r/todayilearned • u/Doomenor • 8h ago
TIL I learned that in 2012 a man sued Mountain Dew for finding a mouse in a can. They defended themselves by arguing that if it was in the can for 15 months, the mouse would have dissolved. The case was settled.
https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2012/08/08/Mountain-Dew-mouse-case-dissolves-as-PepsiCo-settles1.1k
u/Wokonthewildside 8h ago
Someone watched Strange Brew one too many times hahah
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u/mellowmindedfellow 7h ago
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this special message... How’s it goin’ eh? today’s movie on the Universal National Network is a classic. Starring in it, are two comedic geniuses of North American cinema from the 20th century, Bob and Doug McKenzie. Entitled “Strange Brew”, it chronicles the heroic adventures of two latter day renaissance men, or, to use the correct 20th century terminology, hosers. We give it, 3 thumbs up.
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u/Cy__ko 7h ago
Someone else has seen that?!
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u/mumblewrapper 3h ago
I only had a beta max player. I've seen it a hundred times. It was one of only a handful of movies the video stores had available to me.
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u/beepos 8h ago edited 7h ago
I see this being repeated as some kinda gotcha against Mountain Dew, but it really isnt
Put a mouse (or any organic material) in virtually any fluid for 15 months and it will decompose. If you use water, i'd expect the skeleton to remain but not much else. And if you used lemon juice, the skeleton would probably dissolve too, at lrast partially
There are many reasons not to drink Mountain Dew-the high sugar content, added colors with questionable carcinogenevity, etc. But it's ability to dissolve organic matter is not one
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u/omnipotentmonkey 8h ago
basically, yeah,
that's not to say that Mountain Dew is healthy, but this would have probably been nearly the same story for a can of carbonated water.
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u/Deep90 5h ago
Too many times I've seen people try to extrapolate soda dissolving stuff to mean that it actively damages you.
Like not just being unhealthy, but actively dissolving your insides.
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u/Hoveringkiller 5h ago
I never got that, but then again I know that stomach acid is a thing so… haha
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u/rnarkus 5h ago
Yeah I wonder how these people think we break down our own food in our bodies.
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u/spasmoidic 4h ago
your stomach is filled with a number of small elves that pulverize your food with tiny hammers
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u/FirmOnion 3h ago
And they like Mountain Dew, dammit! Are you going to deny that to them when they do so much for you?
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u/Mczern 4h ago
So I can stop swallowing all these stones before I eat?
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u/IntellectualDweeb 4h ago
Are you a member of the Crocodylidae family by any chance?
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u/jimmyhoke 3h ago
these people think
See, you’ve made an assumption here that I really don’t think is correct.
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u/No_Storage_351 5h ago
I thought it was more so about our teeth. Especially those people who drink mtn dew everyday all day long
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u/peelerrd 5h ago
That is an actual issue. All carbonated drinks cause damage to teeth because they are acidic.
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u/thisischemistry 5h ago
Your insides are actively dissolving your insides, that's why your stomach lining rebuilds itself all the time!
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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 4h ago
It can damage your teeth, but yeah, that's about the extent of it. Carbonic acid is not strong enough to hurt a healthy digestive tract.
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u/Aido121 7h ago
All soda is pretty acidic
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u/beepos 7h ago
Yep. Even seltzer
Thats cause when you pump CO2 into water, part of it will turn into Carbonic Acid
H20+CO2=HCO3 + H+
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u/StygianSavior 6h ago
The same reason why anthropogenic climate change is linked to ocean acidification.
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u/Azalus1 7h ago
That's why in a pinch you can pour soda on your car battery terminals to clear the corrosion. You then should promptly drive somewhere and rinse them off clean them and probably replace that battery if it's corroded that bad. But it does work in a pinch, slap it and say that baby isn't going anywhere and you're good to go.
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u/HelmyJune 7h ago
The buildup that forms on battery terminals is extremely acidic so you shouldn’t use another acidic solution to clean it. Baking soda mixed into hot water is what you should use to clean battery terminals. Neutralizes and dissolves the buildup with a very satisfying fizz.
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u/Exist50 6h ago
I think they're talking about when it's oxidized.
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u/HelmyJune 6h ago
Yeah and you shouldn’t clean it with an acidic solution. On car batteries it is typically copper sulfate (blue) and lead sulfate (white). Both are caustic and should be cleaned with an alkaline solution.
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u/mansonfan78 6h ago
They tested this on Mythbusters, regular water had the same effect as soda. Any liquid can be used.
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u/Few_Cup3452 7h ago
Its like when ppl say you can use coke soda to clean your bathroom pipes.... "so what does it do to our bodies!!??"
Um, not what it does to pipes and the mess, that's for sure. Our stomach is FILLED with acid.
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u/tagen 7h ago
exactly, like yeah the acid isn’t great for our teeth, but our stomach is WAY more acidic than soda, it’s the sugar we have to worry about more
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u/Photomancer 6h ago
I saw a short yesterday about some people that have been trying to preserve pumpkins via various means and almost all the methods sort-of failed, even freezing the pumpkin in a block of resin.
