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Dr Pepper Enthusiast John Green Taste Tests Dr Pepper and Its Misbegotten Pretenders

2022-11-08 · review / recommendation · John · 6:20 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: self promotion, civic or action cta, community lore

In a blind taste test of Dr Pepper, Diet Dr Pepper and three knockoffs, John identifies the real Dr Pepper and praises its deliberately artificial complexity (a chemist's soda meant to taste like a soda fountain smells), then ranks socks like sodas to plug the Awesome Socks Club.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting, the Elizabeth Sullivan joke, the taste-test setup and a pause to vote

  • ★★ John interrupts the taste test to go vote, then says he has voted and implores viewers to vote too. — 00:00:00
  • ★ John jokes that 104-year-old Elizabeth Sullivan taught him that drinking Dr Pepper is the way to a long and happy life. (joke) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John sets out to blind taste-test Dr Pepper, Diet Dr Pepper and three knockoffs he calls meaningless. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:31 — Blind taste test of five sodas, with Dr Pepper's origin and why it tastes the way it does

  • ★★ John says the first sample tastes as if Dr Pepper were John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. (playful) — 00:00:31
  • ★★ John finds the third sample worse than water and far too cherry-flavoured. (playful) — 00:01:19
  • ★★★ John says Dr Pepper was invented by the chemist Charles Alderton, who wanted a soda tasting not of lemon-lime or citrus but of how the Waco pharmacy's soda fountain smells. — 00:01:19

  • ★★★ John says Dr Pepper is in essence artificial: a soda should not aim at a flavour like cherry, cola or root beer but at the way the human heart wants a soda to taste. — 00:01:48

    “You want to go for the way the human heart wants a soda to taste.”

  • ★★ John likens Dr Pepper's complexity to Whitman's Leaves of Grass: like the poet, it contains multitudes. (playful) — 00:02:52

  • ★★ John says Diet Dr Pepper's catchphrase was long that it tastes more like regular Dr Pepper, which he says it really does. — 00:03:13
  • ★★ After second-guessing himself, John correctly identifies Diet Dr Pepper and then Dr Pepper. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ John correctly guesses that the worst sample, tasting almost like cough syrup, is the Whole Foods Dr Pepper. — 00:04:36
  • ★★ John says that in his experience store-brand knockoffs are better than the knockoffs made by Coke or Pepsi. — 00:04:58
  • ★ John takes the better knockoff for Kroger's Dr. K, but it is Mr. Pibb, billed as spicy cherry soda. (playful) — 00:04:58

00:05:24 — Socks ranked like sodas: the Awesome Socks Club and its new ankle socks; sign-off

  • ★★ Ranking socks like the sodas, John calls Awesome Socks the Dr Pepper of socks: perfect, with 100% of proceeds going to charity, unlike Dr Pepper. — 00:05:54 · Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ John says the Diet Dr Pepper of socks is the club's new ankle socks, which they have just started making. — 00:05:54 · Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★★ John points viewers who like ankle or regular socks to awesomesocks.club, linked in the doobly-doo. — 00:05:54 · Awesome Socks Club, doobly-doo

In the description and comments

Humor (dominant)

  • John cites 104-year-old Elizabeth Sullivan, who explains in a clip that doctors warned her Dr Pepper would kill her — 00:00:00

    “two doctors have told me that if I drink it, I will die, but they died first”

  • Having likened the first sample to A Love Supreme, John rates the second — 00:00:31

    “This would be, I can also blow into a saxophone.”

  • After condemning the too-cherry sample as all wrong, John stakes his career on his palate — 00:01:48

    “By the way, if that's Dr. Pepper, I retire. I retire from public life.”

  • Quoting Whitman's 'I contain multitudes' about Dr Pepper's complexity — 00:02:52

    “That contains multitudes.”

  • Losing confidence on the last re-taste — 00:04:14

    “Please God be Diet Dr. Pepper. I'm gonna be in so much trouble if you're not.”

  • Mr. Pibb bills itself as spicy cherry soda, and John will tell you one thing it is not — 00:05:24

    “Spicy.”

  • Anticipating Hank asking how this becomes a sock commercial — 00:05:24

    “Don't you worry your pretty little face.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Awesome Socks Club · Dr Pepper

Also: People: Charles Alderton · Elizabeth Sullivan · John Coltrane · Walt Whitman

Works: A Love Supreme · Leaves of Grass

Organizations: Kroger · Whole Foods Market · Zevia

Terms: doobly-doo

Places: Waco, Texas

Events: 2022 United States elections

Products: Diet Dr Pepper · Dr. K · Pibb Xtra

Only in the description or credits: Dear Hank and John · Four-minute rule · Punishment

Also centred on Dr Pepper: What's This Video About? · BRING IT IN 2018

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