7-Up Will Soon Release a New Shirley Temple Flavor

Now that the fervor surrounding the release of the Pumpkin Spice Latte has simmered down, it’s time to start looking ahead to the winter holidays and all of the limited-time treats they bring. There’s one seasonal product that’s already creating ripples of excitement online — even though it hasn’t been formally announced yet. Cross your fingers, because we might soon be sipping on a 7-Up Shirley Temple. 

The news, though not published to official 7-Up channels as of now, has been bouncing around an assortment of snack and beverage insider accounts, including Snackolator and Snack Betch. According to these internet sources, the 7-Up Shirley Temple is a pomegranate and cherry soda that’s hitting shelves for the holiday season this year. Promotional images appear to show the product in 12-packs of 12-ounce cans, as well as two-liter bottles; it’s unclear if it’ll be sold in single 20-ounce plastic bottles as well. As with 7-Up’s flagship soda, the Shirley Temple flavor will allegedly come in both a regular and Zero Sugar variety — at least according to initial pictures shared. 

For anyone unfamiliar with a Shirley Temple — and you have our deepest sympathies if this is the case — it’s a non-alcoholic mixed drink comprised of either lemon-lime soda or ginger ale, a splash of grenadine, and a maraschino cherry (or two) to finish. Lore says it was invented in Hollywood in the 1930s, when bartender Gustave Tops at the Brown Derby restaurant created the treat for child actress Shirley Temple herself. It’s often compared to the Roy Rogers, another sweet and simple mocktail, but the latter uses cola as its base rather than 7-Up. 

While it’s ambiguous when an official announcement of 7-Up Shirley Temple might come from the company, food-focused content creator Markie Devo predicts a mid-October release date. Whenever it’s set to roll out, it certainly seems like it will be soon, because Walmart and Target already have the product displayed on their respective websites, though you can’t place an order just yet: It’s listed in both places as “out of stock.” 

This limited-time flavor makes perfect sense for 7-Up, since the brand’s signature lemon-lime soda is commonly used to make Shirley Temples already. Not only that, but as Sporked points out, both Pomegranate 7-Up and Cherry 7-Up varieties have already been sold in the past (and Cherry continues to be a core product). Combining those flavors into one can and adding the enticing “Shirley Temple” branding seems like an easy vault off of those prior successes. 

7-Up seems to have been priming us for this release in recent months, without anyone even realizing it. In August, the brand’s Instagram account provided a tutorial on how to make a Shirley Temple, and a recipe for Shirley Temples has been on the official 7-Up website since at least 2017. Now just two questions remain: When exactly will we be able to buy it, and what will the Shirley Temple King think of this canned mocktail?