Local News - Dr. Pepper Museum Celebrates 75 Years of Big Red

KWBU News

"You happen to be in the Holy Land-I don't know that you know that, but this is the home of the nation's oldest major soft drink."

That's Wilton Lanning, founding president of the Dr. Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute, and he's of course referring to Dr. Pepper. But this past Friday afternoon, visitors to the museum came out to celebrate the other soft drink invented here in Waco: Big Red. The museum is featuring an exhibit on the iconic and bright red beverage this summer in honor of the soft drink's 75th anniversary.

Mary Beth Tait, Director of Collections and Technology at the museum:

"We're always looking for the next anniversary or big milestone that's coming up in the soft drinks that we collect items of and like to tell the story of. And so, this is one of the big ones. It's really important because of the Waco connection, and we also like the underdog soft drinks cause Dr. Pepper is kind of an underdog. So we thought it would be fun and a really colorful exhibit also."

Bright red bottles abound in the exhibit showcasing different packaging throughout the years. One of the items Tait points out though is a kind of display cabinet from the Perfection Barber and Beauty Supply, Co. The shop, which was located just around the corner from where the Dr. Pepper Museum stands today, is where Grover C. Thomsen, R.H. Roark, and R.T. Roark invented Big Red, originally called the Sun Tang Red Cream Soda in 1937. The cabinet is full of the original flavor extracts the inventors experimented with to create the soda.

But, flavor isn't the only thing Thomsen and the Roarks experimented with.

Joy Summer-Smith, Associate Director at the Dr. Pepper Museum:

"As they were first experimenting with the cream soda, it was not originally red it was originally green."

Apparently green soda wasn't very popular.

"From what I heard, people just weren't really excited about a green soda but once they changed it to red, it really kind of took off from there."

Scott Jackson, the Vice President of Supply Chain at Big Red, Inc. was among the visitors enjoying a Big Red ice cream float in the museums soda fountain. He grew up loving Big Red as a kid in San Antonio. I asked Jackson why he thought it was important to commemorate this soft drink.

"Well there's so many products that come and go every year, and to have a product that's 75 years old and that's got such a long-standing history in the state of Texas and as well as in Kentucky...and just to know that it's out there and just to know that it's been around for 75 years is just fantastic."

Joy Summer-Smith also shares what she hopes Wacoans will get out of the exhibit.

"For people in Waco, I really hope that they just come to learn about the other soft drink that was invented here and really take some pride in the fact that Waco has two nationally recognized soft drinks that were invented just right here within a couple of blocks of each other."

So, as the Dr. Pepper Museum commemorates 75 years of Big Red, I had to ask Wilton Lanning a tough question:

"I don't want to make you choose, but if it came down to it and it could be Dr. Pepper or a Big Red, do you know which one you would choose? If you could only choose one."

"That's not a fair question."

No, it wasn't. And luckily this summer at the Dr. Pepper Museum, you don't have to choose either.

For KWBU, I'm Becky Fogel.