If Coca-Cola and Pepsi are the Marvel and DC of the soda world, Keurig Dr Pepper is Dark Horse Comics. Many people don’t even know about this little third wheel of a company, but when you actually take a look at what they offer, you find some familiar heavy hitters including Dr Pepper (duh), Crush, Canada Dry, Snapple, and A&W among others. (I think Dr Pepper is Hellboy in this metaphor?) Anyway, A&W (which is definitely The Umbrella Academy in this extended comic book metaphor) is launching a special new flavor in 2025. Next year, we’ll get to find out what A&W Ice Cream Sundae is all about.
Ice cream flavored root beer? Is that a good idea?
Now, technically speaking, we aren’t 100% sure this will be a root beer. A&W also offers cream soda and, for all we know, this could just be labeled “Ice Cream Sundae Flavored Soda” by the time it actually hits shelves. That said, the color of the liquid in the bottle picture I have is consistent with A&W’s standard root beer. If they’re going for something close to the “root beer float” flavor profile, it’d certainly make sense to start with a root beer base.
What exactly is ice cream sundae flavor?
Per the label on the cans, this ice cream sundae includes vanilla ice cream, sprinkles, chocolate syrup or hot fudge, and a cherry. Are we going to see all these flavors in one soda? Who’s to say! Vanilla and cherry are no stranger to the soda aisle. I’ll still think the chocolate-flavored Dr Pepper from a few years ago was worth a full retail run, especially in a post-Oreo Coke world. The only flavor I’ve never had in a soda would be sprinkles, and this company has produced birthday cake-flavored Dr Pepper before. As weird as it is, nothing here is necessarily new.
How did you find out about this?
A little birdie sent me parts of Keurig Dr Pepper’s 2025 innovation presentation, which includes a few things we’ve already covered on Sporked like Dr Pepper Blackberry—and a few things we might cover in the near future. Separately from those slides, the product images seen above were posted to Reddit earlier this month.
When and where will I be able to buy this mystery ice cream-flavored soda?
Unfortunately, we have no release date information at this time besides “2025.” It doesn’t seem like this will be exclusive to any particular retailer, but that could change between now and the final release date.
The pictures I was sent directly show this soda in bottles and the picture from Reddit shows it in cans. So, it sounds like we’ll be able to buy this soda in bottles and cans whenever it does hit shelves. And here’s some good news for the sugar-avoidant: We will see this soda release in full and zero sugar variants. Finally, a sundae everyone can enjoy.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!