Dr. Pepper Berries'N'Cream

The grocery store had sample-sized bottles of the new Dr. Pepper flavor for only fifty cents. (Excuse me, "fitty" cents.) I bought one out of curiousity.

It tastes almost exactly like regular Dr. Pepper. The key is "almost." It's like they were trying to find a cheaper chemical to make the drink with and stumbled on this concoction. "Hmmm. It's sorta like Dr. Pepper but with a berry-ish taste, with a hint of cream soda."

Unfortunately, it still has that "chemical" taste so many new drink flavors have. It's the cheap artificial esters they use in place of real flavoring, which is expensive. I'm old enough to remember real fountain Coke with real cherry syrup mixed in. That was Cherry Coke! Truly delicious. The modern stuff called "cherry coke" is like particle board shelving to the real mahogany of Cherry Coke.

You youngsters have no idea. So many foods these days are so far removed from the original it's just sad. Most "cheeses" these days are extruded milk proteins enhanced with fats, coloring and "flavor enhancers." Look at Velveeta or other "cheeses; they're actually called "cheese food product."

You're stuck with liquid swill like "diet vanilla cherry Coke" or "berries'n'cream Dr. Pepper" nowadays. Heck, even "Coca-Cola" isn't the original stuff any more. Folks old enough to remember the "New Coke" debacle usually don't know that when the Coke company brought back the "original" it was as "Classic Coca-Cola." The reason? They stopped using expensive cane sugars from Africa in favor of cheaper fructose corn sugars! The slight, but telling, change in formula meant they couldn't call it "Coca-Cola" any more. It was a different product!

And now you know.