Pungry’s Thirsty: Root Beer Flashback Olde Time Soda Est: 2010

Weeeeeeeeeelllll sonny boy, it’s sometime-long-ago Saturday, and olde grampse here ise gonnae telle youe aboute some olde time sodae thate he founde himselfe drinkinge aftere watchinge the Seattle Marinerse lose againe to trye ande forgete. It’s been a little over a year and a half since I’ve last drunk anything, so my tastebuds have atrophied some, but my sense of nostalgia has only grown greater. Flashback’s Root Beer flavored Olde Time Sodae is, like all root beers, trying very hard to make you remember when you were ten and root beer was the best thing you ever had because back in the day your pappy would only give you ten cents a year for allowance and the soda jerk (who was quite rightfully named so) sold his root beer at the tall price of 15 cents so you’d have to wait two years walking up and down hills both ways in the snow with no shoes to earn enough money to get one small glass at the tall price and you forced your tastebuds to think it was the sweetest thing ever at least until you married Maude down at the olde time poste office when she diligently censored your letters home from serving with the army boys and what was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the root beer. Maybe it’s because it’s been a year and a half since I’ve had any root beer whatsoever, but Flashback tastes better than average despite not doing anything interesting. As always, that’s the problem with these root beers that try to imitate a past taste. You can capture lightning in a bottle a million times after first coming up with it, but it’ll only strike once. Or something like that. To reiterate, Flashback is fine, but I want the future of root beer. Why are all the knuckleheads in Silicon Valley trying to disrupt the tech industry when there’s a perfectly old-fashioned root beer industry to disrupt?

e: Holy smokes, gang. Turns out I’d reviewed this very root beer before for this website! https://pungry.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/pungrys-thirsty-root-beer-flashback-olde-time-soda-est-2010/

One of my main complaints was that it tasted like wintergreen. Well, the folks at Flashback must’ve listened since I couldn’t taste anything other than sweet tap water this time around. Must’ve changed the recipe or something. Which is a crazy thing for a brand called Flashback to do! They’re banking on you drinking this soda once, remembering what it tasted like, and then buying it again for that same taste! Changing the flavor doesn’t do that! I ended that review by calling the root beer a dirty liar, and I think it’s fair for me to do that again.