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Nope.
It's probably a regional thing, though. Only certain facilities have the natural sugar silos to be able to make the \"throwback\" products.
Nope.
It's probably a regional thing, though. Only certain facilities have the natural sugar silos to be able to make the \"throwback\" products.
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But it still feels like it tastes better!
No it doesn't, but the packaging is actually really friggin cool!
Also, I do not think it is a deliberate ploy to mislead consumers.
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I honestly feel as though this was deceptive. When all the articles came out (including the one on the Consumerist), they all were essentially the same press release from Dr. Pepper saying \"look for the retro packaging and you'll receive tasty sugar goodness\". Nothing about how they were also releasing special packaging but with the same old HFCS crap.
I called around to local stores asking if they had the one with the real sugar, and that it would be in special retro packaging. Found the closest store, which was a walmart 100 miles away, drove there, to find out that the retro packaging doesn't mean anything.
Really? You drove 100 miles for Dr. Pepper? Really?
200 miles, round trip. And yes, when it's a 25 minute drive each way just for the closest crappy pizza place, I don't mind going out of my way for something I want to buy, even if it is just sugar water. The extra driving just reminds me how nice it is to live in a rural area without HOAs, strip malls, lots of traffic, or stoplights every 1/2 mile.
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He looks like Wellington Moneybags.
\"Dear Sir, please remit one package of Dr. Peppers Perfectly Packaged Potion forthwith - Sincerely Mr. Moneybags.\"
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Remember that it does matter if Pepsi or Coke bottles your Dr. Pepper. You also want Dr. Pepper Heritage, not just Dr. Pepper in retro packaging. Heritage will say it contains sugar ON the packaging, so don't assume.
Why does it matter who the contract bottler is?
Because when they were making Throwback, many Pepsi bottled Dr. Pepper had sugar in it, even the non-Heritage Dr. Pepper.
Oh, are you from Jersey? (Just wondering based on your profile caption)
If so, Pepsi doesn't bottle the Dr. Pepper in Dirty Jerz, but they do produce the Throwback products out of Piscataway.
They do changeovers from the silos. I've done the production planning. They don't just say \"Meh, lets put sugar in this one too!\" Dr. Pepper Snapple Group would make the decision as to what concentrate/sugar/etc goes into what packaging and then Pepsi/Coke would order said materials.
It's not really based on the contract bottler. It may have been a regional market test, I suppose.
Did the non-Heritage packaging say HFCS or Sugar?
HFCS is so much easier for manufacturers to move around a plant. They can pump it from the tank cars and into silos with just heat. sugar has to be kept dry and blown using a more expensive air pressure system, and it cakes for almost any reason.
The fun things in syrup plants are the explosion proof rooms. Most of the dry chemicals in soda are highly explosive in certain steps of manufacture. Anything with citric acid they are \"supposed\" to shut the blast doors entirely while measuring for batches.
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But you can make simple syrup from sugar, which then becomes just as transportable as HFCS.
Perhaps you are referring to the phenomenon that happens with almost any granulated material, from saw dust, to flour, to coal dust.
Having been to 4+ soda manufacturing plants (worked at a beverage company), none of them had \"blast\" doors. They had normal heavy duty swinging doors with plastic flaps to keep warehouse smog from entering the batching area.
I'd be curious to see what you mean by blast doors.
Went I went back home for the Cherry Festival, Meijer was selling .5 liter glass bottled Mexican coke with real sugar. They weren't in the soda aisle, and they were about $1.50. Well worth it.
Here where I live (St Louis) every grocery store carries Mexican Coke in the \"International Foods\" aisle for 99 cents per 12oz glass bottle. They also carry Mexican Fanta made with real sugar for the same price.
I've never seen the retro Dr. Pepper in either form. Of course I think the vending machine at my job is still serving Olympic coke cans...
Nothing better than Mexican Coke.
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LOL, the moment that I read \"cherry festival\" and \"Meijer\" I knew where you were from.
