For the record, those first two panels are a delicious mixture of well-researched fact and poorly thought-through fiction. Bottom line here: the Blue Sky ginger-ale is actually closer to the ginger beer that McLaughlin and Cantrell were trying to emulate, which was actually invented in Britain in the eighteenth century. And by “actually”, I mean “according to Wikipedia.” So who knows?

I’m actually a Schweppes man, meself.

Ja.