Look, I’m not the only one who made the comparison to ice cream.
If you would prefer to drop the comparison, that’s fine with me. I don’t care, and it is irrelevant to the point, which is vanilla in sweetened dairy desserts is a common and accepted flavoring combination in American cuisine. The only reason I brought up ice cream is because Jasmine already brought up ice cream and didn’t want her to feel like her comparison was way out there.
Again, OK-- I’ve been corrected.
I think we are getting very high brow over something that, in the end, is simply a matter of personal taste. My vanilla yogurt is a dessert substitute for vanilla ice cream and, since vanilla ice cream is my favorite, vanilla yogurt is the thing for me. On the other hand, if it is “disgusting” to a given individual, then it is disgusting.
I think Kayaker has a great idea. If you use plain yogurt, you can build your personal creation from scratch and get exactly what you want.
If one really wants to appreciate the difference between “plain” and “vanilla”, I suggest one do what I did. I went to a Cold Stone creamery parlor and tried both their vanilla ice cream and their sweet cream ice cream. The latter is the Ur form of ice cream; sugar and the dairy ingredients, no other flavors. A world of difference in taste.
This entire thread is founded on the assumption that everything under discussion is a matter of personal taste. So this is just tautological.
So what kind of answer are you hoping for? I think the simplest answers have already been given: to most, it’s the default “plain, sweet” flavor that is most flexible and most American consumers find the taste of yogurt and vanilla palatable.
This is in fact how I make my vanilla yogurt. Plus I make the yogurt from scratch. Then I have total control over ingredients and how I like it: Less sugar, more vanilla.
The Haagen-Dazs pistachio is like this: sweet cream base, and studded with pistachios. No ghastly green color. The pure flavor of the pistachios stands out in stark relief to the delicate base. Other brands seem to use almond extract and other stuff for their background flavors. Ben and Jerry’s was rated to have a good pistachio, and while it’s a nice ice cream, it tastes overwhelmingly of almonds. To check myself, I looked at the Amazon reviews and a number of the reviewers said the same: “great pistachio ice cream, if you like almonds.”
I actually love a good quality sweet cream ice cream. I like it more than vanilla ice cream. I do love a nice rich vanilla flavor in my creme brulee, though.
Is this the vanilla yogurt degenerate confessional ?
Aside from using it in smoothies …
I periodically make dessert in a ‘parfait glass,’ layering (any/all of the following):
You can have my parfait when you can pry it from my cold, dead, vanilla-scented hands.
So I’m a monster ? I’ve made peace with it.
Sigh. I’ve had too many parfaits like that. They look delicious on the shelf, but the sweetened vanilla yogurt really detracts from what could have been a fabulous treat.
I enjoy an occasional Caucasian (aka White Russian). I use soy milk or almond milk.
Plain milk with Kahlúa and vodka is great, but using the vanilla flavor version of milk makes an awful tasting atrocity.
Last evening, after dinner, prompted by absolutely nothing whatsoever (<grin>), I asked my wife if she’d like a parfait for dessert.
After scouring every inch of the premises to be sure that @Acsenray wasn’t lurking about, I made said parfait.
While we were eating them, and watching the boob tube, a commercial for Ozempic, a diabetes medication, came on the TV.
To which my Nurse Practitioner wife said, sotto voce:
Just one more of these parfaits …
So … yeah. Moderation 
But OMFG was it good.
so… you used vanilla yogurt?
sigh. 
We did.
And the truth is that the fruit and granola probably added more sugar than the yogurt.
We used this stuff:
https://www.mountainhighyoghurt.com/products/fat-free-yoghurt-vanilla/
We probably each had about 4T of the yogurt layered in with the fruit. That seems to equate to about 6.25g of sugar (from the yogurt) for each of us – really not a lot.
In total, though, it’s still a pretty sweet dessert – made worse when I drizzle Grand Marnier on it; maybe a wee bit better if I drizzle balsamic vinegar on it.
We don’t eat a lot of added sugar, in general, and neither of us has problems with weight or blood sugar, so we splurge from time to time.
And it really was good
I have used rice, hazelnut, coconut, oat and hemp varieties of milk-like beverages, always plain. The one accidental purchase of vanilla favor led to the bulk of the carton going straight down the drain. That stuff is atrocious without spirits in it.
It’s not the total amount of sugar. It’s the balance. I like the sourness of the yogurt as a counterpart to the sweetness of the fruit. In fact, I’m fine if the fruit is sweetened a bit to accentuate that balance.
The balsamic vinegar drizzle sounds nice.
There’s no general agreement on the spelling. It seems to me that you can keep adding letters to it:
yogurt
yaourt
yoghurt
yogourt
yoghourt
yoghaourt
curds
And there’s also that the English apparently pronounce it like “yawgg’t” whereas in North America, we pronounce two distinct syllables with the first syllable only slightly stressed: yo-gurt.
So, there seems to be a reverse economy of orthography. The fewer letters you spell it with, the more likely you’ll pronounce each letter.
You know the Brits, the proper name of the language they speak ie Elision. How do they pronounce “Leicester”? And then there is the whole matter of words like “ghoti”.