This Ridiculous Green Ooze Soda From The '90s Is Back In Illinois

By Anthony Todd in Food on Sep 9, 2015 2:17PM

via Amazon

Remember Surge? It was sort of like Coke's version of Mountain Dew, but much, much worse and with a ton of caffeine. Anyone who was a kid in the '90s couldn't escape this green stuff, which looked like nothing more than the Ooze from that Ninja Turtles sequel. But now it's coming back and is ready to regain its former glory.

The drink died out in the early 2000s because it wasn't very popular anymore, but last year, Coke brought it back for a special trial through Amazon. It was crazy popular. Now, according to Consumerist, it's back on store shelves in the eastern half of the U.S., and that includes Illinois.

According to the Grand Forks News Herald, a whole fan community sprung up around the soda when it was discontinued and, over the course of many years, convinced Coke there was a market for the stuff. People even raised money for a billboard.

Things escalated in late 2011 when Californian Evan Carr founded the Surge Movement Facebook page. Winans realized the stranger could make better use of the 8,000 online followers he had amassed, and Carr jumped at the opportunity.

Another Surge devotee, Sean Sheridan of Murphy, Texas, was brought on as a fellow administrator, and the three watched Surge Movement explode to more than 18,000 followers. It currently has about 250,000 "likes."

In 2013, the trio raised $4,000 and bought a billboard near Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters with a simple message: "Dear Coke, We couldn't buy Surge so we bought this billboard instead."

Coke has put its social media muscle behind the relaunch of the soda, with a Twitter account, Instagram feed and even a hashtag: #SURGEcomeback. There's even a slightly sad gif of a man rocking out when he hears the news.

But Surge isn't available everywhere—it's only being rolled out in a few special stores, and slowly. It's almost as though they're trying to build some kind of hype. There's a locator map on the Coke website, and right now, it looks like the only places in Illinois to get the stuff are in Johnsburg or Plainfield. Who's up for a road trip?