When it comes to mass produced ginger ale, Dr Pepper Snapple has a big footprint in the marketplace by having both Canada Dry and Schweppes in its flavor stable. The only other big player is Coke's Seagram's brand. This fact alone would seem to make Canada Dry a likely candidate for the "Ten" treatment, though I'd think it's also ideal because of the mixer element of the drink as well. Some innovative line extensions have been added over the years, including Canada Dry Green Tea Ginger Ale, in hopes to expand the ginger ale offerings. Recently, the brand has been advertising that it's "Made with Real Ginger," despite that not appearing on the ingredients at all. Let's not fool ourselves here… Canada Dry isn't exactly a Reed's or Fresh Ginger-caliber product when it comes to the ginger experience.

Like the other 2nd generation "Ten" flavors, Canada Dry Ten borrows from the design cues of Dr Pepper Ten through the addition of a gunmetal grey color to the label. The color actually works pretty well as a compliment for the white/green scheme typically associated with the logo, though the way "Ten" is added to the logo, one might miss the distinction or associate this with Diet Canada Dry. As established in the "Ten" lineup, the packaging proclaims that Canada Ten offers "10 Great Tasting Calories," utilizing 3 sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

The "Ten" lineup from Dr Pepper Snapple Group seems targeted at a demographic that isn't buying the "Diet" versions of said drinks, and in many cases, as noted by the Dr Pepper Ten advertising campaign, that would tend to be the male demographic. To best see if Canada Dry Ten could lure drinkers of full calorie Canada Dry, we compared Ten against Diet Canada Dry and regular Canada Dry.

When all three drinks are poured side-by-side-by-side, the first thing one notices is color. Diet Canada Dry is a darker yellowish color, while regular Canada Dry and Canada Dry Ten are lighter and look similar. The Diet iteration is also quite a bit more foamy/bubbly than the other two. Finally, the scent of Diet Canada Dry is quite muted, while regular and Ten have a somewhat sweet bouquet.

Regular, full calorie Canada Dry isn't a bad drink. It's sweet and has a hint of ginger flavor. It's light and works well by itself or with food. There's a certain HFCS-syupyness that lasts in the aftertaste. In contrast, Diet Canada Dry's artificial sweeteners are pretty obvious when you sample it, really being noticeable in the bottom part of the mouth with a strong fake experience. Which brings us to new Canada Dry Ten, which actually does a pretty decent job of mimicking the flavor profile of the original. It's sweeter than Diet and closer in overall level to regular. Like the other entries in the "Ten" lineup, it starts out strong tasting like the original namesake, only later having the artificial sweeteners kick in. But that first blast of familiar flavor goes a long way in making Canada Dry more palatable than its Diet brethren. I'd argue that it's a good lower calorie substitute for the original if you are watching your calorie intake.

The use of artificial sweeteners in this ginger ale lineup seems to be a bit more finicky than some of the more bold flavors in the "Ten" lineup. I think they are more noticeable overall. Therefore, while Canada Dry Ten isn't perfect in taking just like a full calorie version, I think it does a pretty darn good job shooting for it!

Canada Dry Ten
Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, sodium citrate, malic acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, natural flavors, acesulfame potassium, caramel color

A 12 oz can contains 10 calories, 115 mg sodium, and 2 g carbs (2 g sugars). Caffeine free.

For those interested in a comparison…

Diet Canada Dry
Carbonated water, citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate (preservative), malic acid, aspartame, caramel color, natural flavors, acesulfame potassium, calcium disodium EDTA (to preserve flavor)

A 12 oz can contains 0 calories, 120 mg sodium, and 0 g carbs (0 g sugars). Caffeine free.

Canada Dry Ten is a pretty well executed, low cal knockoff of the original. It's better than Diet and worth a try!

Watch:

Brand: Coca-Cola
Title: "Arghh"
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy

The Coke Polar Bear trilogy wraps up with the Giants bear screaming disgust at the finish to the game… and then drinking a Coke.

Watch:

Brand: Coca-Cola
Title: "Catch"
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy

Coke's Polar Bear trilogy continues with the Patriots bear pulling off an impressive bottle catch, but only after knocking out a lot of his friends on the ice.

Watch:

Brand: Coca-Cola
Title: "Superstition"
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy

Coke's trilogy of Polar Bear commercials kicks off with one bear wearing a red scarf, representing the New York Giants, while the other wears a grey/blue scarf, illustrating the New England Patriots.

Watch:

Brand: Pepsi Max
Title: "For Life"
Agency: TBWA/Chiat/Day

Pepsi continues their attempt to get traction for Pepsi Max by dragging out Regis Philbin and the Coke Zero truck driver. Really? You spent your Super Bowl ad budget on this?

Watch:

Brand: Pepsi
Title: "King's Court"
Agency: TBWA/Chiat/Day

Elton John in a psychedelic, Alice in Wonderland-type sequence? Sure, that makes sense… and he pulls it off rather well. Of course, unless you were actually a viewer of Pepsi-sponsored The X-Factor, you probably wouldn't have known that the vocalist was last season's winner, Melanie Amaro.

As any soft drink enthusiast knows, root beer can be quite subjective. We all have our favorites and those, well, we don't like as much. Sometimes our decisions are influenced by the simple fact that a flavor can be found everywhere (see Coke's dominance of the fountain world and how they tend to always feature Barq's Root Beer). Others have more nostalgic audiences, such as can be found around the A&W brand. I know as a kid, I remember being on vacation and stopping at a A&W Drive In for food, root beer, and a great collectible mug!

As Dr Pepper Snapple Group looked at adding more to their "Ten" franchise, the choice of A&W was probably a no brainer, given that it's one of the "mainstream" root beer flavors that everyone is familiar with (heck, the company even owns rootbeer.com!) The fact that diet drinks are on a nice growth spurt while full calories beverages decline also probably factored heavy into adding A&W as a "Ten" brand.

Like the other 2nd generation "Ten" flavors, A&W Ten borrows from the design cues of Dr Pepper Ten, namely with the use of a grey color on the label. Though, unlike the rather odd juxtaposition found on Sunkist Ten and 7Up Ten, the addition of grey to the orange/brown color scheme of A&W actually works really well. It's a sharp looking package! As established in the "Ten" lineup, the packaging proclaims that A&W Ten offers "10 Great Tasting Calories." We've got 3 sweeteners at play here: aspartame, acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

As we have done with some of our other Ten reviews, we tasted A&W Ten side-by-side with Diet A&W, stacking both up against regular A&W to best gauge the differences. Part of the appeal of the Ten line is to lure non-diet drinkers (a.k.a. Men) into trying something low-calorie. Right off the bat, one of the notable changes is the amount of foam that is produced when the product is poured into a glass. We found Diet A&W to be quite a bit more foamy than both A&W and A&W Ten. On the other hand, A&W Ten had a sweeter scent than Diet A&W, but not like the sweet/bitter combo in original A&W. Diet A&W was mostly bitter in scent overall.

Regarding flavor, when you first drink Diet A&W, it's pretty obvious that it's an artificially sweetened drink. I find that those sweeteners compete with the root beer flavor a bit, producing a mixed taste message. On the other than, A&W Ten tastes a lot like the flagship when you first sample it, though the pleasant "harshness" associated with the original is muted a bit in the Ten iteration. A&W has always been on the sweeter side of root beers, and that's reflected here. That sweetness frontloads A&W Ten, delaying the realization that this isn't a full calorie drink. Your taste buds are like "hey, this is pretty good, wow… oh wait… hey, are you trying to fool me?"

In the grand scheme of things, A&W Ten is far superior to Diet A&W when it comes to tasting more like the full calorie original. It's not as "birchy" as regular A&W; rather, it's more creamy. The sweetness and flavor are great out of the gate, and only later do you realize that there are artificial sweeteners in play. Still, I felt that Sunkist Ten and 7Up Ten both did superior jobs of hiding the negative elements typically associated with diet drinks. A&W Ten tries, but doesn't succeed as well as its sibling Tens. Still, it's light years better than what Diet A&W tastes like, and presents a better entry point for a lower calorie alternative.

A&W Ten
Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, sodium benzoate (preservative), natural and artificial flavors, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, malic acid, quillaia extract

A 12 oz can contains 10 calories, 80 mg sodium, and 3 g carbs (2 g sugars). Caffeine free.

For those interested in a comparison…

Diet A&W
Carbonated water, caramel color, sodium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, acesulfame potassium, natural and artificial flavors, malic acid, quillaia extract

A 12 oz can contains 0 calories, 108 mg sodium, and 0 g carbs (0 g sugars). Caffeine free.

In conclusion, A&W Ten is better than Diet A&W when it comes to tasting closest to the original. It's not perfect, and the frontloaded flavor only fools your tastebuds to a point, but it's an appreciable effort!

7Up seems to be the product that can't catch a break these days. It's dwarfed by Sprite and Sierra Mist in U.S. sales, and seems to undergo a new formulation every other year. We're fans of the current version, which arrived in 2010, and seemingly brought back some of the distinctive flavor that set apart 7Up from the other lemon limes. New line extensions have been added with varying success, such as the decent 7Up Mixed Berry and the atrocious reboot of Cherry 7Up. I'm not not sure who thought it was a good idea to dress the brand up as a freak show with the release of 7Up Retro in cans (thankfully, the bottle was classy). Great taste there, just oddly marketed. With the mixed bag of quality execution, one has to wonder about the fate of 7Up Ten.

