I'm about to take you a journey here, folks. Please, buckle up for safety!
You won't recall, but a long, long time ago I used to write these little bite-sized blog posts for my old site retrodef that I called Nostalgia Bombs. They were supposed to be a "blast from my past"; quickie posts that would be succinct and to the point!
Of course in true-to-me form, I ended up completely ruining the idea and writing a thousand words on everything from old cartoons to dead junk food brands. I'm pretty long-winded, so I guess Nostalgia Bombs were still kinda mini compared to the rest of my posts?
There were a few topics in that series that I always held out hope I'd one day get to enjoy again. One was Hostess Potato Chips and, as you might recall, that day kinda-sorta came back in 2024 when parent company Frito-Lay (or PepsiCo, I dunno) decided to revive the brand as Munchies. I made a post and a terrible video about it that you can enjoy here if you want to relive the excitement.
The other item that I've always secretly held out hope for was Snow White cream soda, which I wrote about way back in 2020 and was actually the final Nostalgia Bomb.
A short synopsis is that Snow White, my chosen cream soda and one of my favourite pops of all time, was available in Nova Scotia when I was kid and teen. At some point in the 90s it disappeared from the convenience stores near me. I did some research and found out the following:
Snow White was a soda brand owned by a company in Ontario called Technobev, which was just an English brand for market differentiation. The real owner was Breuvages Kiri, a Quebec-owned and operated company that had been around since the 1920s. Snow White was marketed in Ontario and the Maritimes, while the Kiri name was used in and around Quebec. While it seems Snow White was no longer offered in the Atlantic provinces at some point in the late-90s, it continued to exist in Ontario until some time between 2007 and 2011, at which point Breuvages Kiri filed for bankruptcy and went kaput.
What I have found out very recently, however, is that the Kiri brand of soft drinks is still around!
Enter Red Champagne...
While Breuvages Kiri was a Quebec staple for soda pop, one of their cherished and still very local brands is Red Champagne. Interesting fact: it's one of the few drinks - outside of the infamous alcohol beverages made in Champagne, France - that is allowed to use "champagne" in its name. It is described as an apple-flavoured soda, but from everything I've read, it's more like a mix of cherry and cream soda.
While I researched Red Champagne to see if I could order some to try I was almost knocked on my ass. They had Kiri soda available on their website!
I've reached out to the owners of Red Champagne, Philippe Simard et fils (and sons), for more direct information. As of writing this, they haven't responded with anything official, but digging up old newspaper articles and the information provided on the Red Champagne website, it would appear that at some point after Breuvages Kiri filed for bankruptcy, the Simards purchased the brand and their recipes and are continuing to honour the legacy of Kiri in Quebec!
This makes sense especially when you find out that Philippe Simard et fils purchased the Red Champagne brand in the early-2000s when it seemed to be facing a similar plight as Kiri.
Now that I'm finished taking the long way 'round, the short version: I found out that Snow White cream soda, also known in Quebec as Kiri cream soda, still exists in La Belle Province... SO I BOUGHT SOME.
It was bit tricky, honestly. They offer their products for sale on their website, which is amazing, but it's really only set up to ship within Quebec. At first I tried to reach out via email a few times and didn't receive a response. As a last ditch effort, I discovered that Red Champagne had a very underused Instagram account, so I DM'd them and lo-and-behold, they got back to me!
I actually spoke with one of the Simard sons himself and he arranged shipping a case of Kiri cream soda to my home in Nova Scotia. He was even kind enough to throw in a bottle of Red Champagne on the house. Merci, Frédéric!
They come in these nice little "stubby" 500mL bottles that look like they'd be 355mL. I think they are traditionally sold in glass bottles if you stumble upon them in a Quebec magasin, but beggars can't be choosers and I'll happily take the plastic bottles.
The other night was a mix of highs and lows for me. My son's hockey team won the Gold championship in their division, but then I came home to find out that what I thought would be the season finale of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs would actually be the series finale, which had me in the dumps.
I decided to shrug off the blues, get myself a snack, and settle in to watch the last episode of The Last Drive-In with a bag of barbecue chips and a bottle of Snow White cream soda! A go-to snack from my childhood.
I wanted desperately to get some Munchies BBQ, so that teenage me could revel in all that retro nostalgia, but alas the only thing I could find was Old Dutch, so I made due.
Here's a sad truth about Munchies chips: as much as I love them and have made it a personal act of service to ensure I buy a bag every time I see them on store shelves, I can't say 100% that they taste like they did back in the 90s.
I've actually reached out to Frito-Lay for comment and they've never replied, but there's no information out there that indicates any of the flavours they released in the Munchies rebrand are actually the original recipes. In fact, the only two that could even be considered "original" are their ketchup and barbecue varieties and I feel it's an absolute fact that the Munchies Tangy Ketchup tastes nothing like Hostess Ketchup chips did, so why would barbecue?
If you watch the video I made back in 2024, I let the excitement take hold of me and said they tasted just as I remembered, but in the fullness of time I've reached the painful conclusion that Munchies Old School Barbecue likely shares nothing in common with Hostess Hot Barbecue chips.
Kiri cream soda, however, is a different story. As far as I can tell, this is the exact same product under a different name. This is Snow White cream soda just as it likely was back in the 90s. And I can tell you that to me, it tasted just as I remembered.
I let this settle for a few days before I wrote this. I tried to make sure I didn't make the same mistake I made with the Munchies chips. I really and truly believe that Kiri cream soda that is served in the year of our Lord 2026 is the same product you could get back in 1996.
The sweet vanilla flavour struck me immediately and it was very effervescent. When I say sweet, I mean much sweeter than most other cream sodas I've had, which is saying something because cream soda by default is known for its saccharine nature. I made sure to get it ice cold first and I was completely knocked out.
I also got to try out Red Champagne! It's funny, I started this saga looking for that pop specifically, but when it came down to ordering that or Kiri cream soda I just completely threw Red Champagne out the window. It was a pleasant surprise having the freebie included.
I can see why I've read it's more cherry and cream soda flavoured than apple, but I think the apple flavour is there, too. Regardless, it is an utterly unique type of soda. I don't think I've ever tried anything like it. It was excellent!
I know it's only pop, but like most things that folks my age have a deep wistfulness for, this is something I used to love getting and I had almost given up hope of ever trying again. The fact that I could order a case delivered to my house (in like two days I might add) just blows me away.
Now... if Coca-Cola could just go ahead and do a national re-release of New Coke, whoever owns the Hires brand could bring back Hires Root Beer, and McDonald's could roll out some more McPizza, I could die in peace!
If you read this far, thanks for indulging my madness! And if there's something you remember loving as a kid, don't give up hope on it. We're currently in an age where old is new again, like never before. There's a He-Man movie coming out this year, for crying out loud. And you never know, if you're crazy like me and you keep doing the research, you might find something you thought lost to time is still out there just waiting to be rediscovered.
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