Summer makes me think of Fizzies.

Remember Fizzies?

If you do, you're probably a baby boomer, someone whose hair is getting thinner and waistline thicker.

In the 1960s, these tongue-tingling effervescent tablets were all the rage. If you weren't around then, try to imagine an Alka-Seltzer tablet with a sweet fruity flavor.

You dropped a tablet in a glass of water and it fizzed into a colorful, carbonated drink.

And if you set one on your tongue, it would foam until you felt like your mouth was going to explode.

I spent many a childhood summer afternoon slurping Fizzies from jewel-toned aluminum tumblers, which were also "in" at the time.

Among my siblings, the purple tumbler was the most prized; we dubbed it "The Purple People Eater." Drinking Fizzies from The Purple People Eater cup was the height of cool!

The Emerson Drug Co. created Fizzies in the late 1950s as an offshoot of its Bromo Seltzer product. By 1968, Fizzies had exceeded Kool-Aid in sales.

What put the fizz in Fizzies?

Sodium bicarbonate and citric acid.

When dropped in water, the two react with each other to make carbon dioxide gas.

What caused the Fizzies craze to fizzle out?

A ban on cyclamate, the artificial sweetener used in Fizzies.

Cyclamate also sweetened the first diet soft drinks such as Diet Rite Cola, TAB and Diet Pepsi.

In October 1969, scientist Jacqueline Verret appeared on the NBC evening news with deformed baby chicks. The embryos had been injected with cyclamates.

Abbott Laboratories, maker of cyclamate, attempted damage control with a study showing that only eight of 240 rats developed bladder tumors when fed the human equivalent of 350 cans of diet soda per day.

But Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch banned its use.

So Fizzies and hundreds of other products went off the market.

Many companies tried to overcome the bitter aftertaste of saccharin, the other sweetener on the market. This was before NutraSweet, Splenda, Truvia, etc.

At one point, an unsweetened version of Fizzies instructed customers to add their own sugar and ice. Ironically, some scientific bodies later said there wasn't enough evidence to declare cyclamate as carcinogenic. It's still used in other parts of the world.

The Fizzies of the '60s made a comeback in 1995 using aspartame. But they didn't catch on like the Fizzies fever of the '60s.

Maybe with so many soft drinks on the market, making your own carbonated drink was no longer a big deal.

From what I found on the Fizzies.com Web site, rights to the product have changed hands, and Fizzies are now sweetened with sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

The Web site said that in Utah, they are sold at Brigham Young University, Canyon Offerings in Springdale, the Walking Stick in Springdale, Quality Market in Delta, and Southern Utah University Bookstore.

The Web site also has a list of online vendors.

I tried the Fizzies of the '90s, but they didn't seem as great as what I remembered.

I suspect it wasn't the fault of the formula. It just seems that a lot of nostalgic foods can't live up to their great memories.

E-mail: vphillips@desnews.com