I Ate The Chocodile

Valentine’s Day has always been my least favorite holiday of the year.  I could rant about syndicated holidays contrived by greeting card companies, but the truth is, I’m a sucker for that stuff.  Something just always goes horribly amiss on Valentine’s Day.  Flowers being delivered to the wrong address, getting lost by way of a detour in a bad part of town and ending up by some place called “Git-Yo Chicken,” a heart-shaped pizza ordered from Minsky’s that never showed up, my date ending up with a fondue fork lodged into his hand…  this list of atrocities goes on, including, but not limited to, food poisoning and near decapitation.

It was in this spirit that I purchased a 20 oz bottle of the New! ™ Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper.  And I do feel that it is as much an embodiment of all things bad and ridiculous as I had hoped it would be. 

The first thing I noted was its intense color.  It was a deep, glossy red, as though someone had poured a few tablespoons of Dr. Pepper into a bottle of Grenadine.  I took a deep sniff.  The aroma was that of a sweet, fake chocolate flavoring, very similar to a Tootsie Roll.  The taste was more of the same…  while its appearance would lead you to believe that it might taste like a homemade cherry cola (much like you might get at a Sonic or Steak ‘n’ Shake,) it actually had very little cherry flavor.  It was generically sweet, and reminded me a bit of my chocolate Torani syrup Italian soda phase, or the cans of chocolate soda that they sell at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.  At first, the familiar flavor of Dr. Pepper was almost completely masked, but after three or four sips, I became sort of numb to the cloying sweetness.  The smell, however, seemed to remain just as potent as I continued to imbibe.  The overall verdict: not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  If only it were as full of flavor as its name is of buzz words.  Other than being sweet it was, well, sorta bland.

So here’s where it gets interesting.  Remember that viral “Chocolate Rain” video that YouTube savvy friends and coworkers have been using to annoy the bejesus out of each other since last April?  Well, Dr. Pepper has enlisted the services of none other than Mr. Tay Zonday to promote their new product, going so far as to make a quite well-produced music video for his follow-up single jingle, “Cherry Chocolate Rain”.  I hung my head in shame as I watched, promotional beverage in hand.  I was, indeed, “drinkin’ what they’re sellin’”.

**I move away from the mic to take a drink

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