Favorite type of soda?

[DTComposer]

I gave up soda and iced tea about 25 years ago, when I decided coffee would be my caffeine provider. I will occasionally have a 7-Up, less often a Coke. I preferred Coke to Pepsi because I felt it had more "bite" to it. I also enjoyed cream soda.

I loved root beer as a child, and around 15 or so I completely lost my taste for it.

[Roadgeekteen]

I gave up soda and iced tea about 25 years ago, when I decided coffee would be my caffeine provider. I will occasionally have a 7-Up, less often a Coke. I preferred Coke to Pepsi because I felt it had more "bite" to it. I also enjoyed cream soda.

I loved root beer as a child, and around 15 or so I completely lost my taste for it.

I tried 7-Up- cannot see what is good about it.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

7-Up was better when it was sweeter. They changed the formula some years ago to make it more tart and it wasn't the same. I pretty much avoid it entirely now.

[US71]

7-Up was better when it was sweeter. They changed the formula some years ago to make it more tart and it wasn't the same. I pretty much avoid it entirely now.

Sierra Mist is worse, IMO

[briantroutman]

In one of my marketing courses at Penn State, we went through a detailed dissection of the development and launch of Diet Coke in 1982. Much of the material focused on the new drink's relationship with the Coca-Cola Company's first diet cola, Tab.

Coca-Cola Company execs were keen to tap a new low-calorie soft drink market that was exploding in the early '60s, but they were afraid of having their precious name on anything other than "the real thing" . So they had a computer kick out thousands of meaningless four-letter combinations. One that caught their eye was TABB, which they shortened to TAB. The primary sweetener is (or was) either saccharin or cyclamate depending on which of the two wasn't banned in your country at the time of purchase.

To the best of my knowledge, I had never heard of Tab before that marketing course, nor had I ever seen or tasted one. (In retrospect, the Tab joke in Back to the Future had gone right over my head.) Then by chance, I stumbled upon a 12-pack of Tab cans in a grocery store and had to satisfy my curiosity.

Later at home, I opened the first can and took a sip. It was the most vile beverage I'd ever tasted. But I'm loath to waste anything, so I finished the can. And though it became a little less disgusting with each successive sip, I definitely didn't like it.

The remaining eleven cans sat in my refrigerator for few weeks before I finally decided that I should finish them off. I opened can #2, and inexplicably, I LOVED it. And I have loved Tab ever since. OK, maybe "love"  is overstating it, but I at least like it, and since I've never seen another human being drinking a Tab outside of people I've given one to (plus Steve Martin in The Jerk), Tab–out of all soft drinks–feels most like my own.

That said, I drink maybe a couple per month at most. The link between saccharin and cancer is weak at best, but I'd rather my body not be saturated with it. And as years pass, I find there are many things I'd rather drink than soda.

Then too, Tab is hard to find because, though it remains an official Coca-Cola Company product, many Coke bottlers (perhaps the vast majority) don't make it. Hence if you're in the territory of a Coke bottler that still makes Tab, it will be reliably available at almost every grocery store. And if you're not, you won't find it at all. When I lived in California, the San Francisco area bottler didn't make it, but I could buy it in the Reno/Tahoe area or in Los Angeles, so I'd bring back several cases on road trips.

[SP Cook]

- Kosher Coke.  Hard to find outside places with a significant Jewish population.  I have seen it at Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati, which is a good source for lots of foreign, throwback, and off-beat food products. 

- Ale-8-One has a very detailed map of who sells it where on its website. 

https://ale8one.com/sales/

- TAB.  Not wanting to diminish the flagship brand's name with a diet version is why it is Lite (from Miller).  After the success of that deal, A-B fretted for a while, unwilling to call something "Bud Light", launching instead "Natural Light from Anheauser-Busch".  When that did not take they launched Bud Light and repurposed Natural Light, whose original marketing pitch was very upscale, as a cheapo beer for hard drinkers.  Which brings me to TAB.  Old guy mode on, TAB, before there was Diet Coke, was, umm, the diet version of Coke.  It was, as Coke Zero is today, an attempt to make something that tasted as much like Coke as possible, given the artificial sweeteners of the times.  Diet Coke is not.  It is, more or less, Diet New Coke, the same flavoring formula as the marketing fiasco of all time.  As sweeteners advanced, there is a group who grew up on saccharin and like the taste.  Probably as those people (mostly women who were in their teens and 20s in the 60s and 70s) age out, the product will go away.

-7-UP.  7-UP used to be a good product.  They changed the formula about 10 years ago (at least in the USA, oddly both 7-UP and Dr Pepper have split ownership, with the US company only owning Dr Pepper in the USA and about 20 other countries, and the CCC owning it everywhere else, and 7-UP only in the USA, with PepsiCo owning it everywhere else, where, AFAIK, they still use the old formula).

[briantroutman]

As sweeteners advanced, there is a group who grew up on saccharin and like the taste.  Probably as those people (mostly women who were in their teens and 20s in the 60s and 70s) age out, the product will go away.

I have to disagree with your assessment of the Tab market. There may be a few Barbies who have been drinking Tab and smoking Virginia Slims ever since the Johnson administration, but if for no other reason than lack of product availability, I think most of these original users switched to Diet Coke or something else years ago.

Perhaps my view is skewed by my surroundings, but in my occasional searches for Tab over the years, most other Tab aficionados I've encountered could be best described as eccentric or "alternative" . People who engage in performance art, people who drive Peugeots, Neil Hamburger fans... These seem to be the type of people who will go out of their way to buy an odd-tasting beverage which may or may not be a carcinogen.

