You know those random childhood memories that pop back into your head at the weirdest times? One of mine is of when our family would go to dinner at Burger King on a Friday night. (Not the Burger King in the mall, but the standalone Burger King that had a play room complete with a carousel that, if you were tall enough, you could turn on and off with the switch on the wall.) Part of this specific memory is that the row of soda fountains included a tap for Mr. Pibb.
To a kid in the 1990s, Mr. Pibb was outside my usual soda (or, as I called it growing up in Western New York, pop) encounters. My dad used to work for a Coca-Cola vendor, filling machines, which means we were a Coke family by birth. Our household usually had Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, Sprite and maybe whatever root beer Coke happened to have under its umbrella back in those days. (There was the one time that in hopes of masking the fact that she had accidentally used a spicy taco mix, my mom allowed us to crack into the 2-liter of Pepsi during dinner.) But Mr. Pibb was not a soda we had at home.
That Burger King fountain — complete with free refills, since no one was stopping me from going back time after time — promised something new. What was Mr. Pibb? It wasn’t a cola. It definitely wasn’t root beer. Was it cherry? No, it was different from even the Cherry Coke that back then was packaged in those iconic cans.
I later stumbled upon Mr. Pibb in its next phase of life. During a summer vacation, I strolled the soda aisle at the Food Lion in Virginia Beach with the goal of picking out a 12-pack of soda that we didn’t normally have at home. This is when I first encountered Pibb Xtra. The soda had dropped the “Mr.” and added a bit of early 2000s extreme-ness.
This was probably the last time I had a Pibb of any name.
When news broke last fall that Coca-Cola was revamping the soda, restoring the Mr. Pibb name, giving it a fresh new visual identity and amping up its caffeine levels, I was immediately taken back to those childhood memories. I need to try the new Mr. Pibb — more specially, the new Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar.
I finally found Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar in the wild on Friday, a small stash of it mixed in with a pallet of Coke products at our grocery store. The home location in the actual soda aisle was still full of Pibb Xtra, so this was a lucky find.
Would Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar live up to my memories? (And did anyone else’s Burger King have a carousel?)
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There was no way I was missing the rebranded Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar in that stack of soda. Coca-Cola kept the soda’s “maverick, wildcard persona and signature maroon color, with new eye-catching touches of gold and an exclamation point hinting at both its bold taste and extra caffeine content.”
“When Mr. Pibb first launched, the packaging didn’t tell consumers what it was — it told them what it was not,” Coca-Cola exec Dane Callis said in the announcement. “Not root beer, not cola. It's something unique and original, a bold rebel in a category of norms. Nothing fans know and love about Mr. Pibb has gone away, but we took steps to modernize its look for new consumers’ tastes and preferences.”
As the box notes, Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar is a “kickin’ cherry zero sugar soda.” And it’s fantastic. (I assume the “kickin’” bit comes from Coca-Cola dialing up the caffeine content from 40 mg per can to 54 mg. A regular Coke Zero has 34 mg of caffeine.)
My first sip of Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar turned into several sips. By the time I was done packing up the portable photo box I use for Snackology, my glass was empty. I cracked open a can and poured another.
Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar has a full, rounded taste. The cherry comes in at just the right level, enough to nudge your tastebuds but not enough to encroach on that medicinal edge that cherry flavors can sometimes unfortunately have.
I love this soda. Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar is absolutely going on the list of sodas that I regularly keep at home now. Welcome back, old friend.
Snack Score
Mr. Pibb Zero Sugar
🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪
(5 out of 5)
Snackology is a publication of The Omnicosm.
Issue No. 162
Snackology is written and produced by Bill Kuchman. Copyediting by Tim Kuchman.
The Omnicosm founder. Snackology, Popculturology and The Cold Open writer. A Rochester, N.Y., native now living in the Washington, D.C., area. Won’t pass up a Genny Cream Ale.
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