When I was a kid, my brother and I used to spend a fair amount of time at family parties taking our plastic Solo cups and filling them with every soda in the cooler at once. We’d make appetizing combinations of orange, cola, lemon lime, grape and maybe some Dr. Pepper or root beer if it was available.

Once, we got a hold of a soda gun at an Elks Club Christmas party and mayhem ensued. The funny thing is I don’t remember our drinks actually tasting all that bad.

I didn’t know it at the time but found out recently that this absurd combination of soft drinks is called the “Soda Suicide.”

It’s been a while since I mixed a Soda Suicide, but today it came back to me like riding a bike when I went down to Burger King on Colman Street in New London to try out their new tricked-out fountain machine.

The fountain has the look of an old Coke machine, combined with a sports car with space age sensibilities. You mix your drink by clicking on an ATM like computer screen. There are the “mother” categories like Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper and Fanta. Then, within the categories there are “sub-flavors” so to speak, like cherry flavored Dr. Pepper and strawberry Fanta. From there you mix any strange flavor you choose.

The Day’s Rick Koster and I prepared a video on our blind taste test of a few Soda Suicide combinations. Look for the video and a story in print on Wednesday.