You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
What's that Mango? So I was looking up.
TikTok trends and I ended up on this channel from Mississippi Mema. Do you know her?
So? You think because I live in the South, I know just all the memas. I guess No, I.
Just thought you might know the channel. Also, she has a great accent, so you should know her. But in the video, she pulls up to a Sonic and she orders a doctor pepper with pickles, which apparently is the drink of the Summer. It's called a pickled doctor pepper.
The drink of the summer. Is like this, is this an official drink at Sonic?
I mean, I don't think it's official. I think it's more like a secret menu item. You know, it gets requested enough that the woman who took the order wasn't surprised by it at all.
So what is in it? You said? It's called a pickled doctor pepper?
Mm hm, Yeah, it's really complicated to make. Basically, you take it a giant doctor pepper, you put ice in it, and then you add five or six pickle slices or some pickle juice and that's it, and people go crazy for it.
Oh man. I mean, I know about the kool Aid pickles, and I'm obviously a Doctor Pepper fan. It's a good drink, but I don't know anyone who's drinking pickled peppers.
This is new to me, well me either, But I knew I had to try it. So I went out and I bought a Doctor Pepper, And honestly, it felt too ridiculous to like slice up a pickle and put it inside, So I just ate a few bites of a pickle and then I washed it down with the Doctor Pepper.
Oh man, this is a real experiment. You are dedicated to the job, and so what what did it tastes like?
It tastes like you're eating a pickle and washing it down with doctor Pepper. Oh oh that's a big Okay, all right, It did not change my life, but you know, it is the drink of the summer. Also, I wanted to celebrate Doctor Pepper because they've had a great year. Did you know that Doctor Pepper just tied Pepsi to be the second best selling soda in America?
Oh wow, that is huge.
Yeah, I know, I feel like we should be high fiving over it. But Coke is still firmly in first place. But according to The Wall Street Journal and Fox, part of the reason is because Doctor Pepper keeps experimenting with new flavors, all of which appeal to gen Z. Plus, this pickled Dr Pepper trend has apparently been contributing to their popularity. Anyway, That's just the first of nine strange facts everyone should know about Dr Pepper. Let's dive in.
Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to part time Genius. I'm Will and as always I'm here with my good pal Mango and sitting there behind that big booth. I know everyone's curious what he's doing today because he's always up to something interesting. But it's our good friend Dylan. He's not in a great mood that he's actually angrily waving a picket sign and it says, oh I'm trying to read. It says no Pepper, no period, look at him, go Mango. It's just it's just wild.
Yeah. I actually talked to him before the show and he said, as someone who's really passionate about grammar, he's protesting Doctor Pepper until they put the period back in the name. I guess the doctor in the soda used to have a period after the R until the nineteen fifties and then they with the fun it looked weird. And so you know, I'm not going to join Dylan's grammar protest, but I do agree with him in spirit.
Yeah, yeah, I mean he's always right when you think about it. Well, speaking of the doctor, why don't we talk a little bit about the doctor in Doctor Pepper Like it's always been kind of a mystery who this Doctor Pepper is. And Doctor Pepper is actually one of America's oldest sodas, first formulated in eighteen eighty five. It's a year older than coke, eight years older than Pepsi,
and practically speaking, it's from Waco Tech Now. According to the Doctor Pepper Museum in Waco, it was invented by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton, and in fact, in the early years of the drink, people used to call the drink a Waco, which is kind of fun, and they call for the drink at the counter by saying, shoot
me a Waco. But according to some its real origins are actually from Virginia, the way Texas Monthly tells it a young drugstore clerk perfected a tasty formula of twenty plus ingredients that you could add to soda water, and then sold it to a chemist on one condition that he would name the beverage after the clerk's father in law. Now, this was a physician named doctor Pepper, so he takes the drink with him to Texas starts this soda empire.
Now all of this is a little apocryphal, but what we do know is that, like most of these early sodas, doctor Pepper was originally sold as a curel, which is likely why they added doctor to the title of the drink. But by nineteen seventy three, the CEO of Doctor Pepper was clarifying that quote, a spoonful of doctor Pepper will not relieve constipation, hives, excessive acidity, morbidity, sterility, bile, eczema, hysteria, bronchitis,
or what ails you in general. And while folks still splash it on and some rub it on, I guess the only claim we make is that doctor Pepper is soothing to youngsters suffering post Ton selectomies. So that's what he clarified. Didn't do any of the other stuff, but it will help youngsters suffering from post Ton selectomies. So there you have it, mango.
