I remember A&W Root Beer and Stewart Root Beer drive through burger joints. I wonder if there are any left.
Other flavors of sodas that are no longer popular:
[ul]
[li]Moxy: Apparently, one of the first sodas. I was on a trip to Maine and bought back a case for work since one of our coworkers was from Yankeeland. She refused to even look at them. A couple of people tried them, but they were far from popular.[/li][li]Squirt: This was a grapefruit flavored drink. There were several grapefruit flavored sodas. Never understood why this was a good idea.[/li][li]NeHi Grape Soda: Grape was once a popular flavor, but another loss to Colas[/li][li] Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda: Celery Flavored. Use to be my father’s favorite.[/li][li] Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge: For a short while back in the 1970s, this soda was a big hit. Of course, we were all on drugs back then.[/li][li]Delaware Punch: Actually has been banned by most states. (Due to red food coloring used and not due to taste). One sip, and you could feel your teeth rot.[/li][li] Big Red: Oh God. Please, die. This stuff is like liquid bubblegum, but sweeter. It is like Delaware Punch on acid. Or at least lots of caffeine which is the only reason people use to drink the stuff. Now, with highly caffeinated things like Red Bull, you’d think this stuff would be on its death bed. But, for some strange reason it is having a resurgence.[/li][/ul]
Ah, Moxie. The trick with Moxie, you see, is that the first sip tastes horrible. So does the second. This is where the magic happens, the third sip tastes pretty good and wholly unlike the first two sips. From there, enjoy the rest of your delicious soda; just don’t stop for too long or you’ll have to start from the beginning again.
A-yup, it’s a Maine thing and it’ll stay that way. That’s fine; it has a museum, an annual festival and plentiful supply where it is enjoyed. That’s good enough for me.
Stewarts Root Beer drive-in still exists – there is one in the town I live in.
The Cel-Ray soda still exists, too. For some reason my husband likes it, although I cannot understand why. We are sometimes able to get it for him at Wegmans.
A&W restaurants still exist and they are all over California over here. They are owned by Yum, parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Long John Silver.
A&W has a website with a locator feature. I entered a few metropolitan ZIP codes at random and in every case found several restaurants in the surrounding area.
Obviously they’re not nearly as dense as McDonald’s and the like, but they are around.
I really really wish that the states thought lemon was a viable flavor for stuff. In Japan, there’s delicious lemon gum and lemon soda and such that’s widely available. What gives?
I usually find that most lemon flavored stuff tastes nothing like lemon. And, as far as I know, there is no Lemon soda or gum here. But, even if there were, they’d taste more like lemonade–not the kind made from real lemons, but the mix.
Squirt is still around, or at least it was as little as 5 years ago. I used to have a co-worker who drank it like water. It might be hard to find though.
Although the origianal chocolate flavor (and a few others, including strawberry) have never been discontinued, it has been relatively unsuccessful. Or, at least, it has never really caught on in my area, Rochester, New York. Nor, most likely, Western New York. I can’t recall when I last saw in on a shelf here.
Is this an attempted whoosh? There’s tons of lemon flavored stuff in the States.