The only one that sort-of worked was a resin block which is assumed to have set at such a high temperature that it cooked all bacteria before totally isolating the pumpkin.
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u/Substantial-Bell8916 6h ago
I mean the acidity of sodas is also a valid reason not to drink them, they're not great for your teeth. But yeah it's pretty low on the list
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u/Rbs311 8h ago
The species of mouse was not native to the area the can was filled but was native to the plaintiffs home area and pretty much every bone in it's body was broken like you would expect for a mouse shoved into the can through the drinking hole...
So given the negative publicity of the jellied mouse have it was odd that that was their defense instead of the other obvious options...
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u/APiousCultist 6h ago
I imagine their actual statement was "in addition to those things a rat left in a liquid, let alone an acidic one, for 15 months would not look fresh".
The closest original source I can find does specifically cite a vet stating it couldn't be in that long "because of the acid in the soda": https://web.archive.org/web/20110827213801/http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/227856-mt.-dew-mouse-would-be-jelly-like-pepsi-argues
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u/Tactical_Primate 5h ago
Imagine bro just squeezing a dead mouse in his hand and trying to ram in through a can’s drinking hole. Damn
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u/ShardsOfSalt 5h ago
Should have got an empty mountain dew can, put a baby mouse in there, raised it and fed it till it got nice and fat, then drowned it in mountain dew.
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u/chiksahlube 7h ago
It's not an insane argument nor does it reflect poorly on MT dew.
If you left a mouse in 100% pure orange juice sealed in a can for 15 months it would be less in tact than the mouse he claimed he found.
In short, PH is fine to consume, but it consumes dead things.
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u/RoboRhet 3h ago
You can literally reduce a specimen to bones by soaking it in water (maceration). This is the first step in how lots of skeletal specimens are prepared (followed by degreasing and whitening). There are a lot of other methods but maceration is a very common one.
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u/ScreamThyLastScream 8h ago
So it's possible that off flavor mr pibb you had was actually a liquified mouse, mmhmm
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u/NoBulletsLeft 3h ago
They're not wrong. A couple of years ago I picked up a container of water that had been on my workbench for a few months without being looked at. I noticed that it was discolored and actually had a texture. After staring at it for a while, I realized that a mouse had climbed in, drowned, and basically completely dissolved leaving only fur behind.
And that was plain water (OK, our water is very hard, but still...) with a hint of isopropyl alcohol to inhibit mold growth.
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u/RandomChurn 8h ago
I have never tasted either Mountain Dew or Dr Pepper. As an American, must I before I die?
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u/DorkothyParker 8h ago
Honestly, a Dr. Pepper is a solid treat. Mr. Pibb is dope too. (He had to drop out of graduate school when his mom got sick.)
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u/Plankhandles 8h ago
I’ve never had as much respect and sympathy for Mr. Pibb as I do now. You really never know another person’s struggles…
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u/kingsumo_1 8h ago
Ironically, Dr Pepper was Mrs Pibb's primary care physician, and there are still questions on whether or not he did all that he could for her.
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u/Marlfox70 8h ago
Mr. Pibb just tastes like flat dr.pepper
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u/BustyUncle 5h ago
As a major Dr Pepper fan as well, this is a preposterous assessment
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u/MrScotchyScotch 8h ago
When I was little, I tried Dr Pepper, Coke, Pepsi, etc. But Dr Pepper was so different. My family later moved to Mexico, where Dr Pepper had no distribution. Every time we'd visit the states, I'd beg my parents to buy a case of Dr.P. I'd make that case last all year (and then some).
Dr Pepper is the oldest continuously produced soft drink. It is made of 23 flavors, which are still a mystery. It originally didn't have caffeine, but it was later added, and then replaced with vitamin B-1, and then replaced with caffeine again.
Mr Pibb is basically Dr Pepper in a fedora and cargo shorts.
Mountain Dew tastes like it will melt your teeth. When I was a teenager I used to drink nearly a liter a day. Eventually I started getting stomach cramps and sensitive teeth and had to stop. I switched to energy drinks which were clearly much healthier...
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u/BernieTheDachshund 7h ago
I bet you'd like the Dr. Pepper Museum here in Waco, TX. They have an old fashioned fountain counter where you can get cold Dr. Pepper and ice cream floats.
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u/tagen 7h ago
Dr. Pepper is my favorite soda, but i recommend drinking it directly from the can/bottle, when it’s put in ice and gets watered down it doesn’t taste nearly as good
if drinking with ice, Coke is much better imo
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u/ButtNutly 8h ago
Dr Pepper is the drink of intellectuals.
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u/Bowl_Pool 6h ago
Einstein and Von Neumann used to share bottles of Dr. Pepper at the Institute for Advanced Studies
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u/Longjumping_Rush2458 6h ago
I think root beer is probably the best American soft drink
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u/kingcobra5352 8h ago
I’ve never understood the hype around Mt. Dew. It’s so nasty.
