Dear Mr. Pepper, DDS,

In the last year or so, our world has seen a massive proliferation of joke sodas. It used to be that only the feral madmen over at the concern of your colleague, Mr. Dew, would, on the regular, load flavor syrups into their SuperSoakerShotgun, close their eyes, spin the barrel, and then, while laughing maniacally, hold down the trigger, filling thousands of bottles with neon puce carbonated corn juice, which they would then deliver by 2PM to the overworked marketing department, with the sure and certain knowledge that those bottles would be labeled something like Mountain Dew “I Have Become Death The Destroyer Of Worlds” Oppenheimer Edition and loaded onto distribution trucks by 5.

But now, in the last year, Mr. Coca and Mr. Pepsi have thrown their hats into the “let’s shove a bunch of weird flavors into our various colas and see if we can rake in a few bucks before we totally dilute our brands” ring. Mr. Cola has gone off the deep end with his conceptually-flavored sodas (as a side note, I’m guessing it’s only a mere few months until Mr. Coca produces a Regret-flavored soda, possibly as a tie-in with the next Darren Aronofsky flick) and Mr. Pepsi has been attempting to recruit allies in the Cola Wars with creations such as his Pepsi X Peeps horrorshow.

Until recently, you’ve held your head high and remained above the fray, and I respected you for it, sir. I don’t drink much soda, but I’ve always held your original Dr. Pepper product in high esteem; on the few occasions I drink soda it would be fair to say that your soda is my go-to. So you can imagine my surprise, and my fear, when I learned that you’d taken a tentative step into the “what random flavors can we jam into a can and sell at a 490% markup” fight with your new product, Dr. Pepper Strawberries and Cream.

Despite my initial fear of this product, I eventually came around; after all, your original product famously already contains 23 flavors – what’s two more? I wasn’t sure how strawberries would play as a twenty-fourth; and I’ll be honest that when I see things labeled “cream” flavored I never quite know what to expect – isn’t the main flavor of cream just fat? Can you make an artificial flavor that’s “butterfat and lactose?” Regardless, I sidestepped my confusion and dropped a case of your fine product into my shopping cart, and carted it home.

As I drove home, I thought about you, Mr. Pepper. Famously, you claim to be a doctor, but it’s never been quite clear what sort of doctorate you hold. One might assume you’re an MD, but you could just as easily be a Doctor of Divinity, or Astronomy, or even Molecular Biology. Lord knows, many of the folks I know who went and got doctorates have changed fields since - it has become very clear that academia is a difficult place to break into, and I’m guessing you’re the first in the Pepper clan to have achieved such a lofty degree as a doctorate, and so didn’t have any family connections to rely upon to get yourself a job as a professor, and so the humble life of a sugar purveyor made all too much sense to your life. Unless…

It came to me in a flash, Mr. Pepper. The only type of doctor that would make sense for you to be… is a dentist. It makes so much sense! First you get people addicted to sugary beverages, and then, when their teeth rot and need dental work, BOOM there you are, ready to help them out – both the people, and their teeth. Its a level of vertical integration in the consumables industry that even Mr. Carnegie would not have imagined, and it’s circular! People will always want your sugary beverages, and those people will always need dental work. Brilliant!

I also must tip my hat to your brilliance in branding, sir. No one would want to drink “Dentist Pepper” soda, and “Dr. Dentist” soda just sounds weird. Dr. Pepper, on the other hand, rolls as smoothly off the tongue as your soda rolls onto it.

I was considering this beautiful example of the vertical integration grift as I unpacked my groceries, and finally had the opportunity to crack a can of your Dr. Pepper Strawberries & Cream soda. The aroma is, frankly, about what you’d expect: the distinctive aroma of Dr. Pepper soda, with an overlay of strawberries dipped in lactic acid. I expect the lactic acid aroma is from whatever fake cream flavor is going on in here combining with the carbonation.

The flavor… I mean, I guess it’s fine? It’s Dr. Pepper, it’s fake strawberries, it’s cream soda. That’s the cream you were going for in the name, which is frankly kind of confusing. Strawberries and cream don’t taste like cream soda! I don’t know that I’ve ever really understood where cream soda gets its name, because it sure doesn’t taste like something that comes from God’s humblest creature, the perfect bovine. I suspect it used to be something like “vanilla creme soda,” but one of your colleagues – or perhaps even yourself – trademarked “creme” used in that context, and the rest of the soda barons cleverly got around that trademark by using words like “cream” and “creem” and “craem,” and now we find ourselves in the world that you’ve all built.

Now that I had tried your soda cold, sir, I knew I had to embark upon the ultimate flavor exploration journey: what does Dr. Pepper Strawberries & Cream soda taste like hot? While I’ve never quite understood the appeal of a hot Dr. Pepper, it was a thing your midcentury marketing department pushed for the longest time, and at a friend’s holiday celebration every year, he serves it to us, his humble guests; I’ve had your soda hot many times, and not just because I left it in the front seat of a car in the summertime. So I nuked half a mug full of your soda for a minute. I’m sure you’re cringing now, sir, thinking “no! No! You must heat it gently on the stovetop!” Well, sir, I am a busy man in a busy world; if I am to have any time to write you letters I must take occasional shortcuts, and in this case, it was the microwave.

The first thing I noticed is that the aroma of Dr. Pepper Strawberries and Cream, when barbarically heated in a heathen microwave, is actually reminiscent of warm strawberry Mr. Quik in milk. It actually gets a slightly milky aroma, which is not unwelcome, but is utterly bizarre when considering you’re looking at a brown water and sugar based beverage, that has never been anywhere near a dairy. The milky aroma is nowhere there in the flavor, I’m sad to say; it’s back to Dr. Pepper, strawberries, and cream soda; though the strawberry comes out much more strongly, steamrollering the other twenty-four flavors into the background. It tastes like drinking a liquefied strawberry jolly rancher, with maybe a hint of stonefruit.

I must say, sir, that mostly I was left unimpressed with this soda. It’s… fine. It’s not better than regular old Dr. Pepper. It’s not better than Mexican strawberry soda. I haven’t had one of Mr. Faygo’s sodas in a long time, but I don’t imagine it’s better than those. The best way I can describe this soda, sir, is: inessential. No one needed this. No one wants this. And I imagine one day, it will disappear from our local grocer’s shelves, unremarked and unremarked-upon. And on the day that happens, no one will mourn, no one will rend their garments, no one will tear their hair. I expect no one will even notice, except for the grocery store stockperson who has to pull the “Dr P S&C” SKU and pricetag off the shelf.

However, in a way, you are still to be congratulated, sir. In a world where every major soda purveyor’s beverage scientists seem to be building new flavors by channeling their inner child, sticking a cup under the seventy-nine option beverage dispenser at their nearest Wawa, and pressing random buttons until the cup is full, then without tasting or even thinking about it passing it off to marketing and saying “SELL SELL SELL” like a stock trader on Wall Street in 1929, your particular entry into the genre at least makes conceptual sense. I’d never call it good, and I won’t buy it again, but this time, I’m at least likely to finish the can. So, at the very least, you’re one up on your colleagues in that very small way.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise