Pepsi Looks to a New Drink to Jolt Soda Sales. Essentially a wild cherry Mountain Dew, Pepsi engineers the new drink to add the urban minority market to other niches — Rocket Power white youth, computer programmers — it has addicted to its original high-caffeine soft drink. In so doing, it breaks ranks with stonewalllling beverage companies by acknowledging for the first time that caffeine is in soft drinks for the physiological effect, not the flavor. New York Times