23....Really? But I Still Just Taste The One

I've always been fascinated with advertising campaigns: the successful ones, the unsuccessful ones, and the just plain peculiar ones (can you say Mentos?). But sometimes I just gotta scratch my head and ask, "Uh, what's the point?" Take, for instance, Dr. Pepper's recent massive ad campaign heralding the popular beverage as having "23 unique flavors." Now I've never been a big Dr. Pepper fan but I do know that it has always had one flavor and that flavor was Mr. Pibb flavor. When, suddenly, did Dr. Pepper become a complicated blend of 23 flavors? It doesn't even have 23 ingredients and sometimes those ingredients change (sugar or corn syrup) depending on where it gets distributed from! Even ballsier than that, is that the actual flavor of Dr. Pepper is exactly the same as it has been for the last one hundred years...it's just now it is a perfect blend of 23 unique flavors! Hey, at least Coke said it's suddenly unique flavor was because it was New Coke....which everybody hated of course and prompted the return of Coke Classic (which actually was a Newer Coke but...you get my point). Obviously, Dr. Pepper is just making this shit up but I must wonder, "Why 23?" Why not..I don't know...42? Or 3 cubed plus 2? Is there something about the idea of 23 separate flavors that is subconsciously appealing to the average soda drinker? Who knows although I do think that Mr. Pibb should start a "mediocre second place soda war" with a counter-campaign; maybe they could do a, "Drink Pibb: It tastes the same and we do it with just the one flavor. Pibb flavor," or, "Choose Mr. Pibb...because we heard that one of their flavors was boiled beef balls." Regardless, I hope Dr. Pepper great success in their expensive campaign although I do fear that if it is successful Hardee's and Carl Jr's might come out with a 23-flavored slop burger...as if watching people eat that revolting chili burger wasn't bad enough.

UPDATE: 1/5/2007--So it seems that Dr. Pepper actually started out as having 23 fountain flavors which explains the 23. However, that fact still doesn't make me wanna start drinkin Dr. Pepper. A funny note though, when Mr. Pibb changed it's name to Pibb Xtra I did go out and buy some just to see what that "Xtra" was all about. I discovered it didn't taste all that different than regular ol' Mr. Pibb but I did have two people ask me what the "Xtra" was while I was drinking it which was nice (so I guess the Xtra might be the added attention you get while drinking your new Pibb).