My love of pop goes back to my youth. My family didn’t always have pop in the refrigerator but my mom would sometimes pick up a quart bottle from Tushner’s Market to go along with skin on wieners and potato chips, a Saturday lunch tradition growing up. My grandmother would also treat my brother Jimbo and me to a pop at the laundromat. Sometimes if I found enough returnable bottles I could return them to a grocery store for 2-cents apiece and get enough cash back to buy a full bottle.

Image my thrill to find a store devoted to nothing but pop. Mass Street Soda is located on historic Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas. The store’s website claims, “With over 1,000 varieties of soda, it’s setup to satisfy almost any taste.” I picked up a 4-pack of mixed pops and took it back to the motorhome to chill and sample later. There was a shelve at the store containing some real odd pop varieties like Dill Pickle and Bacon flavored sodas. The store clerk told me that she thought everything on that shelve was gross, so I took her advice and stayed away.

Big Red has been around since 1937 and was a pop that I really enjoyed as a kid. It was sweet and creamy and everything I remembered. The soda is neither strawberry nor cherry flavored as I assumed all these years. With just a bit of internet browsing I discovered that Big Red is actually a combination of lemon oil and orange oil along with vanilla. Whatever its ingredients, it tastes like my childhood to me.

Dad’s Blue Cream Soda drew me in because I like the color blue and I like cream soda. It was good and very sweet, but the color blue had no connection to the flavor. I guess that I was expecting a blueberry flavor, perhaps something like a creamy version of a blue snow-cone. It was a good vanilla cream soda that just so happened to be colored blue.

Lost Trail Sarsaparilla is made in Louisburg, Kansas. Here are some fun facts from WebMd: “Sarsaparilla is used for treating psoriasis and other skin diseases, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and kidney disease; for increasing urination to reduce fluid retention; and for increasing sweating. Sarsaparilla is also used along with conventional drugs for treating leprosy and for syphilis.” Good to know I guess. The pop when opened had a spicy, yet mild aroma. It was quite good but there was not as much carbonation as I expected.

Lost Trail Orange Cream Soda was something that my wife picked out for herself, but she let me have a taste. Orange pops were never really my ‘thing’ but this one was pretty good. The flavor reminded me of an Orange Creamsickle.

Old Town Albuquerque, NM is packed full of tourist shops with trinkets, t-shirts and other souvenirs on display to pull in visitors’ dollars. The weather, however was beautiful and one of the shops I ventured into had a few pops hat I had never seen before. I picked one up and drank it while waiting on my co-shopper.

Zia Pinon Kola is not a cola. It is brewed with a blend of kola and pińon nuts grown in the mountains of New Mexico. It also contains lime juice, vanilla and cinnamon. While is is made using real cane sugar the pop is not overly sweet. Plenty of carbonation with the nutty flavor made this an excellent pop to experience. This one is among the top of my list of favorites.

Another places that sells unique and vintage pops is Cracker Barrel. My wife DiAnne and I stopped for lunch at a Cracker Barrel in Gallop, NM and before leaving, I picked up another 4-pack of pop to go.

Cheerwine has been around since 1917 according to the bottle. This was the first time I’d ever heard of it. Cheerwine is a cherry-flavored pop produced in Salisbury, North Carolina. The first thing I noticed about it was its strong cherry flavor. According to Wikipedia, the pop is supposed to be highly carbonated, but mine was a bit flat so it was most likely a bottle that had been on the shelf too long. Every time I took a sip from the bottle I tried to determine whether this was a cola or something else. I concluded that it is a cherry-cola, but the cherry is stronger than any other cherry-cola I’ve ever had.

Americana Honey Cream is a really good pop distributed by Orca Beverages out of Mukilteo, WA. It has a modest, but just-right honey flavor with a hint of vanilla. If you are a cream soda junkie like me, you’ll want to give this one a try. This pop along with the Zia Pinon Kola rate at the top of my list.

Ale 8 (aka Ale-8-One) was a pleasant surprise and was the last bottle I pulled from the shelf at Cracker Barrel before leaving. I thought Ale 8 was going to be boringly similar to 7-Up (since both have a single digit and a short word in the title) but it turned out instead to be a good ginger ale. The ginger flavor was stronger than any ginger ale I’ve ever had, but not as strong as a ginger beer. Ale 8 is bottled by Ale-8-One Bottling Company, Winchester, KY.

Praline Cream Soda by Swamp Pop Sodas out of Lafayette, Louisiana was out of this world heavenly. Truth be told, I drank all four pops (in photo above) today so I could write this article and by the time I tasted this one I was popped out. This pop, however is rich enough to be a dessert on it’s own. Praline Cream Soda features a full brown sugar, buttery pecan flavor that dances about your mouth for a while. Di and I had a sip of this before hiking today and she liked it as much as I did. I put the remaining pop in the refrigerator and when we returned I made two small Praline Cream Soda floats using Edy’s Slow Churned Vanilla Bean ice cream. Best pop float ever for me.

In Minnesota and throughout most of the Midwest we call it pop. In other places it’s known as soda or a cold fizzy drink. In the south, one might hear a request for a coke which doesn’t necessarily mean Coke®. The generic term ‘coke’ could mean any variety of pop. Whatever you call it, I have been a pop lover my entire life. Choosing, tasting and writing about these unique sodas was a fun experience for me but I have no desire for another pop this evening.