New Olipop Flavor! We Tried Shirley Temple Olipop

It’s not hard to make a Shirley Temple. You get some lemon lime soda (we’re partial to 7UP), add some grenadine and a couple maraschino cherries, et voila. That said, there’s something fun about the prospect of simply cracking open a can and taking a swig of the beverage that made us all feel like little sophisticates when we were permitted to order it at restaurants as kids. A couple of brands have attempted to can the Shirley Temple in recent years, with varying degrees of success. 7UP’s Shirley? A delight. And there are three main reasons it succeeds:

It’s really sweet (Shirley Temples are sweet as hell!).
You can detect lemon lime soda beneath the grenadine.
It tastes like grenadine, not just cherry syrup—pomegranate, too.

Could a prebiotic soda brand manage to tick all these boxes? We tasted the new Shirley Temple Olipop to find out.

New Olipop!

Shirley Temple Olipop

Target

Pros: Olipop is a low-sugar soda (only 5g per can), but it’s still very, very sweet. They use a blend of stevia and cassava root extract that’s very saccharine, and I gotta say, it really works in a Shirley Temple. This new Olipop flavor basically tastes like a Shirley Temple with WAY too much grenadine, and what kid (or kid at heart) doesn’t love too much grenadine in their Shirleys? We also appreciate that it tastes like pomegranate syrup, not just cherry. If you’re into Olipop, you should definitely try this one.

Cons: Olipop Lemon Lime made our list of the best lemon lime sodas mostly because we wanted to add a prebiotic option to the list—not necessarily because it has the zestiest lemon lime flavor. In fact, it kinda tastes more like carbonated lemon iced tea than lemon lime soda. And sadly, lemon lime soda doesn’t really register as part of the flavor profile in Shirley Temple Olipop. That makes it a little bit of a letdown overall.

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

About the Author

Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks. Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown. What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction. Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home. Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.