Like Sunkist Ten, 7Up Ten borrows from the design cues of Dr Pepper Ten, namely with the use of a grey color on the label. This provides a counterpoint to the expected green 7Up branding, but does a nice job of setting apart the drink from the existing original and diet versions. The addition of the "TEN" label is the same style at Dr Pepper Ten, though it doesn't thematically blend well with the existing 7Up look. As established in the "Ten" lineup, the packaging proclaims that 7Up Ten offers "10 Great Tasting Calories." Remember, this drink is not only sweetened with both aspartame and acesulfame potassium (Ace-K), but also high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), with the thinking that this allows for better, non-diet flavor.

So what about that taste? To better gauge the flavor and offer comparisons, we tasted 7Up Ten side-by-side Diet 7Up. Additionally, since the target audience for 7Up Ten is probably converting folks from full calorie 7Up, we had a bottle of that handy as well. When you pop the tab on 7Up Ten, you are greeted with a very sweet, almost candy-like scent. This differs slightly from Diet 7Up, which tends to smell just like the 7Up you expect. The look and color of the drink is the same no matter what version you choose… it's clear and bubbly.

The flavor itself is much different, however. While Diet 7Up has noticeable medicinal flavoring and obvious artificial sweetener aftertaste, 7Up Ten does a much better job of masking that experience. For one thing, it's a lot more lemony in taste, quite a bit more than even full calorie 7Up. The drink is also quite sweet, considerably more than Diet 7Up. The flavor profile is therefore slightly different than the 2010 reboot of 7Up, but in this case, it works. While you can still taste hints of the artificial sweeteners, it's nowhere near as bad as Diet 7Up. (It should be noted that the sweeteners became easier to pick out the warmer the drink got; we found the best results when cold). In effect, 7Up Ten creates an alternate reality take on a no/low-calorie version of the lemon lime classic. The increase in sweetness and lemon flavor make for an excellent drink!

7Up Ten
Filtered carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, potassium citrate, potassium benzoate (preservative), natural flavors, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, calcium disodium EDTA (to protect flavor)

A 12 oz can contains 10 calories, 45 mg sodium, and 2 g carbs (2 g sugars). Caffeine free.

For those interested in a comparison…

Diet 7Up
Filtered carbonated water and contains 2% or less of each of the following: natural flavors, citric acid, potassium citrate, potassium benzoate (protects flavor), aspartame, acesulfame potassium, calcium disodium EDTA (protects flavor)

A 12 oz can contains 0 calories, 45 mg sodium, and 0 g carbs (0 g sugars). Caffeine free.

I was skeptical when I saw another rebooted version of 7Up in the pipeline, but 7Up Ten does deliver the goods. If you can afford the 10 calories, it's far superior to Diet 7Up.

…Starting as early as January, the company will start testing 7Up Ten, Sunkist Ten, A&W Ten and Canada Dry Ten in Columbus, Ohio, Des Moines, Iowa, and central Pennsylvania. It will also test RC Ten, a cola, in Chicago, Evansville, Ind., and Des Moines.

Thus, it appears that "Ten" is DPSG's response to Coke's "Zero" and Pepsi's "Max" franchises. Let's take a look at the first of these new Tens, Sunkist Ten.

In our Dr Pepper Ten review, we felt that it didn't taste better than what was already a quality reduced calorie drink, Diet Dr Pepper. Many BevReview readers disagreed with our perceptive, and let us know accordingly in the comments (thanks for your passion, everyone!) For this review, we sampled Sunkist Ten alongside Diet Sunkist to get a similar comparison.

As part of the Ten line extension, it's obvious that Sunkist Ten borrowed some heavy design cues from Dr Pepper Ten. First off is the use of the gunmetal grey color, which apparently is DPSG's version of Coke Zero's black color. This is combined with the orange style and logo typically associated with Sunkist. The addition of the "TEN" label is the same style at Dr Pepper Ten, though it feels more tacked on and less organically added when compared to the flagship. Instead of proclaiming "10 Bold Tasting Calories," Sunkist Ten simply offers "10 Great Tasting Calories." And for those questioning the math on Dr Pepper Ten's calorie count vs. the calories/ounce proclamations, we can thank the confusing calculations of the FDA's Rounding Rules, which oddly allow for drinks with less than 5 calories to report as "0 calories", while those with 50 calories or less need to round to the nearest 5 calorie increment — thus how the same drink can have zero calories in one size but non-zero calories in another. Confused yet?

Like Diet Sunkist, Sunkist Ten is sweetened with both aspartame and acesulfame potassium (Ace-K). Ten also has the addition of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to round out its sweetener profile, which DPSG argues adds the ability to better portray the original full-calorie flavor of these drinks. Crack open a can of Sunkist Ten and it smells like your typical orange soda. The bright orange color is also in line with what you've come to find with Sunkist.

