Cool, my neck of the woods! I actually lived in Spfld a couple years, 1988-1990. Ever go to Magic Kitchen out in Sherman for Thai (and that home made pie)?
Sundrop is popular around here, especially with the high school age crowd. It has been suggested, not entirely tongue-in-cheek, that it be fortified with prenatal vitamins. One of my instructors ships a couple of cases to Florida so that she won’t have to do without her Sundrop fix on vacation.
If you haven’t had Sundrop, it’s similar to Moutain Dew, in my opinion. Loyal Sundrop fans might disagree.
The Detroit area had an analogous beverage called Faygo Redpop. Faygo was a Detroit name dating to the 20s - one of my high school’s English teachers was a Feigenson, from the founding family - that did (does?) all sorts of flavors. Not sure how wide their distribution was, or is.
That’s not the can design I remember.
Re: ginger ale, Canada Dry was the best and I thought they were associated with Canfield’s somehow, but maybe that’s just because I bought them out of the same machine.
Ale has alcohol, beer has alcohol…but ginger beer and ginger ale don’t, as I understand it. I wonder why they’re named as they are.
I was born in 1961. I don’t know how seriously we tried to find Vernor’s elsewhere when I was a kid. It was just one of the things we had when we went to visit my grandmother in Detroit.
Vernors ginger ale is a Detroit drink. I do not know how far it travels. Strangely it is used in Boston Coolers. Vanilla Ice Cream and Vernors.
Vimto in cans and Vimto syrup are available at a Middle Eastern supermarket I go to- I think the clientele is Egyptian, Armenian, and Lebanese.
It’s good stuff. It reminds me of my childhood memories of Tahiti Treat (which now tastes awful to me).
We can get Vernors here in Chicago without too much looking around.
Canfields makes a diet fudge soda that is quite possibly the worst thing ever invented.
Is Faygo nationally available or is that just another midwest thing?
Absolutely! Except when I went there it was still in Springfield, out by the fair grounds. The Grandmother made the pies and if you didn’t get there early, you didn’t get pie!
I left for college in 82 and haven’t really been back much since, I didn’t realize Magic Kitchen was in Sherman now.
(sorry about all the hijacking!)
Although I don’t see it nearly as much as I used to, Cactus Cooler has always been a favorite of mine, and I couldn’t get enough of it growing up. I believe it’s a Southern California thing.
OK, having actually glimpsed the Wikipedia page now, I guess it’s generally in the southwestern US.
2 years ago I went and had some food there. And oops, don’t get me talking about that pie—mm boy! IIRC the chef had worked for the royalty or whatever leaders were there in Thailand, so @ $5 a plate for the food is/was a steal. But that pie…
Um to our knowledge, board, there were no Thai soft drinks available, so see, we didn’t hijack this, we’re still on topic. 
:dubious: :smack: 
What he said, no Thai soft drinks, regional or otherwise.
50/50 and Vernor’s are very readily available here in the Cleveland area. I used to drink Faygo all the time, haven’t noticed it lately. I’ll check. Big Red also used to be popular.
Faygo only seems to show up at Woodmans, a insanely ginourmous grocery from Wisconsin that sells, as far as I can tell, every foodstuff on the planet and at the $1 aisle at the local ethnic market.
It’s apparently named for Boston Boulevard.
When I was a teenager in Washington state in the early 80s, I babysat every Friday night for a couple with family ties to the Detroit area. They brought cases of Vernors back with them from visits there and always had some in the fridge. I was delighted to see it in grocery stores all over the country in the last few years.
Flauder is a lightly sweetened soft drink flavored with elderberry blossoms and melissa available in Switzerland.
Anyone remember Towne Club Soda? I grew up drinking the spectrum of colors/flavors in the Detroit area (as well as Up North). Wiki says they’re in Indiana and Ohio too. I’ll have to try and find some. But it won’t be the same in plastic bottles. Towne Club was meant to be drunk from tall glass bottles.
We have Faygo available at one of our local groceries here in Baton Rouge (Hi-Nabor). My mother used to drink their diet drinks. I rank it right up there with Shasta, which used to also be readily available at Hi-Nabor.
It’s all Coke, anyway.
I found Pitu (brand) Cachaca in a Pennsylvania liquor store 5 or so years ago. I bought the 3 bottles on the shelf, and haven’t seen it since. For a while I was mixing up caipirinhas left and right, now I’m out. 
Any brazilian supermarket wil have these. newark NJ (large Brazilian-American community) has all of this stuff.
I just wish the girls would start imitating the brazilians (in swimsuit technology)