They've changed the recipe to modern ingredients. I miss the original from my youth but this is better than nothing. They've only recently started distribution here in New England, bottled locally.
Polar Beverage here in Worcester does bottling and canning for nearly every major soft drink brand as well as produce their own.
It used to say aged in oak barrels on every bottle and can. Now it's whatever they can make the cheapest. I like Jamaican ginger beer too, but it's harder to find around here and much more expensive. I used to get a single bottle at a time in a neighboring city on rare occasions, but have little reason to go there since I quit working. It's very spicy so it's not something I would want to drink all the time, but if 12 ounces didn't cost more than 2 liters of Vernor's I might buy it more often.
ETA: Halo Burger, here since 1923, sells Boston Coolers made with Vernor's. Just thinking about it makes me crave one and a QP Burger, or maybe a couple of Olive Burgers. The Halopeno Burger looks good too. I haven't had one of those yet. "Seven Days without a Halo Burger Makes One Weak!"
http://haloburger.com/ Boston CoolerA Boston Cooler is typically composed of Vernors ginger ale and vanilla ice cream.
The origin of the term "Boston Cooler" lies in Detroit, Michigan, the city in which Fred Sanders is credited with inventing the ice cream soda. The name is a mystery, having no apparent connection to Boston, Massachusetts, where the beverage is virtually unknown. One theory suggests that it was named after Detroit's Boston Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of what was then, according to the theory, an upper-class neighborhood a short distance from James Vernor's drugstore. Boston Boulevard, however, did not exist at the time. The streets and subdivision that became the Boston-Edison neighborhood, approximately five miles from Vernor's drugstore, were not platted nor incorporated into the city until 1891, and its first homes not constructed until 1905, nine years after Vernor closed his drugstore.
It is known that by the 1880s the Boston Cooler was being served in Detroit, made with the local Vernors. Originally, a drink called a Vernors Cream was served as a shot or two of sweet cream poured into a glass of Vernors. Later, vanilla ice cream was substituted for the cream to make a Vernors float. Unlike a float, however, a Boston Cooler is blended like a thick milkshake. Both Sanders soda fountains and Michigan-based Big Boy restaurants (which had Boston Coolers as a signature item until the Elias Brothers sold their franchise to new ownership in the 1980s) used their milkshake blenders to prepare the drink.
It can be found most often in the Detroit region's many Coney Island-style restaurants, which are plentiful because of Detroit's Greektown district influence. National Coney Island is one of the few restaurant chains to list the Boston Cooler in its menu. The Kerby's Koney Island chain lists a Boston Cooler on its menus, but that variant is actually a Vernors float, as the ice cream is not blended. It is also found at the Detroit-area Dairy Queens and at Halo Burger, a Flint, Michigan based fast food chain.
A Boston Cooler is also available on the menu at the Chow Food Bar in San Francisco.