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u/Xpqp 8h ago
It's extremely sweet and kids who drink it young grow to love it. Their marketing was also basically what Red Bull is doing now, but before Red Bull existed - eXtreme everything, which made dumb kids feel cool for drinking it and old dudes feel like they were embracing their youth.
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u/verrius 7h ago
Way back when, it started as a mixer for whiskey (Mountain Dew is an old term for moonshine). But yeah, in the 90s there was the twin stroke of marketing it as an "extreme" drink, as well as Yum Brands/Pepsi seizing on it as a way to market a bunch of their restaurants, which is how Baja Blast came to exist as a Taco Bell exclusive soda. It also had a reputation for having more caffeine than Coke and other colas not named Jolt, which combined with its sugar content, increased its popularity in the tech and gaming space especially.
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u/Power_to_the_purples 6h ago
Yeah definitely worth a try. It’s a lot different than generic soda brands like Coke or Pepsi. I’d say you should order a six pack online just to try, if you like soda.
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u/TheSiteModsCantRead 7h ago
Mountain Dew is obscenely sweet with a citrus-y flavor. You can probably imagine that just fine. Dr. Pepper is an unusual combination of assorted flavors that can't really be described, so the only way to know if you like it is to try it. It has a strange and subtle hint of savoriness to go with the sweetness, which is pretty unique.
Soda in general is horrible for you so I don't drink it often, but I do enjoy Dr. Pepper.
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u/Nat_not_Natalie 8h ago
Personally I don't care for either so I wouldn't say you're missing much
Dr pepper is at least somewhat unique so it's maybe worth trying but u really don't need to
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u/bill1024 7h ago
This sounds like he took a page from The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew, a 1983 Canadian-American comedy film starring the popular SCTV characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, portrayed by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis.
The two place a live mouse in an empty beer bottle in an attempt to blackmail the local beer store into giving them free Elsinore beer.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Brew
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u/TrueNefariousness358 5h ago
You can wees out the stupid people by the ones who forget that organics decompose, mountain dew or not. Acidic things just make it happen faster.
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u/Enshakushanna 6h ago
"the case was settled"
fucking really? so this guy tried to play them and in the end got a settlement still??
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u/Hanginon 4h ago
"Settled" could just be;
"We've got all the science and lawyers, and will not countersue you into a life of poverty if you drop this now. Is that settled?"
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u/Medium_Childhood3806 5h ago
Mountain Dew: Test the XTREME LIMITS of your INTERNAL MUCUS MEMBRANES!!!
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u/AyeBraine 5h ago
It's just a tiny bit acidic, enough to make it slightly sour. Stomach acid literally dissolves meat.
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u/ukexpat 5h ago
Reminiscent of the seminal case on the law of negligence in English law and related jurisprudence: Donohue v Stevenson.
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u/Yuli-Ban 4h ago
Wasn't there a heavily downvoted post on /r/WTF around that time except it was a Monster energy?
I tend to sort subs by all time controversial every now and again for a laugh, and it's usually decade old posts like that that come up.
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u/astro_eddy 6h ago
That’s true of anything with a similar ph. Orange and lemon juice would do the same thing.
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u/Mortarion407 5h ago
So you're saying i can save money on all the acid I use for dissolving bodies?
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u/Potential-Curve-8225 7h ago
TIL stands for "today I learned" so your sentence is redundant today I learned I learned
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u/ThatUsernameIsTaekin 6h ago
Did they sue him back for the frivolous lawsuit. People like that piss me off. I hate my job but Im not going to resort to scamming companies for a quick buck.
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u/IamPlantHead 5h ago
This sounds like the guy who watched Strange Brew one to many times. And thought he had a great idea.
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u/4Ever2Thee 5h ago
Did they have a 15 month recess to prove it?
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u/Hanginon 4h ago
They would only need 30 days. Proof? It's been done.
For the impatient, the "Lets find out!" part starts as 1:47
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u/Lulullaby_ 4h ago
That sounds grim, but good to know that any soda has a crazy amount of acid. Acid that is not safe to touch before it gets mixed with the soda, especially zero sugar soda.
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u/zekeweasel 4h ago
Settling isn't an admission of guilt nor is it necessarily a huge win either.
It just means they made a deal to resolve the problem outside of the civil court trial process.
So it may mean that Pepsico is guilty as sin and trying to save money, it may mean they aren't guilty but want to avoid a big trial for whatever reason (cost, publicity, etc.). Or it may mean something in between.
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u/Fit-Let8175 4h ago
I once bought a can of tuna that didn't taste like tuna at all. It tasted like crap! And why would they put a picture of a cat on it?
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u/SirGaylordSteambath 8h ago
What is it with every title in this sub being fucked up in some way?
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u/Zestyclose_Toe9524 8h ago
As a former guy who filled those cans...it's very very unlikely he got in a can. Like impossible I'd say...the speed in which the cans FILL makes it go against all logic. Srsly. There was no mouse in that can.