As for the flavor, the initial sip is dead-on for Sunkist. It's sweet, syrupy, and bold. But with any diet drink, the details are really in the aftertaste. You can definitely tell that this is a non-full-calorie beverage. The aspartame and Ace-K are obvious. Orange is one of the easier drinks to mask artificial sweeteners in, and Sunkist Ten doesn't disappoint in this area. You can tell the sweeteners are there, but they aren't too distorting. The aftertaste lingers a bit and then disappears. This flavor experience is in contrast to Diet Sunkist, which tends to taste fake from the start. Whereas Sunkist Ten tastes like the original in the beginning of the taste experience and then transitions to artificial, Diet Sunkist feels artificial throughout. When it comes to most closely resembling the original, Sunkist Ten is the winner (of course, it also has more calories than Diet Sunkist, which features 0 per serving).

Sunkist Ten
Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, sodium citrate, malic acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, modified food starch, natural flavors, acesulfame potassium, caffeine, ester gum, Yellow 6, Red 40

A 12 oz can contains 10 calories, 130 mg sodium, and 2 g carbs (2 g sugars). Caffeine content is 3.42 mg/oz. (For comparison, Mountain Dew contains 4.5 mg/oz.)

For those interested in a comparison…

Diet Sunkist
Carbonated water, citric acid, sodium citrate, malic acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, modified food starch, acesulfame potassium, natural flavors, caffeine, ester gum, Yellow 6, Red 40

A 12 oz can contains 0 calories, 128 mg sodium, and 0 g carbs (0 g sugars). Caffeine content is 3.38 mg/oz.

In the end, Sunkist Ten brings a more authentic Sunkist flavor compared to Diet Sunkist. If you are looking for a lower calorie orange soft drink, Ten is what you seek.

I first encountered Doc 360 at the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show in Chicago last fall. It's produced by WIS-PAK, a large Pepsi bottler out of Wisconsin. They came up with the formula on their own to distribute to markets looking for a Dr Pepper alternative, as they have manufacturing locations not only in "America's Dairyland," but also Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

I must say, I'm impressed by the packaging approach, in that it's not just another "Dr. [Fill in the Blank]". The drink looks contemporary and energetic from the packaging design. From the sales sheets I was given at the show, it's interesting to read who is being targeted by this drink. An excerpt:

Why 360?

Doc 360 take the consumer out for a full circle of flavor. We know once they try it, their tastebuds will flip.

The term 360 is also closely associated with the extreme sports world. The extreme sports market segment has been exhibiting rapid growth in the popularity over the last decade.

This segment fits perfectly with Doc 360, it allows and encourages individual creativity in the innovation of new maneuvers and in the stylish execution of existing techniques.

Who's It Made For?

Heavy users within the flavor category, Millennials & Gen-Xers, C&G consumers [Convenience and Gas], mostly male 18-34 years, looking for value, variety, & stimulation.

These are the people who pride themselves in participating in challenging, cutting-edge activities and are constantly searching for new ways to test themselves.

You'll note that none of this sales text actually talks about the flavor of the drink itself. Given this positioning, however, I can understand why they are attempting to describe this drink as "The Mountain Dew of Dr Peppers". It's a Pepper clone that's higher in caffeine and positioned at the same Dew market.

As for the taste, it's actually very good. It doesn't taste exactly like Dr Pepper, obviously, but it's a pretty good copy. I'd say it's missing some of the spicy "kick" that we associate with the original, but it's not bland by any means. There's a quality sweet flavor there. I'd definitely drink it again.

I think I was more impressed with Diet Doc 360, because while you could tell that it was a diet drink (sweetened with aspartame and Ace-K), it had a decent aftertaste and flavor. The scent, coloring, and base taste all are in line with what's you'd expect from Dr Pepper. Nice job!

The big differentiator that Doc 360 likes to make is with caffeine content. Regular Dr Pepper contains 3.42 mg/oz of caffeine. Doc 360 and Diet Doc 360, on the other hand, contain 5.0 mg/oz. (For comparison with their target market, original Mountain Dew contains 4.5 mg/oz.) So you basically have a Pepper clone with an energy drink-type emphasis.

Overall, if you can find Doc 360, it's worth a try for something a little different, but familiar. Recommended!

Doc 360
Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, natural & artificial flavors, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate (as a preservative), and caffeine

A 12 oz can contains 150 calories, 55 mg sodium, and 40 g carbs (40 g sugars).

Diet Doc 360
Carbonated water, caramel color, natural & artificial flavors, phosphoric acid, aspartame, sodium benzoate (as a preservative), caffeine, and acesulfame potassium

A 12 oz can contains 0 calories, 55 mg sodium, and 0 g carbs (0 g sugars).

Official Website: DrinkDoc360.com