A man made an unexpected discovery after finding a decades-old bottle of Mountain Dew in a ditch — complete with a winning code for a Super Nintendo.
“My cousin found a 1992 Mountain Dew bottle in a ditch this week. Under the cap was a winner for a Super Nintendo!” a user posted to Imgur in 2014, according to HuffPost.
The bottle had been sold in 1992 and apparently discarded almost immediately. It lay undisturbed in the ditch for 22 years before being discovered in 2014 with the winning cap still intact.
The Vintage Promotion
The prize was part of an “Under-the-Cap” promotion from the early 1990s, when Mountain Dew partnered with Nintendo to offer gaming consoles through codes printed inside bottle caps. The Super Nintendo, which was released in North America in 1991, was a popular prize during this era of beverage and gaming brand partnerships.
Despite the promotion being over two decades old at the time of discovery, the find generated significant attention online when the Imgur post went viral.
An Unlikely Treasure
The story captured the internet’s imagination as an example of an unlikely treasure found in an unexpected place. While promotional contests typically have strict expiration dates, the unusual circumstances of a bottle preserved for more than 20 years created a unique situation.
More than a decade later, the discovery remains a nostalgic reminder of the creative marketing campaigns that defined 1990s gaming culture, when major beverage companies frequently partnered with video game manufacturers to reach young consumers.
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