I just bought a case of Mexican Cokes from my local Sams Club in Virginia a couple of weeks ago. At around $20 it was worth splurging on. It might not be carried in all markets but worth checking out if you are a member.
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OMG!! MEXICAN COKE!!!! I am not at all a coke fan, and actually not really a soda fan but good god Mexican coke? Brilliant. I stock up whenever I am there. Why on Earth do they not use that formula in the States??
Sugar tariffs and corn subsidies mean that HFCS is a lot cheaper in the US than sugar.
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I think you'll only find sugar in the current demographic who those products are target to, the tail end baby boomers who have fond memories of the stuff from their childhoods. They have logos from the late sixties and early seventies.
Speaking of which, I bought a Pepsi throwback the other day and it almost brought me to tears- it really does taste like the old stuff. I thought this whole throwback thing was just marketing BS, but gave in out of curiosity, and damned if it wasn't spot-on. I haven't enjoyed a Pepsi in decades. Turns out it's not just sentimentality. It's also because modern-day sodas really do taste like chemical laden crap in comparison to the older styles.
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Agreed. While in Europe, I really enjoy drinking all the sodas there because they all have real sugar in them. Thanks to the airlines weight restrictions, I can only bring back 1 or 2 bottles. How sad.
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I understand demographics and marketing but with soda like this, how is it segmented to only your perceived targets? Plus, my 12 year old son is more in tune to the throwbacks with real sugar than I am.
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It appeals to Gen Xers like myself who have spent a lot of time in the third world drinking sugar based soda out of glass bottles. Just mention Mexican Coke and Tacos to someone who has been to Mexico and watch their eyes grow and drool drip from their mouth.
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It also appeals to those of us who grew up before the HFCS-in-friggin'-everything age. I thought I'd stopped loving Mountain Dew, which I loved as a kid, just because my tastes had changed. Then I bought a Throwback Mountain Dew, and I was similarly brought to tears. OMG.
I have about 10 12-packs of Pepsi Throwback in my pantry, even though I only drink a soda or two a week. Why? The same reason Elaine stocked up on Today Sponges!
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So now you have to decide which guests are soda-worthy?
Also, it appeals to those who think HFCS is bad for you.
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can they start making it without the phosphoric acid? that'd be something
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Just another nefarious attempt by a heartless corporation to defraud people who, through clearly no fault of their own, lack the ability or time to read the side of a box.
The bastards.
I blame lazy teachers, who spend the day on the internet, rather than teaching. ;P
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Usually I agree with theses types of statements, I mean after all, they're out to bleed us out of every dime but in this case, is the packaging misleading? I didn't see any reference to real sugar on the box or can. Maybe the real sugar one is only available in certain areas where the bottling (canning) process can change to sugar from HFCS. Just saying...
I guess you missed his bleeding sarcasm.
Oops! You're right, running on no sleep today.
S'all love
Is the \"sugar sweetened\" Dr. Pepper the same thing as Dublin Dr. Pepper, which I order a case of around Christmas time? Or is that a different formula?
I don't always drink soda, but when I do, it's Mexican Coke, or Dublin Dr. Pepper.
I live fairly close to Dublin, Texas, where they bottle Dublin Dr. Pepper. That bottler still uses Imperial Pure Cane sugar, which has a different proportion of Sucrose to Fructose than beet sugar, which is used by virtually all other bottlers. You can certainly taste the difference. However, any Dr. Pepper sweetened with sugar tastes far better than any sweetened with HFCS.
However, any soft drink from a can also tastes a little worse than any from a glass bottle. The original formula was made to be bottled in glass, so aluminum and plastic containers each require slight adjustments to the carbonation level. You can taste that difference significantly. (And while I personally can't taste the aluminum can, I do believe the folks who say they can.)
They also have a few plants outside of Dublin that manufacture cans of DP made with Imperial cane that aren't \"Dublin\" Dr. Pepper. I have found them at Brookshire's in Kilgore, Texas.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the difference between bottle and can. Soda must come from a glass bottle and it must contain cane sugar.