I love the idea of people rubbing Doctor Pepper on like it's a colone. Just flash, you're in this smell kind of good. I wonder why it was so important to the kid that the drink be named for his father in law, though.
You know, of course, like so many of these stories, there's a lot of lore behind it. But another claim is that the doctor is doctor Charles T. Pepper, who is a Confederate physician. It's hard to tell what's true though, Like supposedly, the Doctor Pepper Museum has like a dozen different origin stories that they've tried to fact check. Not a whole lot of luck so far, though.
Well, I know one of the things that Doctor Pepper has always pried itself on is the fact that it's an original flavor, right that no one knows what the twenty three ingredients are, et cetera. And I always laugh looking at those lists of Doctor Pepper knockoffs, like the Soda Lover's wiki has one hundred different budget variations, from Doctor Shasta to Doctor Bob, Doctor Topper, Doctor good Guy, doctor Gulpster, Doctor Sparkles, Doctor Wham, Doctor Slam, Doctor A Plus, and Professor Fizz.
Like you're just making a few of these out, but that's a fun.
List, just scratching the surface here. And there's some misters on there as well, because some of the sodas didn't make it through grad school, which does make me wonder about the origins of.
Mister pib and so, so what did you learn?
Basically that SODA's were very much a regional delicacy for a very long time. So aside from Coke and Pepsi, who are bottling their product nationally, you have things like Werners from Michigan or Moxie, which is from Maine, right, and Doctor Pepper was really considered a Southern drink. When Doctor Pepper started making a push to go wider, Coke was threatened, so they decided to introduce a competitor, and
they tried a few times. According to Texas Monthly, Coke did some small scale tests of two drinks in the nineteen sixties. One was called Texas Stepper and another one was called Chime. But in nineteen seventy two they rolled out a drink called Pepper, which obviously was a little close in name to Dr Pepper, so Dr Pepper sued them, and then they changed the name to Mister PIB. But what's really funny is that this entire time, Coke denied that they were trying to make a Doctor Pepper knock off.
Like a Coke spokesperson told Texas Monthly quote, I haven't tasted Dr Pepper myself, so I wouldn't know how similar it is to Mister Pip. He goes on. I don't think it was meant to compete with Doctor Pepper as far as I know, Coke just felt there was a market for this kind of soft drink. It's ludicrous, especially
knowing the name change. But the other part that's really funny is that Texas Monthly looked a little closer and found that even though mister PIB had no relation to Doctor Pep, and even though Coke wasn't trying to imitate the flavors, the places where they decided to test market Mister PIB were Waco, Texas, which is the birthplace of Doctor Pepper, and the other towns in the South that were strongholds of Dr Pepper. Yeah, yeah, it's super coincidence.
But there's Actually, one other funny thing about the cover up. When mister pib first debuted, the color was brown, but Coca Cola quickly changed it to red, and according to mash, it's because Quote Coke was worried people would think it was a Rupier ripoff instead of a dr Pepper ripper.
Ah, I see, yeah.
Which is so funny to me. But what do you wanna what do you wanna talk about next?
All right, well, all your talk of pickled Doctor Pepper made me think about the original Doctor Pepper hack, which was to heat it up on the stove. Have you heard about this?
Yeah, nothing like a piping hot Doctor Pepper on a hot day. But uh, do you know how how that hack got started?
Apparently this goes right to the top, like like the drink was invented by Doctor Pepper's former company president, this guy Wesby R. Parker, who was irritated that his sales basically dropped to zero in the winter, so he was trying to figure out what to do with this. This was back in the nineteen fifties, so Parker started experimenting with different variations at home, just trying to make a
winter mocktail of sorts. And he realized that when you heated doctor Pepper on a stovetop, it actually retained its flavor, and if you added a slice of lemon to it, it was really delicious. Now, the funny thing is Parker actually did a comparison and warmed up a bunch of different sodas, and his belief was that because Doctor Pepper was made with natural fruit flavors instead of artificial ones, he'd actually retained the flavor in a way that other
sodas didn't. Anyway, the company started pushing the drink, and for a while, hot Doctor Pepper was served at the Cotton Bowl and other Southern regional football games in the winter. I'd not heard about this before.
Yeah, I'd never seen that. It's also kind of funny that all the variations are like pickle. Doctor Pepper tastes like doctor Pepper with pickle, he did, Doctor Pepper still tastes like Doctor Pepper. Just hot.
Yeah, it's just just hot doctor Pepper. But you know, the company really tried to make it a thing for a while, and they pushed it the holidays as kind of a warm punch, and the next president of the company said he used to have it in place of coffee. Even told journalists that he'd have three or four hot Doctor Peppers in the morning and then a bunch of cold ones in the afternoon, but obviously it never really took off.
