Is the world ready for a "breakfast soda?"

If you want a beverage to give you a little kick in the morning (or a big one) you have a lot of options. Coffee, tea (herbal, green or black), espresso drinks, soda, energy drinks… heck, you can even drink Mountain Dew in the morning.

But that won't deter Pepsico from launching a new "experimental" beverage called Kickstart, which is basically a fruity Mountain Dew. Their target audience is Mountain Dew drinkers who want something caffeinated in the morning, but for some reason do not want to drink Mountain Dew. (I don't get it either.)

Kickstart is basically a hybrid beverage, a cross between a soda, a juice-drink-without-much-actual-juice-content like Sunny Delight, and an energy drink. It will have five percent juice plus added vitamins C and B, and a little more caffeine than a regular Mountain Dew, but not as much as a Red Bull or Monster drink. It will be sold in the same "tallboy" 16 ounce cans familiar from energy drinks like Monster and Rockstar. However, it will have about half the calories of a regular soda, using artificial sweeteners to bring the calories down to 80 per can.

Kickstart will be joining an already crowded market. We seem to be entering the Long Tail era of sodas. There's a soda for every need; most likely, several. How far do you need to subdivide the market into niches?

What is obvious about Kickstart, which Pepsico is dancing around, is that this drink is clearly aimed at kids. Kids who need a caffeine jolt to get their day started, but whose parents (perhaps wisely) have forbidden them from drinking soda first thing in the morning. "It's got juice in it, Mom!" is a phrase that will be frequently used to describe Kickstart once it hits the market.

I also wonder if Kickstart is meant to edge its way into the vending machines of schools which have banned soda. Using its paltry five percent juice content as a cloak, basically. What won't they think of next!

Image copyright Associated Press