As I’ve mentioned before, as a living, functioning human with working taste buds, I prefer sugary soda, but as a crypto-diabetic man-bear, I mostly confine myself to diet. However, since the introduction of lo-cal pop, folks in both the amateur and professional theaters of Carbin-Nation have been trying to game the system. The introduction of C2 in 2004 was a stroke of alchemical genius, and though it wasn’t a popular success, it was a game-changing development for those of us who want to have our Coke and drink it too. Of course, it was merely an official recognition of what kitchen food chemists have been up to for years; the true genius was the first beleaguered secretary who came up with the brilliant idea of mixing a Coke and a Diet Coke together. Fatties like me have long known that mixing just a tiny dash of the heroin that is real sugar/corn syrup with the stepped-on Clorox that is artificial sweetener is the key to making a truly tasty diet drink. The latest manifestation of this is Dr. Pepper 10, a mutant version of Diet Dr. Pepper that blends HFCS with the usual sucralose shenanigans — only 10 calories worth, in contrast with C2 which was still a pretty massive calorie-bomb, but enough to make it taste a lot like real soda pop. This thing is a goddamn revelation — probably the closest a lo-cal soda has ever come to tasting like a sugary soda, to my palate at least — so of course the marketing geniuses over at the Dr Pepper Snapple Group had to go and fuck it up with a truly obnoxious advertising campaign. I know the whole “NO GURLZ ALLOUD” thing is popular with morons, but honestly, this fucking “get back, bitches, this is a manly man diet soda” thing is really fucking repulsive. I’d really like to enjoy your tasty beverage treat without feeling like I’m contributing to institutionalized sexism, not to mention the fact that you’re insulting half your potential consumer base. So could we maybe get over our gay panic and just sell this stuff as a delicious low-calorie soda without the girls-are-icky approach? Thanks so much.
