The late Mich Hedberg once said, “I had a Mr. Pibb. Mr. Pibb is a replica of Dr Pepper, but it’s a bullshit replica, cuz the dude didn’t even get his degree.” Walking around campus, Ed Board is sad to see that Dr Pepper, the official beverage of the Lone Star State, is not available in any of the vending machines, leaving students craving a Dr Pepper fix to head for either The Market in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center or the closest 7-11.
Would it really hurt to get Dr Pepper in the vending machines? This is a university after all – wouldn’t you want to promote doctors rather than misters? Come on, do people even drink Mr. Pibb outside of the situations when Dr Pepper is not available?
Sip on this for a while: Dr Pepper is the oldest soft drink in America. Older than Coke. Older than 7-UP. Older than Tab. It’s even older than the early 20th century tonic after which our university mascot is named – Peruna.
According to the Dr Pepper Web site, the drink was first concocted and sold in a Waco drug store in 1885. And for those wondering where the period after “Dr” is, that was dropped in the 1950s.
Mr. Pibb? Well, Ed Board recently conducted an experiment (i.e. did a Yahoo! search) and one of the first results for “Mr. Pibb” was a link to a Web site called “fakedrpepper.com.” As the site states, “Despite what fast food and restaurant workers across the world might say, Mr. Pibb is not the same thing as Dr Pepper. Mr Pibb tastes extremely weak in comparison to Dr Pepper.” What better proof is there that, in this case, the rip-off simply does not compare to the original?
Sure, students could hit up places like Hughes-Trigg or 7-11 to grab an ice-cold DP. But think of this – with few exceptions, all first-years are required to live in the residence halls and purchase a meal plan. The meal plans work at two places: RFoC at Umphrey Lee and Mac’s Place in McElvaney Hall, each of which serve only Mr. Pibb. Now, is this really the way we want to welcome out-of-state students to Texas? Ed Board doesn’t think so; first-years deserve a Texas original.
College is supposed to be the time where you learn about the finer things in life like : all-nighters, hangovers, Red Bull and the power of the almighty dollar. One of these finer things is learning to appreciate the classics. How can a southern, Texan university not support Dr Pepper? You can’t get more classic than Dr Pepper in Dallas. Well, maybe we should just hold out a little longer, and about the same time our football team starts to win again, we’ll see the return of the doctor to campus.
