On March 23, 2026, an Osaka food and drink blogger (@motooikemen), who goes by the handle “Barkin-kun,” posted a review of Suntory’s new release Guilty Soda NOPE (ギルティ炭酸 NOPE). The post reads: “Tried the buzz-worthy ‘Guilty Soda NOPE.’ Apparently it blends 99 types of fruit and spices — so much that I have no idea what flavor it actually is. It’s somehow fruity, but the taste is one you can never quite pin down. And it’s quite sweet. There’s genuinely no way to describe it. Like mixing a bunch of different sodas together… I really don’t know. Suntory put out a weird drink!”
NOPE is a new carbonated beverage launched by Suntory in 2026. The product’s marketing leans into its own mysteriousness: the name “Guilty” refers to a sense of guilty pleasure, and the drink positions itself as a mid-tier, accessible soda sold in convenience stores and vending machines across Japan. At launch it was available in a 600ml PET bottle as the flagship format (jokingly referred to as “Big Guilty” in the thread) and a smaller 350ml can. Several commenters noted that limited-edition merchandise — including an aluminum tumbler — was bundled with early purchases.
Suntory’s carbonated beverage lineup has historically been a challenging market for the company. As one sharp commenter pointed out, Suntory’s independent successes in soda are relatively few — the company is better known for its Pepsi licensing, its canned coffee brands like Boss, and its mineral water lines. NOPE appears to be a deliberate swing at the “mystery flavor” novelty drink space, a category that has succeeded internationally with products like Dr Pepper.
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No comparison dominated the thread more than Dr Pepper. This is not surprising: Dr Pepper occupies a similar conceptual niche in Japan — a spiced, complex, fruit-adjacent soda that nobody can quite describe — and it has a devoted following despite never achieving mainstream popularity. What made the NOPE thread lively is that the Dr Pepper comparison was immediately contested. The most-liked comment in the entire thread (208 hearts) is a gentle pushback: “Dr Pepper is better, so that comparison isn’t quite right.” Multiple commenters agreed that NOPE moves in the same direction as Dr Pepper but stops short: it’s less intense, much sweeter, and closer to a fruit soda than a spiced one. The emerging consensus was something like “Dr Pepper’s younger, fruitier sibling.” Notably, several commenters tested whether NOPE could replace Dr Pepper in their daily rotation and concluded it could not.
The second most-liked comment (164 hearts) made a sharp comparison: NOPE tastes like the old Fanta Fruit Punch that used to be sold in Japan and has since been discontinued. This struck a nerve. Several other commenters immediately agreed, and the Fanta Fruit Punch comparison became one of the thread’s anchoring references alongside Dr Pepper. The reaction points to something interesting about how Japanese consumers process unfamiliar flavors: when a new drink is hard to describe, people reach not for abstract flavor notes but for other products — especially discontinued ones that live in nostalgia. Other products that came up include Fanta Grape, Hokkaido-limited Guarana, Haribo cola gummies, and a cherry-flavored drink nobody could quite name. One commenter said it tasted like the pink liquid medicine they were given as a child — and added, “not in a bad way.”
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A recurring note across many comments, even from people who generally liked the drink: NOPE is very sweet. Several people described the sweetness as its most memorable quality — more so than any identifiable flavor. One commenter who described themselves as a Dr Pepper fan said they expected something similar and were caught off guard by the sweetness. Another user with more industry-adjacent instincts suggested that if Suntory added caffeine and reduced the sweetness slightly, NOPE could compete directly with energy drinks like ZONE — implying the current formulation is underselling the product’s potential. The original tweet itself flagged sweetness as notable, which likely primed the thread to track it.
A small but sharp cluster of comments used NOPE as a jumping-off point for commentary on Suntory’s carbonated beverage track record. One detailed comment argued that Suntory’s only homegrown soda success is C.C. Lemon — and that the company has otherwise relied heavily on Pepsi licensing and its natural water brands. The argument was that Suntory keeps launching experimental sodas (Orangina, various limited editions) without the follow-through to build them into durable brands. Whether or not that analysis is fair, it reflects a real skepticism about whether NOPE will still be on shelves in a year. Another commenter predicted it would disappear quickly, comparing it to “Spiral Grape” — a past Japanese soda that had a devoted following but was discontinued.
