I didn't really answer the TOD about my favorite sodas.
Coca-Cola -- now, then, and forever. But I enjoy a Pepsi once in a great while, too. I'm not one of "those".
Growing up, what I think we most commonly had around the house (when we had soda at all) was Coke, 7-Up, Root Beer, the occasional Vernor's, maybe some orange or grape thing. In my earliest years, though, it was more like what someone else said: Kool-Aid. A soda was a real treat, most often enjoyed if we were eating out, grabbing a snack somewhere, stopping at a lunch counter, or getting a bottle out of a vending machine.
So... Coke, the occasional Pepsi, and I now like trying various root beers, for a couple of reasons. I can appreciate the sort of old-timey type of thing it is
(OH!! Sorry to interrupt myself, but: Birch Beer at Royal Castle. South Florida in the 1960s. I so miss that place.)
Where was I? Root beers. The other reason is that there's an incredible variety of them. My go-to, however, is actually the ubiquitous A&W. (Got a Proustian moment about that, too.)
For diet sodas, which is mostly what I indulge in on a routine basis now, it's: Coke Zero (a godsend), diet Dr. Pepper, Diet A&W, and I, too, like that original chemical taste of TAB. Isn't there still a saccharine version available somewhere?
Oh, and DR MBarnum mentioned orange creme sodas. I generally don't like creme sodas (except the occasional root beer that's especially creamy -- that's just fine). I did like Orange Julius, very much, though -- but only the way it was made at the O.J. stands in L.A. in the 1970s. Tried one here a couple of years ago and it was a complete waste of taste bud expenditure.
