Traumatized by Faygo: Why I’ll Never Drink Redpop or Grape Again
I was traumatized by Faygo Redpop and Faygo Grape as a kid, and it's a feeling I still carry with me to this day.
OK. Maybe "traumatized" is a bit strong. But see if you can understand why.
When I was in fifth grade at Central Elementary in Flushing, my dad drove an 18-wheeler for a living. He hauled all sorts of things across the country. I vaguely remember him hauling pickles out of Pinconning. I can barely recall another time when he transported an entire trailer full of Head and Shoulders shampoo.
I will always remember the time my dad hauled an entire truckload of Faygo Redpop and Faygo Grape.
When he got to his destination and opened the back of the trailer, that's when the leak was discovered. Rain had gotten into the trailer during transit, and several of the cardboard cases which held the pop bottles had gotten wet. Because of those wet cardboard containers, the receiver refused to accept several pallets.
Now, my dad didn't work for some large trucking company. He was an independent contractor, so there was nowhere else to pass the buck. He called the company that had shipped the Faygo and explained to them what had happened. They determined that it would cost too much for him to bring the affected bottles all the way back to them for re-packaging, so they told him just to keep them.
Keep them.
I was a 10-year-old kid whose dad had basically just inherited all the Faygo my brother and I could possibly ever want! We were the luckiest kids in the world! Until reality began to set in.
We didn't have a big house, and we didn't have a garage. So those pallets of Faygo ended up taking up space in the bedroom my brother and I shared.
We gave away several cases to happy relatives, but it hardly made a dent in our newfound stash of Faygo.
For what seemed like the next 20 years, every time we wanted a pop, we had two choices. Faygo Redpop, or Faygo Grape. My parents weren't buying anything else. Couldn't even get a reprieve at grandma's house. She was stocked up too.
I'm not sure I tasted another soft drink until I was old enough to drive and go get my own. And I've never had another Faygo Redpop or Faygo Grape since.