The Best Pepsi Flavor Has Been An Iconic Fan Favorite Since The '80s

Today we're not discussing the eternal battle between Coke and Pepsi, whose turf battles you can often see at fast food chains; we're going all-in on Pepsi. We once ranked every single flavor of Pepsi that we could get our hands on, and that ended up being an array of 13 flavors. In most people's minds, the best one would probably be the original, but when we tried all of them, a flavored version of the cola finally edged them all out — and it was a classic that came out in the '80s.

We found that the Pepsi Wild Cherry was our favorite, though it was a tough decision between that and the classic version. And we have some hot takes attached to it, as our writer declared after an arduous tasting session, "While regular Coke is superior to regular Pepsi, I actually think Pepsi Wild Cherry is on par with Cherry Coke. It's not only Pepsi's best product, it's one of the best sodas in existence."

Pepsi's Wild Cherry's origin story does, in fact, involve the titanic rivalry between Pepsi and Coke. The flavor came about when Pepsi learned that Coke had its first cherry version on the way. The company had five weeks to catch up to its competitor, and scrambled by preparing TV commercials early. Pepsi tested the product in the Canadian market in 1985 (notably not in the U.S. at the time), successfully beating Coke to it. Being first to market has its advantages, and this paid off: In the beginning, Cherry Pepsi outsold Cherry Coke by two-to-one in some Canadian stores.

The American Wild Cherry-flavored version wouldn't come out until 1988, and it's stayed since then, though there have been limited-time variants of it like Cherry Vanilla in 2010. There's also a permanent flavor of Wild Cherry and Cream, too, likely popularized by things like the dirty soda trend, which mixes cream and soda. But we don't think it needs any special treatment, because in a lineup of all sorts of Pepsi flavors, Pepsi Wild Cherry easily beats all of them.