The Dr. Pepper Museum

Today, we went to the Dr. Pepper Museum. It is located in the original Dr. Pepper bottling plant on Fifth Street in Waco, Texas. When you come to central Texas, the Dr. Pepper Museum and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame are two must-see stops.

Most of the museum is dedicated to Dr. Pepper, its history and how soda is made and bottled. But Dr. Pepper is not the only soda that started in Waco — Big Red also started here. One of the displays centers around an anamatronic figure, dressed as an early 1900s doctor, telling a little about life of that time and the beginnings of Dr. Pepper.

Other displays included machinery for washing bottles, filling and capping them, trucks which transported them and vending machines that served them. Of course, advertising materials were displayed, including photographs of billboards, magazine ads, wall signs, thermometers, clocks, glasses, paintings, movie and television show "product placements," star and famous personalities endorsements and, of course, television commercials. The emphasis, of course, was on Dr. Pepper, but materials for Coke, Pepsi, 7UP, Big Red, Big Blue, Royal Crown Cola, Moxie, Canada Dry, and a hundred other, lesser known brands were on display.

Across the plaza from the museum, there is another building with a soda shop, gift shop and even more displays. One that caught my attention for a while was a G-scale model train display.

Note the advertisements for Dr. Pepper on the "Aldertons Grocery and Gas" sign and the 7UP signs.

The load on the flatcar are two regular and two diet Dr. Pepper cans. The livery on the car on the other flatcar matches the Dr. Pepper racing team car.

The backdrop to the whole display is a big Dr. Pepper bottling plant. Note also the 7UP logo on the water tower and the bottle caps on the Dr. Pepper office building in front of the bottling plant. The slope-back switch engine has the 7UP logo, along with each car of its consist. The siding contains a gondola car with two "ice"-covered soda cans and another filled with bottle caps for a number of brands. Notice also, the waiter with soda cans on the platform of the work caboose with the barrel.

One of the best models in the display is this little engine house. Strangely enough, it does not have any advertisements on it.

This building also contains an art gallery with a number of paintings with "product placement" type advertising. I especially liked this well-executed painting of a young woman in a canoe drinking a Royal Crown Cola.