Lite Drinks For Lite Men

I don't know if "dudes" don't drink diet, but MEN don't drink diet. Men like me who sail the seven salted seas. Wow everywhere I go is with the Coors Lite and the Bud Lite. Pathetic. Like getting loaded on Poland Spring.

How many times do I see people order two slices, smothered in cheese and sausage or pepperoni, and then they say "and a diet Coke." Come on! All that fatback and you're worried about a soda? And instead of a nice healthy natural sugar filled soda it's loaded up with some artificial sweetening chemical that kills mice in cancer tests? Damn.

It's all going downhill, but they try to make you think it's progress. So annoying. A whole generation going into the tank without really living life. They are living "lite" life and it's an ongoing public embarrassment. In Prohibition they didn't have light beer or diet soda. They had gin that would make you go blind. The experience and the risk was REAL back then, not an attempt at buffering yourself with with psuedo-good health bullshit while you are wallowing in America's daily helping of fat, sugar and booze.

Today's advice - if you're fat forget diet soda, you need to stop drinking for awhile or switch to whiskey or vodka, straight up, and give up soda entirely. You can bloat a little this way but it's better than beer. If yellow skin persists see your doctor. You're welcome.

Dudes don't drink diet.

Or at least that's the idea behind Dr Pepper Ten, a 10-calorie soft drink Dr Pepper Snapple Group is rolling out on Monday with a macho ad campaign that proclaims "It's not for women." The soft drink was developed after the company's research found that men shy away from diet drinks that aren't perceived as "manly" enough.

To appeal to men, Dr Pepper made its Ten drink 180 degrees different than Diet Dr Pepper. It has calories and sugar unlike its diet counterpart. Instead of the dainty tan bubbles on the diet can, Ten will be wrapped in gunmetal grey packaging with silver bullets. And while Diet Dr Pepper's marketing is women-friendly, the ad campaign for Ten goes out of its way to eschew women.

For instance, there's a Dr Pepper Ten Facebook page for men only. And TV commercials are heavy on the machismo, including one spot that shows muscular men in the jungle battling snakes and bad guys and appear to shoot lasers at each other.

"Hey ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not. Because this is our movie and this is our soda," a man says as he attempts to pour the soda into a glass during a bumpy ATV ride. "You can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. We're good."

Dr Pepper Ten is not the first diet soda aimed at men. (Think: Coke Zero and Pepsi Max.) But Dr Pepper Ten's ad campaign is the first to be so overt about courting men who want to drink a soda with fewer calories. The ads come at a time when overall sales in the $74 billon soft drink industry are slowing as more Americans buy healthier options like juice and bottled water. Volume has fallen from slightly over 10 billion cases in 2005 to 9.4 billion cases in 2010, according to Beverage Digest data.

[Associated Press]