Yeah, but I also kind of want to try that. We should do another episode where we just test all these sodas from like, I feel like there's so many hacks online from like Coke with peanuts, Doctor Pepperoni, which is Doctor Pepper with pepperoni in it, like Doctor Pepper with a screamer. Oh, it's gonna be terrible. I really
can't wait. Also, I didn't mention this, but earlier when I had that Doctor Pepper, like, I'd eaten the pickle separately and then I just left the Doctor Pepper in the bottle on the counter, and Henry walks over and he puts some mentos in it, and then down's the rest of it. It's like, why can't you just drink the Doctor Pepper?
Yes, seriously, come on, Henry, that's a different drink you're supposed to do with. So what fact do you want to run with next?
Here's a fun one. The Dallas NBC station went to the Doctor Pepper lab to see if they could get some tips on what those twenty three flavors and Doctor Pepper are, and of course they didn't have any luck. They were told the formula has been a secret since eighteen eighty five and that it's kept under lock and kena safe for sometimes even talked about being in two saves, with half the recipie in one and half the recipie another.
But one thing they did find out is that when new flavors are sampled at the Doctor Pepper labs, they're all done under a blue light so that the tasters can't see the color of the beverage. Apparently the color of a drink can have a real impact on the way you perceive a drink, and the blue light keeps tasters honest.
Which is great, But do you know what any of those twenty three flavors are? Like, I'm actually pretty curious about this now.
Yeah. I look that up as well, and there's a whole community of super fans online who've tried to figure it out, and according to Mashed, people think the main flavors are amaretto, almond, BlackBerry, black licorice, caramel, carrot, clove, cherry, ginger, juniper, lemon, molasses, nutmeg, orange, plum, pepper, root beer, rum, raspberry, vanilla, and most surprising to me,
tomato toto incredibly yeah. Yeah, I guess if you blend all those things up and you add some seltzer, you've got a house formula for your own Doctor Will or mister Will or whatever you want to call it. But one thing that Doctor Pepper is adamant about, and they say this all over the list, is that there are no prunes in Doctor Pepper. According to Doctor Pepper's faq online. They've got a question, does Doctor Pepper contain prune juice?
The answer is no, Doctor Pepper does not contain prune juice.
That is that is very good to know. I will put fewer prunes and more tomatoes in my homemade Doctor Pepper from now on. But still got a few more facts to go. But why don't we take a quick break first.
Welcome back to part time genius. When we're talking all things Doctor Pepper. So Will, where do you want to take it from here?
All right, Well, we've only got a few facts left. So you know, one of the things that's always interesting to me is the advertising over the years for all sorts of products. But especially sodas and foods and drinks like this. So in the early years they advertised Doctor Pepper for quote them vigor and vitality. You see what they did that did alliteration there, and they called it
liquid Sunlight. But according to The Daily Meal, in the nineteen twenties, there was a study from Columbia University that showed that blood sugar tends to dip at ten am, two pm, and four pm. So Doctor Pepper decided to capitalize on this with the slogan drink a bite to eat at ten two and four. I had to read that a couple of times because just drink drink a
bite to eat at ten to two and four. And basically they were pitching Doctor Pepper as three tiny square meals to give you this kick of sugar between your bigger square meals. And I guess according to the Daily Meal, the ads worked because wartime laborers kind of thought of it as their like their red bull or something, and so later in the fifties they continued that marketing line with the phrase the friendly Pepper upper. These are all such confusing phrases, and it was actually used on Dick
Clark's bandstand. But back to the whole drink a bite to eat thing for a second. Oddly, that ad is the only time Doctor Pepper decided to use a doctor mascot to sell the brand. They supposedly wanted to use a picture of a typical country doctor, but the cartoon image is is of this guy with like this top hat and these glasses and a glass soda bottle. He kind of looks like like a human version of mister Peanut.
And for some reason, under him there's a second slogan that reads join the club, which is a little more clear, like it's not very exciting, but just like you know what they mean by that.
At least, I feel like they're so good at mixing wrong ingredients and so bad at mixing wrong words.
Yes, yeah, yeah, Pepper the bite me so. Yeah, it's really good stuff.
