Whither A&W Root Beer Floats?

This summer I had a taste of my first A&W Root Beer Float since I was a kid. It tasted good, but somehow it wasn’t quite what I remembered. Something was wrong.

A couple of days ago on the Food Network series Unwrapped, I saw the difference: the mug is filled with root beer and then soft-serve is shot in. Soft serve? Noooo!!!! Say it ain’t so.

The root beer floats that I remember, the ones we’d make a special trip for, were something like this: in a frosted mug, some scoops (yes, scoops) of ice cream were dropped in, followed by root beer until there was a really good head on it. In short order, the ice cream would float up to the top. This sizable concoction was wisely shared, was guaranteed to cause brain freeze, and had a heavenly taste that made all thoughts of a non-air-conditioned summer day melt completely away. Spoons were a necessity as the slow-melting ice cream took up a fair amount of volume.

With this memory, seeing that…that thing they call a root beer float just made me ill. Just as you can’t grow a good ballpark hot dog in an indoor stadium, neither can you create a respectable root beer float without: a) A&W Root Beer, and b) scooped ice cream. Nope. I’m sorry. Some things should not be tampered with. Case in point: I buy Mexican Coca-Colas because they use real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup…the taste and satisfaction are so worth the extra drachmas.

Am I totally off my nut with this? I realize my memories are, like, four decades old on this, but I know there was no soft serve in those more traditional floats. The only place for soft serve in town was at the Dairy Queen…while it wasn’t “real” ice cream, you got it mostly for the dipped chocolate shell.

If you remember the A&W restaurant floats being with scooped ice cream, I’d appreciate some comments or an email.