Thanks for the info about cane sugar vs. beet sugar. That had not occurred to me!
So ... they rolled out retro packaging, but they're using it on both HFCS and cane sugar cans?
My box and cans look completely different from what they are showing. The cans have a worlds fair type look with lion, biplane, blimp, clouds, city background and of course the \"made with real sugar\" logo. Ingredient label confim sugar, with nothing about HCFS.
Oh...I lie. My box does look like that, except at the center of the rising sun is where mine has the sugar label.
I saw the Heritage Dr. Pepper in Texas while traveling a few weeks ago, but decided not to buy any, thinking I could pick some up when I got back home. I've been watching our local Kroger since then, and never saw it. Turns out I was A) shopping at the wrong Kroger, and B) it's being stocked in with regular Dr. Pepper, not just beside or instead of it. People are picking out the Heritage from the shelves and stacks. I managed to grab the last couple of 12 packs one of my local stores had just this week.
Yes, I think they know well that consumers want the real sugar soda, and are trying to capitalize on that nostalgia without having to go to the trouble/expense of continued production of the non-HFCS formula.
I would love to be involved with a double blind taste test to see if I can tell the difference. I can taste a difference when I already know which is which but humans can fool themselves pretty easily.
Take me and 20 or 30 other testers. Give us 10 shot glasses apiece. Each one was prepared by someone else who is not going to be present when we are tasting. Each shot glass is coded. 50% of them are corn syrup Dr Pepper and 50% of them are sugar Dr Pepper. We do not know which are which. The people serving them to us do not know which are which. We cannot get any kind of clues as to which are which. We have to solely rely on our senses. We taste the drinks and write down what we think is in each shot glass. Later, the results are figured out. We see how often we could tell the difference.
I personally do not know if I can tell the difference under these conditions. I would like to know.
My wife thought the same thing as she has dull taste buds.
I buy the Mexican Coke from Costco and drink it when I'm wanting to savor it. One night, she brings me a glassful of it and after the first sip, I ask her why it tastes funny, which I was thinking it was a change in dish detergent or something and she admits that she gave me the normal can HFCS version because it is cheaper and I wouldn't know the difference.
Oops.. I did.
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I could tell the difference. When I get an allergic reaction, that'll be the HFCS-soda. I think Pepsi is the bottler in my area, so I haven't seen any of the retro Dr. Pepper. Sucks.
I would be astonished if you couldn't tell the difference, with no ambiguity whatsoever. It's much easier to tell the difference between Dublin Dr. Pepper and HFCS Dr. Pepper than it is to tell the difference between HFCS Dr. Pepper and HFCS Mr. Pibb.
Lots of people can't tell the difference, especially when both have been in cans. From the bottle it tastes \"greener\".
Well, I have seen and read about a lot of tests where people swore they could tell the difference between two versions of something and in the end the people learn that when they had to rely completely on their senses and did not know beforehand which was which then they could not tell the difference.
I am not saying that it is impossible to tell the difference. I can tell the difference when I know one from the other beforehand. What I would like to see is a double blind taste test to see if that truly holds up. If it does then we know that the corn syrup version is an inferior product that is unfit for swine.
Maybe I can recruit some coworkers for a test.
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Saw these at costco, but checked label before buying so I passed. How hard is that?
\"Do you think this is a deliberate attempt by Dr. Pepper to trick people into thinking they're buying real-sugar soda?\"
No. It's an attempt--like all packaging changes--to catch the eye of the consumer and increase sales.
Besides, retro packaging is irresistible.
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I bought the glass bottles at the local gas station because they had a sign up that said made with real sugar. When I got out to the car and took a drink I could tell something wasn't right. I flipped the bottle around the the sticker they had on it had HFCS as the main ingredient on it. Well I already had started to drink it so I finished it and just made a mental note to check the ingredients in the future before buying.
