instead of a Diet Dew. I felt guilty not drinking it, though, as I am every function’s effective garbage can for food waste, so I had… maybe a third of it? And then I threw the rest out.
Then I had to remind myself: I wasn’t the biggest waste of Dews. Less than a week into the campaign, people were buying whole palettes of various Dews just to drain, use the codes, and throw out.
Don’t get me wrong—chances were low that all of that Dew was going to make it to thirsty mouths, except maybe in the thick of this campaign. The whole ordeal just had me wondering if fish needed some kind of insulin of its own to survive this uptick in water sugar. We already know that microplastics and dumped prescriptions are genuine issues in modern water and waste control industries. Is this not just an extension of such concerns?
As the shopper of the household, I also saw the immediate effect on the local Walgreens’ Diet Dew supply. Where I could only find more than five or six on a rare occasion, my local store started having upwards of ten, a dozen, or even more at one point. This is honestly great for me, because, as I mentioned, I can become something of a Diet Dew addict if enabled, and as your local cop sitting on the side of the road waiting to hand you a speeding ticket can tell you, there’s nothing more dangerously enabling than a quota.
Fast forward to mid-June. I’m doing some casual work, and I made three cascading realizations. One is that I’m only about six or so caps from victory; the next is that I can probably ask my favorite group of convention gamers if they have spare caps. When I do, a few people propose their caps at home, while a few ask similarly, having the epiphany that if I can, why can’t they? So I tell people, hey, I only need a few for this thing I need, if anyone needs it after I’m done go ahead.
And then, with one more realization, I go onto the Mtn Dew Gaming site… and the shirts are marked Low Stock. Oh boy. So I rushed to tell my roommate, hey, if you have any codes, get them to me now. And I rush to put in my own codes, only to see, soon enough… “Out of Stock.”
Just as I was checking? In mid-June? Goddamn. However, we kept hope. After all, if there’s anything so easily restocked, it’s going to be the single-color graphic tee. Are they realistically going to do so? I don’t know! I’m not controlling the Mtn Dew Gaming budget.
So, honestly, I mourned a bit (including to the game cafe manager who was also gunning for it), let it go, and went about my life, including the FFXIV Dawntrail launch proper.
And I’ll admit: Going back to a life without Diet Dew was hard. There’s something about diet soda that hits differently. After many years of it, I like to think it’s partially a sensory thing to have those highly carbonated suds wash over your tongue during or after a good meal, or if you just need a sweet pick-me-up. It could also just be a mild caffeine addiction, given the average 20-oz bottle of Diet Mountain Dew has about 91mg of it (about the same as an 8oz cup of coffee), and god knows I’ve endured the horror of going cold turkey on a Red Bull addiction (do NOT). But this I would endure because otherwise, this household would go broke.
"Celebrate the launch of @FF_XIV_EN Dawntrail by riding across Tural alongside me and my refreshing Mountian Zu! Become a legend and redeem your MTN DEW Gaming Rewards codes for a Mountain Zu today!" - Big SippinOpen to US & Guam residents only, 18+ (19 AL & NE). Ends 1/5/25.… pic.twitter.com/aKKyVI1fy4
— Mountain Dew Gaming (@MTNDEWGaming) July 2, 2024
Come mid-July, my roommate and I suddenly remembered that the promotion was expiring. So, while my roommate already had the mount, I decided to browse the site, perhaps get my mount, and see what else there was. And out of foolishness, I checked the shirt…
…The tee was back in stock!? It’s back in stock! With this sudden realization overwhelming my body and soul, I rushed through the motions to grab an XL for the roomie and I, and before I knew it, I had the confirmation email in my inbox. It arrived unceremoniously, and with zero tracking, from some third-party promotional fulfillment address less than two weeks later to my absolute delight. Thankfully, it fit more than well enough, and so my roommate and I called it a victory.
Being the absolutely unserious person I am, I premiered it at a massive dubstep show, where I gave one rando who recognized it a kandi that read “SCION,” and chatted up another about FFXIV and gaming in general.
That’s where the final lesson took root in my heart: In our souls, we all want to be Mtn Dew Gamers together. This shows through how the community went to visit Big Sippin’, the Mtn Dew Gaming staffer who has an in-game account and held regular hangouts during the promotion. It also shows in how Amazon literally wouldn’t sell me Diet Mountain Dew 20oz bottles for cheaper than $4/bottle because everyone was buying them up for themselves.
Maybe we don’t all need that shirt. Still, being able to wave the flag of the most harmless sort of degenerate (unless you count the environment), one who is absolutely not immune to promotional propaganda but is certainly prone to the whims of joy and aspartame, is a little delight in and of itself. It’s a rallying cry for a little mundane treat under the banner of the capitalistic lifestyles we’ve no choice but to endure!
Really, why not be the next to wear that shirt? Have you seen what it’s like out there lately, especially in the gaming industry? Why shouldn’t we spend $100 on 20oz bottles of Mountain Dew for the sake of an amusing piece of cloth? (Please don’t answer these rhetorical questions, MMORPG forums. Or do. I can’t control you.)
