In this year’s campaign to celebrate the Fourth of July and all fifty states of the United States, the marketing directors at PepsiCo tried their heavy hand at humor to create a pun from the name of one of their soft drink lines. The campaign surrounding Mountain Dew is proudly named “DEWnited States,” and each can or bottle will display the name of a United State. The big reason for soda fans to participate in this campaign is the alluring prize of a prepaid gift card with $100 for anyone who can collect labels from all 50 states.

Well, it appears that Mountain Dew must have some kind of memory altering ingredient that the staff of PepsiCo’s marketing team has been drinking because the promotional ads for this campaign depict Michigan's U.P. as part of Wisconsin.

The states are a little bit too DEWnited.

Look at that! Each state is obviously distinguished by different, wacky patterns, except the smaller states in the north east which are separated into regions, and the U.P. is clearly drawn as an extension of Wisconsin, like a big, ugly hat. In sixth grade, that would have cost me at least two points off on my geography test. Not only does this mistake appear in Mountain Dew’s map of the United States, but it also appears in a video promoting the state of Michigan, or half of it, at least. That means this mistake slid through TWO revision and approval processes and no one saw it. Or no one cared. 

PepsiCo has not made a move to take down any promotional graphics or videos containing this mistake since its release last Tuesday (July 9), but they have reached out to the unverified Twitter account, @UpperPeninsula, with a promise to make a label specifically for the misrepresented region. It’s unclear as to whether or not this new label will count as a Michigan bottle or a separate, bonus bottle in the contest, but at least the Midwest has hope for reparations.