My one experience with Hoffman's sodas came when I worked one summer in a gas station in New York that my father briefly owned; the vanilla cream soda was the best I've had outside of Dr. Brown's. Although I'm loath to endorse anything with the dreaded "natural and artifical flavors" at its core, I do miss both Crystal Pepsi (I didn't think it was much like 7Up - much closer to regular Pepsi without the coloring, which I think was probably the point, to see if they could sell the stuff without the half-cent-per-can investment in caramel color) and Pepsi Blue, which tasted pretty good although I suspect a lot of potential customers couldn't get past the kinda Gothic graphics. And for the person who asked - Nehi is fairly readily available here in Louisville, usually by the bottle in larger convenience stores, usually orange, peach and occasionally grape, although these days my waistline usually dictates its cousin Diet Rite, or Fresca.
I miss glass bottles too, but goodbye to those days. None of the big players are going to ever go back to the days of maintaining washing facilities, absorbing breakage costs, product liability from broken bottles (think small children and car tires), etc. etc. etc., and we wouldn't pay what it would cost anyway.
I was digging around
www.popsoda.com last night, which is what prompted me to start reading this thread in the first place, and was surprised to discover how many of the European fruit-flavored brands still have substantial (in most cases, around 25%) amounts of fruit juice in the formula. Reminds me of when Hawaiian Punch actually was fruit punch, galvanized steel can and all, instead of sugar water.