Yeah, it's not at all confusing. But one thing I hadn't realized is how important it's been to Doctor Pepper's growth that the drink is not a cola. So, as we've mentioned before here, Coca Cola and Pepsi were well ahead in the soda game right like. By the nineteen sixties, Doctor Pepper was in fifth place in the soda wars, and it wasn't even a competition. And that's partially because
Pepsi and Coke had done a really clever thing. They'd each gone into markets to work with bottling companies and made them sign agreements that they had to be exclusive to their cola. But in nineteen sixty three, doctor Pepper got a federal court to rule that because no cola nut extract is in the drink, it is not actually a cola. And because of that loophole, they got bottlers around the nation to start making the drink for them.
So now if you're a bottler, you can like bottle Pepsi and Doctor Pepper, or Coke and Doctor Pepper without any conflict of interest. And if you remember, that's basically the point at which Coca Cola decides to accelerate the development of their Mister pib concoction. It's basically so that they can offer these companies their own version of the
drink and cut Doctor Pepper out. Anyway. According to the Motley Fool, the company went from doing about fifteen million dollars of sales annually to two hundred and twenty seven million dollars of sales in nineteen seventy seven, and it changed the company's perception of just being this regional drink.
And actually, just to bring this poem for a second, when Dr Pepper entered the New York market in nineteen seventy there was this Dallas born journalist named David de Vos, and he told Texas Monthly about how he entered a Manhattan delicatessen and he ordered a kosher salami on rye with a cold and sparkling Doctor Pepper. And it was this thing that it was unimaginable to him prior to that, right, like it was this taste of home. And as he wrote quote, it simply blew my mind. It was like
the merging of two great cultures. Munching on a big kosher pickle and washing it down with my Doctor Pepper almost brought tears of joy. The two complimented each other like wine and cheese. Right, I guess means people have been pairing Doctor Pepper with pickles for a very long time.
Now, apparently. So that is a great fact, and it's gonna be hard to top, but I think I have one that'll do it. Because Mango, I remember that when you were younger, you were a huge Guns n' Roses fan. Well, actually, I may have just made that up, but either way, it's a good fact. Did you know that Guns and Roses once sued Dr Pepper?
No? But uh, but now I'm very curious.
Well, I don't know if you remember this, but Chinese Democracy was an album that came out in two thousand and eight, and it had taken forever to create.
A Yeah, I remember, it was like one of the most expensive albums of all time, and they were always talking about when it was going to come out.
That's exactly right, and Guns n' Ros's last original music before that had been the Use Your Illusion one and two albums from nineteen ninety one, and trying to get their new album, Chinese Democracy off the ground had just been this nightmare, of course, and apparently they'd recorded like over fifty tracks. Slash left the band, the guitarist Buckethead left the band, lots of others left the band, and
tons of creative differences in all this drama. And to your point, Axel Rose, he'd spent like thirteen million dollars of David Geffen's money in the studio to that point. Then Dr Pepper for some reason stepped into the fray and offered a free Doctor Pepper to everyone in America except for Buckethead and Slash if the band just put out the album. The copy from the offer is incredible. I'm just going to read it here. It says we
completely understand and empathize with Axel's request for perfection. We know once it's released people will refer to it as Doctor Pepper for the Ears because it will be such a refreshing blend of rich bold sounds, an instant classic.
I just love this so weirdly. Axel Rose said that he appreciated the support, said he'd share his drink with Bucketheads since he played on the album, and then later announced that the album would be coming out some months later and Doctor Pepper kept their promise, which is all really cool, except the rollout was poorly executed. The details are too much to go through here, but trying to get free drinks to three hundred and five million Americans
turns out to be easier said than done. And it's not clear whether Doctor Pepper actually believed that the album is going to come out as promised or not, since it had been like fourteen years in the making. Anyway, people were pissed. Axel's lawyers threatened a lawsuit and called the whole thing this unmitigated disaster, and they said, quote in the eyes of vocal fans, doctor Pepper ruined Chinese
democracy's release. They also demanded full page apologies from doctor pepperin all the major newspapers at the time, from USA Today to Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. So it was a whole thing for a minute until Axelrose told his lawyers this isn't really an issue, and they dropped the whole thing.
That is so good, crazy and I love the idea of Slash. Just like watching the whole thing go in flames, like with his feet up on his stool, smoking a cigarette, drinking at doctor Pepper. It just feels perfect. I think you definitely win this one.
I'll take it. That's awesome. I appreciate that. And that's it for this week's episode. Thank you so much for listening, and remember we love hearing from you, whether that writing a review for the show or writing to our moms don't forget at pt Genius Moms at gmail dot com. We heard from a lot of you. We'd love to hear from many more of you. PT Genius Moms at gmail dot com. Seriously, that is the email address. Lalita and Paultte are waiting to hear from you. We'll see you next time.
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaschtikler and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.