However just for fun I was going to call Dr.Pepper and see if they could get me some of the sugar only stuff since I was tricked out of it.
I'm not a regular soda drinker, I gave it up for the most part just due to the fact that water is a whole lot cheaper and healthier, but I do occasionally treat myself to a Dr Pepper or Pepsi here and there.
Am I the only one who finds the whole \"Throwback\" soda thing just incredibly frustrating and an absolutely insane display of arrogance on behalf of the large soft drink corporations?
Seriously, they release these \"classic ingredient\" batches of soda in the smallest windows throughout the year, and make the public go rabid and foam at the mouth about that product they used to enjoy.
In other words, they are basically saying:
\"Hello Consumers, we're Coke/Pepsi. Our Bottom Line is so much more important to us than providing our customers with a product they genuinely enjoy, a product which is arguably healthier for you than the cheaper, refined, government(taxpayer) subsidized corn sugar product we sell to you the other 95% of the year, that we're going to let you have a short taste of what you'd actually like to pay for. As always, thanks for buying our product\".
Eat shit.
Wow, what I am lost upon if your reasoning and logic. How did making soda with sugar become such a bitter and vile condition in your mind? LOL. And as for \"the public go rabid and foam at the mouth about that product they used to enjoy\", that is a stretch of a presumptous statement to make without proof. In fact, I'd say your post is completely lacking any proof with zero concrete evidence to base your theory.
In short, I don't look at these things as though they are \"out to get me\".
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I always took to mean something more along the lines of:
\"The bottom line is everything. We are far more profitable making a corn syrup product, and most people don't care. But there is the distinct possibility that corn subsidies might shift more toward energy production and/or political pressure against the use of corn syrup for human consumption is mounting, and may soon break. We need to make sure that we can convert to an old formula corn syrup prices shift, and if we can make a little more off it in the mean time, great.\"
Couldn't agree more. It's a shitty thing for them to do, and I don't even drink sugary soda so I don't deal with this particular issue.
But I HATE HFCS, it tastes like shit.
The Dr Pepper with \"Real Sugar\" is called Dr Pepper Heritage.
The bigger question is whether each can should have 24 ounces in it if you don't pour it over ice.
The Dr. Pepper bottling plant in Dublin, Texas has been bottling Dr. Pepper since before Dr. Pepper started bottling Dr. Pepper. No kidding. They have never changed their formula, which requires Imperial Brand Pure Cane Sugar.
Dr. Pepper Heritage is a close approximation, but it's still not the original Dr. Pepper formula. Proportions of certain ingredients have been adjusted, and the sugar, while real, is a blend of many varieties of sugar from different sources. (Yes, cane sugar has a different flavor than beet sugar or other fruit sugars.)
Since the Dublin plant only bottles one day each month, and their legal distribution radius is like 40 miles from Dublin, we'll never see it widespread. I asked while touring the plant why I've seen it other places, and the tour guide said, \"Basically, they're bootlegging it.\" The plant is allowed to SHIP their product out of their area, but they're not allowed to truck it out on their own. Weird contract.
A hot dog with sauerkraut and a knish from Ben's Best Deli with a Dr. Brown's Black Cherry soda is quite possibly the best \"fast food\" lunch on the planet.
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I don't see the problem. HCFS is made from corn, and it's fine in moderation.
/cashes check from corn industry.
Not if you have taste buds.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1221204-100x100.png\")
Not if you've got a corn allergy.
I just bought some the other day. The box of Dr Pepper has the retro ads, but also a big \"Made with Real Sugar\" logo stamp. The ingredient list says sugar and the taste is right. I think there's just retro packaging w/o the sugar too.
Whatever. It's still fructose and glucose in carbonated water, and still makes us fat and diabetic.
Maybe it's an attempt to \"prove\" that HFCS is the same as sugar by creating a placebo effect among customers who swear they're drinking the sugar formula but really aren't.
