All this sploshing around the sewage outflow on the beach of nostalgia reminds me of a fraught issue in The Asbestos Palace. My wife and I remember a product from our childhood that doesn't seem to exist, yet weirdly we both remember it.
Firstly, let's introduce The Pop Man. Kids these days won't believe you could get stuff just delivered to your door, but back in the 70s and 80s, a man (there may have been Pop Women, but I never saw one) would come around once a week and take away your empties and leave fresh bottles of fizzy sugary confection coloured with luridly hued industrial chemical process byproducts. It was the happiest day of any week because we were all sugar junkies. Don't drink it all, wailed our mother's vainly, that has to last all week. Fortunately, diabetes had yet to be invented, in fact, I think we were working on that very invention.
Anyway, the product was a variety of pop. We think it was called Grandcham. Neither of us can find any record of this childhood nectar or anything similar. It was a like Iron Brew (that's what unofficial Irn Brus were called) but lighter in colour and with a taste never before encountered in nature.