This product didn’t exist, but a perceptive artist/promising marketer concocted designs for 12 different flavors and a special edition platinum box. You shouldn’t put it past the free-spending Casablanca label to have tried something like this, though. After all, they cheerfully green-lighted the unprecedented expenses for manufacturing the Kiss band members’ four simultaneous solo albums in 1978. And the tendency of both the label and the band to merchandise with no regard to age appropriateness was without parallel.

I collected these cans in the summer of ’79 and was able to make the stacked up panorama shown in this picture. My decision to toss them out at the end of that summer was perhaps a formative anti-hoarding lesson for someone with an unmistakable collector’s impulse. Each can offers up a single image suggesting a quintessential recreational activity for each state (photos – except for Minnesota – courtesy of usasoda.com):

Alabama (biking in historic Mobile)
Alaska (scaling the Alaska range)
Arizona (backpacking in the Grand Canyon)
Arkansas (picknicking in Hot Springs)
California (surfing the California coast)
Colorado (skiing in the Rockies)
Connecticut (hiking the Appalachian Trail)
Delaware (touring)
Florida (boating in the Everglades)
Georgia (fishing Lake Lanier)
Hawaii (snorkeling)
Idaho (rafting the Salmon River)
Illinois (cycling in New Salem State Park)
Indiana (playing basketball)
Iowa (ballooning)
Kansas (camping along the Santa Fe Trail)
Kentucky (horse racing)
Louisiana (boating in Lake Pontchartrain)
Maine (canoeing in the Allagash River)
Maryland (sailing in Chesapeake Bay)
Massachusetts (running the Boston Marathon)
Michigan (fishing in Lake Michigan)
Minnesota (dogsledding in the Superior National Forest)
Mississippi (sailing along the Gulf Coast)
Missouri (canoeing in the Ozark streams)
Montana (backbacking in Glacier National Park)
Nebraska (saddlebronc riding)
Nevada (wind sailing in Death Valley)
New Hampshire (climbing White Mountain)
New Jersey (canoeing in the Pine Barrens)
New Mexico (rounding up cattle)
New York (sight-seeing in Central Park)
North Carolina (golfing the Tar Heel Fairways)
North Dakota (cross country skiing)
Ohio (backpacking along the Buckeye Trail)
Oklahoma (horse riding near the Glass Mountains)
Oregon (climbing Mount Hood)
Pennsylvania (touring Independence Square)
Rhode Island (sailing in Newport)
South Carolina (playing tennis at Hilton Head)
South Dakota (hiking Mount Rushmore)
Tennessee (hiking the Great Smokies)
Texas (fishing the Toledo Bend Reservoir)
Utah (camping in national parks)
Vermont (iceboating in Lake Champlain)
Virginia (camping in the Shenandoah Valley)
Washington (kayaking in the Skagit River)
West Virginia (climbing the Seneca Rocks)
Wisconsin (fishing in Lake Winnebago)
Wyoming (hiking the Grand Tetons)

Anyone interested in constructing an alternate list?

Was thinking about a long deceased friend of mine and one of my central memories of him: the two of us, six years old, sitting at his kitchen table and his mom serving both of us slices of bread with banana/peanut Koogle. He took a bite and pretended like his lips were stuck together. Then I took a bite and realized he might not have been pretending.