Oh, boy, was the rare trip to the A&W drive-in ever a treat as a kid. I could barely lift that big cold mug.
Still keep one in the freezer.
There were a lot of good root beers back in the day. Then many of them got ruined (IMO) by the use of HFCS. Then came the craft beers, ales, and sodas, and many good root beers appeared. What I’ve noticed recently is a lot of the craft root beers in bottles seem to have an annoying aftertaste that wasn’t there previously.