This thread sparked a momory - IIRC, Russell Johnson, aka The Professor on Gilligan’s Island, was on an episode of Ironsides. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Johnson
I believe he was the bad guy, and gave himself away by eating peanuts & coke. This had been noted by a witness as an odd characteristic of the perp.
Why the hell do I keep this kind of stuff in my brain? I don’t have room for stuff I NEED to remember, but this stays in there.
I used to put peanuts in my coke back in the late 30’s and 40’s in South Dakota. I think a lot of people did this back then. Made both the coke and the peanuts taste better. 
Lance peanuts and Coke in bottles, both from the vending machine at the YMCA after soccer or swim team practice (mid 70s). Pure bliss.
You pop the cap off the coke bottle with the built in vending machine cap popper widget. You put your hand around the bottle neck to form a funnel and pour the peanuts and salt into the Coke. The Coke foams up, the peanuts float to the top in a Coke/foam/peanut slurry, filling the neck. You quickly drink, and the slurry is a foamy crunchy salty sweet mouthful that you chew and drink at the same time. The rest of the drink is more fluid, but has stray peanuts and salt.
This all works best on a day when it is 98 degrees and you’re barefoot and wearing cutoff shorts and you’ve biked to the corner store with your best friend and the dog, and later you’ll probably go swimming.*
*Or possibly you and Jim will raft down the Mississippi.
There’s also a reference to peanuts in Dr Pepper in a Tim McGraw song. Lemme deploy the Google-fu . . . .
The lyric is from “Back When”: Don’t you remember, the fizz in a Pepper, peanuts in a bottle, at 10, 2, and 4.
Here’s a blog entry about it.
I always assumed it was strictly a Southern thing, so I’m interested to hear of people doing it in Iowa and South Dakota.
You should try the Hershey’s Take 5 bars if you can find them. It’s a pretzel with peanuts, peanut butter and caramel all covered in chocolate. You get salty from the pretzels and peanuts and sweet from the rest. I bought a bag of minis for Halloween (I know it’s weeks away but I always have to test out the candy first), it’s like crack. It takes all my will power not to eat the whole bag.
As for the peanuts in soda, I never did this but I knew people who did. Also didn’t Laverne on Laverne & Shirley do this? I know she did milk and Pepsi but I thought she also did peanuts in Pepsi.
We bought either Tom’s or Lance peanuts, never Planters, if Mac’s even had 'em.
This I have heard of from several less than sober aquaintences. Supposedly you end up with some degree of liquor soaked peanuts that sustain your buzz.
I question the chemistry but that was the claim.
Those sound really good. I can’t say I’m mad keen on Hershey’s chocolate, but I’ll give them a go if I can find them over here.
Edit… well what do you know? This company does them and their warehouse is only a few miles from my house. “Customer collections are now welcome” 
Someone I knew once said, “If I could just forget the Greek alphabet, I bet I could come up with a cure for cancer.”
Silly me. I had assumed they meant Royal Crown Cola.
I do it with cola. It tastes good.
I’m not from the South, but I’ve lived there a number of times.
My favorite since the early 1960s has been peanuts and a big orange drank. I learned to do this back in my dorm days. Then I would finish up with a cigarette and use the bottle for the ashes.
Sometimes after I had finished the big orange drank and cigarette, I would forget what stage of the ceremony I was participating in. Absentmindedly, I would reach for the bottle and take a big swig of slightly orange scented Lucky Strike ashes.
It took only a couple of times of doing that to cure me and make me pay attention.
Never the Planters, but a real connoisseur from the early days will choose Tom’s peanuts every time. I own a Tom’s display case for that reason.
Salute from Tennessee!
It was never Planter’s peanuts, as others have said. Around here, it was either Dr. Pepper or RC Cola for the drink. The majority seemed to go for the Dr. Pepper.
I did this on occasion, but I really don’t care for the flavor. I prefer sunflower kernels, but I never put them in my soda.
Indeed - In the “White Trash Cookbook” it’s listed as a “High Calorie Pick-Me-Up.” Following the recipe (it calls for Tom’s peanuts, btw), comes the following editorial comment: “Raenelle told me this was one of Betty Sue’s concoctions. She said: ‘But it’s so trashy she won’t own up to it!’”
You can still find the 8 oz. glass bottles of Coke here in Atlanta, and I’ve been known to toss a little bag of peanuts in my Coke even to this day!
Yep, and a lot of southerners pronounce it ‘are - oh - see - cola’.
I remember Bobby Bowden mentioning just that in an interview, and saying it was an ol’ southern thang.
My grandfather did it, and he was from southern Missouri. IIRC Grandma bought Pepsi usually and although I don’t remember the brand of peanuts, they were always the Spanish style ones with the papery shell.