How to get dropdown (and multiple) select value for a product collection?

Question

In Magento 1.5 on the product page, I created a product collection (for related products) like this (I've omitted filters):

// $_products = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_collection') // this variation makes no difference.
$_products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
                        ->addAttributeToSelect('name')
                        ->addAttributeToSelect('url_path')
                        ->addAttributeToSelect('price')
                        ->addAttributeToSelect('some_text_attribute')
                        ->addAttributeToSelect('some_dropdown_attr'); // does not work for dropdown/multiselect apparently

Now if I echo $_products->getSelect() I see that adding the dropdown attribute did nothing to modify the select. So the data for 'some_dropdown_attr' is not available that way. Isn't there a way to add it to the select. And if not, there certainly must be a way to get the value(s) of any dropdown (or multiselect) attribute for a certain product.

$_text_attr[] = array();
$_dropdown_attr[] = array();
foreach($_products as $_product) {
  $_text_attr[] = $_product->getData('some_text_attribute');
  // 1.) get resource - doesn't work
  // $_dropdown_attr[] = $_product->getResource()->getAttribute('some_dropdown_attr')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product); // results in array of "No"
  // 2.) get attribute text - doesn't work
  // $_dropdown_attr[] = $_product->getAttributeText('some_dropdown_attr'); // results in array of NULLS. 
  // Get attributes - doesn't work - array of "No". Also, even if it did work it seems idiotic to have to get all product attributes just to get the value of one
  // $_attrs = $_product->getAttributes();
  // $_dropdown_attr[] = $_attrs['some_dropdown_attr']->getFrontend()->getValue($_product);
}

Answer 1

As @marius points out in the comments the following should work:

$_product->getAttributeText('some_dropdown_attr');

Therefore only the following could be happening:

• You must have mis-named your dropdown attribute
• Ensure that the attribute has valid values applied on the current store view

If all else fails, there may be a problem with your attribute setup code; for instance, not visible in the frontend isn't set properly and you're using flat tables...

In that case to debug output it with the following code:

$attr = $_product->getResource()->getAttribute('some_dropdown_attr')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product);

If that works check your catalog attribute configuration or disable flat indexes.