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Frakkin' HFCS. I'm not a fan of Dr. Pepper, but this just reminds me how much I wish Pepsi would make their \"Throwback\" line a regular item.
ok, lesson learned here: retro does not necessarily mean \"sugar content\" but only retro packaging. Read the label.
I only drink Diet Dr. Pepper anyway!
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Do it right and buy Dublin Dr. Peppers. That means you won't have to worry about that corn syrup crap.
I feel like and ass. My husband and I, who are both rabid DP fans like the HFCS version better. The sugar ones tasted like they had artificial sweetener in them. It's sad that we are so used to the other stuff that sugar tastes fake.
It's really weird how people seem to think cane sugar is somehow healthy now just because it's not as shitty as HFCS.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-615273-100x100.png\")
I could really go for a glass-bottled, cane-sugary Dublin Dr Pepper right about now. That stuff is insanely delicious.
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I learned something today. Just when I was about to be smug and say that Canadians don't have to deal with HFCS in soft drinks, I started researching. Soft drink makers call it \"glucose/fructose.\" Read from http://www4.agr.gc.ca/AAFC-AAC/display-afficher.do?id=1172167862291&lang=eng :
Glucose/fructose is a generic term for high fructose corn syrup or HFCS
Fortunately, most ingredient labels on soft drinks still put sugar on the label, usually \"sugar/glucose-fructose.\" And to think things were better up here. I was wrong.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1539413-100x100.png\")
I always look forward to the sugar sweetened sodas when I travel to Costa Rica and the Philippines. The difference is just remarkable.
Pepsi did a \"throwback\" promotion during Super Bowl week this past year for their products. That is sodas sweetened with cane sugar. For whatever reason the stuff was just awful.
Dr.Pepper Heritage has been here for a while. Both are fairly clearly labeled, the sugar version has a different name even.
I haven't seen much connection with this promotional \"anniversary\" packaging - it's just a different design.
Who actually expect any business or government to tell the truth? That's just stupid.
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I bought my sugar Dr. Pepper yesterday. But in all honesty I would kill for the stuff in glass bottles, I hate the after taste cans leave. I am currently in Texas, so the glass bottles pop up in various places, but I wish it were more widely available.
if you care to divulge, where do you live in Texas? I've been able to find cane sugar Dr. Pepper in cans, plastic bottles, and glass bottles in different places...
While I agree with you on a nostalgic level, I must be the party pooper who informs you that a clear glass bottle (or plastic bottle, or anything else that lets in light) is more likely to allow the flavor of its contents to be adversely affected than a modern aluminum can lined with plastic. Meaning any \"metallic\" taste (I know you didn't say it, but I hear it all the time) is either imagined or is from your lips touching the top of the can, as the drink never touches metal.
Despite all this, I still prefer drinking soda (and beer!) from a bottle rather than a can. It just feels right.
Most, if not all of the Texas Sam's Clubs carry Dublin Dr. Pepper in 24 pack flat for something like $15. As for cans, someone said you can only get cans locally in Dublin. Haven't seen cans myself north of Dublin--only bottles.
Oh, and as an aside, they're still pumping out Pepsi and Mt. Dew throwback locally. Per the distributor fellow, they're testing the local market in a possible attempt to go national, full time w/the throwback goodness.
FWIW.
I know Texas is as big as well, Texas. But all it takes is a little trip to a magical land called Dublin. Go to the promised land my son.
All it takes is a road trip to Waco....
I wish they sold the tall glass bottles of Dr Pepper. They sell them in glass bottles but they are shorter than the ones I used to get. I still remember the first time I had Dr Pepper. My parents had let me have Coke and I thought it was ok. I was at my great grandmother's house mowing her lawn and she told me to get a soda pop from the fridge in her garage. I went there and all she had was Dr Pepper. I popped the cap off and drank and I realized it was the nectar of the gods. I never liked Coke after that.
I can get the Dublin Dr Pepper. That town is only a few miles away from where my parents are. Works out for me when I am visiting. In Houston, I can come across some every now and then but it is a bit more rare.