Dr. Pepper Museum

[utmck]

Has anyone visited the Dr. Pepper museum in Dublin and is it worth going to?

 

[FAST FRED]

I've been with my wife, daughter and mother.

They liked it OK and I was OK with them liking it.

It broke up a short road trip between Marble Falls and Abilene for us.

There's not much there except a little Dr Pepper history and a shop selling Dr Pepper commemorative and gift items.

I believe there's probably more and better DP history in Waco.

At least, Baylor has mascot bears that drink Dr Pepper from bottles.

The Dublin place has lots of DP T-shirts, knick knacks, dolls, banners, posters, gift baskets, cups, glasses all with a Dr Pepper logo or theme and lots of other assorted stuff like you could buy at any roadside gift shop.

They had DP playing cards and DP dominoes, DP flashlights, wall placards, signs and DP decorative light fixtures.

My mom remembered the old DP road signs and advertising posters on the walls.

We drank it all in, please notice my clever pun, but I didn't think it was anything very special even though Dr Pepper has always been my soft drink of choice.

I even tried it hot and as a mixer for liquor when they promoted it those ways.

I didn't find those uses very special either, however.

Very cold in an iced glass or, better yet, from an icy bottle always did it for me.

You know, from one of those ice filled tubs you couldn't quite see into as a short kid, wherein the water freeze burned your hand and left your nail beds numb, as you searched to find a submerged bottle with the right shape.

That icy water is my reference point for understanding what the people who jumped off the Titanic felt.

Or from a bottle dispensing machine where the temperature was so low that the contents were frosty and slushy.

The Dublin bottling plant may give tours showing how they pour shipped in DP ingredients into various containers nowadays and ship it out.

As I remember, you each could get one DP fountain drink in a cup, if you waited in line.

There were some people buying stuff and people who just stopped to look around.

It's a tourist trap at its worst and a "worth one time only" driving break at the best for most folks, I suspect.

We bought a nice DP T-Shirt and a small gift wrapped six pack of original cane sugar DP in old time "10, 2 & 4" bottles in a DP logoed bucket filled with some other "DP" items.

Of course, you can buy original recipe DP at a premium price all over now.

I remember when sodas cost a nickel plus a penny to take the returnable bottle.

In Dublin, there were three hundred dollar leather DP motorcycle jackets, DP jump suits and DP blouses and DP gimme caps and DP pencils and ball point pens and DP paintings and DP picture books and puzzles and serving trays and Teddy bears and coolers and stickers and flags and DP stick-on tattoos, etc.

There was an impressive display of antique bottle openers, both hand held and wall mounted, with replicas for sale.

There was real and costume DP jewelry, including DP earrings and DP pendants and DP charms.

There were DP watches and DP clocks with bigger numbers for the 10, 2 and 4, identifying those hours as Dr Pepper Time.

For the DP evangelist, there were "I'm A Pepper!" and "Wouldn't You Like To Be A Pepper Too?" pins, shirts and posters in great variety.

They had a plastic replica of a full, capped Dr Pepper bottle to stand glued upright on your car's dash board, a DP icon to forever watch over you and make you thirst.

"I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my DP Jesus....."

You could sign up for e-mail or postal correspondence offering DP insight, memorabilia and special events.

There's even a DP mail order catalog so you can have the stuff you wish you'd bought shipped to you after you get home.

You are cordially invited to sign their Dr Pepper guest book.

Coca Cola and Dr Pepper have a long running rivalry about which one is really Santa's favorite and there were DP Christmas items, including gifts and decorations, available.

There were candles shaped like a DP bottles, useful illumination for meditation or setting a make out mood.

We spent less than 30 minutes and less than 30 dollars total there and were on our way further down the road to the Perini Ranch Restaurant or Joe Allen's BBQ.

I forget which of those fine establishments we ate at on that trip to Abilene.

Abilene can, indeed, be a welcome sight to a traveler, but I still think George Hamilton IV needed to get out a little bit more.

There's no punctuation used when you properly write Dr Pepper (or Texas A & M, for that matter) but go and see all this for yourself if you need to.

I drink only diet DP now because I'm diabetic.

Regular soft drinks taste so sugary to me that I don't like them anymore.

And after drinking them most of my life I'm just glad I still have my real teeth.

So, it was all pretty pointless for me, but also pretty painless.

Maybe you'll dig it more than I did.

However, as a museum, IMHO it'll never warrant hosting a Ben Stiller movie.

 

[CanaTigers]

Yeah the museum is in Waco. Dublin just has an old bottling plant. The Waco museum is a pretty good time kill and easy to waste a day along with all the rest in the area, Texas Ranger and Texas Sports Hall of Fame.