[US71]

I'll drink Tab before I touch Dr Pepper or any of its clones (Mr Pibb, etc)

I also have a nice set of Tab glasses (as well as 7UP) 

[Rothman]

There was an ice cream parlor in my hometown that had Tab on their menu into the mid-1990s.  In 1992 or so, a friend of mine asked for one and they didn't have it.

Saw it in stores here in the last few years, though (upstate NY).

[kkt]

There was a Simpsons episode in which a character drank Tab, to create a less than manly image.

[jp the roadgeek]

Tab even tried to join in on the Crystal Pepsi craze



Another variation of the lemon/lime soda family I remember as a kid was Teem.  Never saw it in stores, but some restaurants carried it.

[Big John]

There was a Simpsons episode in which a character drank Tab, to create a less than manly image.

Then there is Homer ordering a Tab after not finding the "any" key.

[hbelkins]

My brother is a fan of Tab. It is, indeed, hard to find these days.

[MNHighwayMan]

We have it here in Iowa. It was also common in Minnesota back when I lived there. It seems to be pretty popular in this little region of the country.

[slorydn1]

Tab--> My only memory of Tab was as a child in the 1970's taking a sip from my mom's can. I think I would rather drink cod liver oil before ever trying another sip of Tab ever again.

In other threads I joked about the Pepsi vs Coke thing as I live in the birthplace of Pepsi. My office is a mere 3 blocks from the actual spot. I trully am ambivalent about either cola, I can drink either one. I think Pepsi tastes slightly better than Coke, my little brother disagrees.

                              ----BUT-------

My actual favorite "soda" (or pop for our midwestern friends) is non other than Publix in-house brand Black Cherry soda, with a close second to their brand of Cream soda. Now that we actually have a Publix in our town it brings back memories of all of those trips to Florida as a child, and all the Black Cherry I consumed on the beach during Christmas break every year.

[Conn. Roads]

Apparently there are no other New Englanders willing to weigh in on Moxie. You can still get it in other parts of the country, but New England, and Upstate NY seems to be where it is most popular.

[bandit957]

Apparently there are no other New Englanders willing to weigh in on Moxie. You can still get it in other parts of the country, but New England, and Upstate NY seems to be where it is most popular.

I tried Moxie once. It was different, but it was OK.

[formulanone]

Apparently there are no other New Englanders willing to weigh in on Moxie. You can still get it in other parts of the country, but New England, and Upstate NY seems to be where it is most popular.

I weighed in on Moxie in the Least Favorite Type of Soda thread...

[JJBers]

Apparently there are no other New Englanders willing to weigh in on Moxie. You can still get it in other parts of the country, but New England, and Upstate NY seems to be where it is most popular.

I hate Moxie, and in Southern New England, I rarely ever see it.

[Roadrunner75]

Apparently there are no other New Englanders willing to weigh in on Moxie. You can still get it in other parts of the country, but New England, and Upstate NY seems to be where it is most popular.

I really like Moxie.  I've always heard about it, and when we went up to Maine for the first time a couple of years ago I finally got to try it.  Since that time I've found they sell it in the glass bottle 4 packs (for a considerable premium, and from a Washington state specialty soda bottler) sometimes at Christmas Tree Shops if I recall, and I used to get it there occasionally.

Last year we went back to Maine, and this time I filled the back of my car with 12 packs of canned Moxie and Diet Moxie.  I still have some in the garage and I ration it out until we get back up that way to stock up.  It's too expensive to ship (and I'm not that obsessed).  There is also a bottler out in Catawissa PA that makes it.  We go out that way to see the in-laws periodically, but I still haven't found it in any local places (I think it's more distributed from Harrisburg up north).

As for my favorite - that would be Diet Dr. Pepper.  Even better in a 44oz cup from Wawa's new Freestyle machines with cherry vanilla.  I could probably go for a continuous IV drip or keg of diet soda all day, and will no doubt pay the price when they find out how bad Aspartame really is.  I switched to diet years ago, and now regular high-test tastes too sweet for me.  TAB was mentioned above, and at my previous company there was a woman who brought cases of it in and put it in one of the company soda machines.  Every once in awhile we would walk to the other end of the building and have a TAB.  Not all that great, but it brought the 80s back for a moment.

[bandit957]

You will all be pleased to know that today I discovered that our friendly neighborhood Kroger does carry Ale-8-1 in glass bottles (but not any other type of container, if such a thing exists).

[hbelkins]

You will all be pleased to know that today I discovered that our friendly neighborhood Kroger does carry Ale-8-1 in glass bottles (but not any other type of container, if such a thing exists).

Ale-8 can be purchased in 12-ounce returnable glass bottles, 12-ounce nonreturnable glass bottles, 20-ounce plastic bottles and 12-ounce cans.

Diet Ale-8 is available in the latter three versions (the classic returnable bottles are only for regular Ale-8 and there are people who swear that the liquid in the returnables tastes better than the liquid in the nonreturnable bottles.)

Caffeine Free Diet Ale-8 is also available, and I think it comes only in cans and nonreturnable bottles. I've never seen it in 20-ounce plastic bottles.

[cjk374]

Cokes from glass bottles always taste better than cans, plastic bottles, or a fountain. That's why they charge more for the glass bottles.

And...don't forget to put peanuts in the glass bottles of Coke.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

And...don't forget to put peanuts in the glass bottles of Coke.

I have never heard this. Guess there's something for me to try next time.

[cjk374]

And...don't forget to put peanuts in the glass bottles of Coke.

I have never heard this. Guess there's something for me to try next time.

I think it's a southern thang. But it is delicious. Roasted without the red skins preferably.