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The only state official who didn't run on both the Democratic and Republican tickets last fall said Thursday night "cleanly - drawn" political battlelines would separate "a lot of good, plain, vanilla Democrats" from "a few raspberry Republicans."

 

Agricultural Commissioner John C. White, 29. devoted most of his speech to Tarrant county Democrats to criticism of the Texas' system of cross-filing and political hybrids.

When February ro[l]led around and spring drills, Herb checked out his uniform and went through some more hard bumps.

 

After Spring drills were over he was more or less still classified as a plain vanilla scrub.

The basketball victory (81–62) played second fiddle to the school spirit displayed by both Midwestern and the Cowboy cheering section.

 

What would normally have been a plain vanilla game burst into a wide open affair mostly because of the cheering fans.

The only state official who didn't run on both the Democratic and Republican tickets last fall said Thursday night "cleanly - drawn" political battlelines would separate "a lot of good, plain, vanilla Democrats" from "a few raspberry Republicans."

Agricultural Commissioner John C. White, 29. devoted most of his speech to Tarrant county Democrats to criticism of the Texas' system of cross-filing and political hybrids.

When February ro[l]led around and spring drills, Herb checked out his uniform and went through some more hard bumps.

After Spring drills were over he was more or less still classified as a plain vanilla scrub.

The basketball victory (81–62) played second fiddle to the school spirit displayed by both Midwestern and the Cowboy cheering section.

What would normally have been a plain vanilla game burst into a wide open affair mostly because of the cheering fans.

The predominance of Texas periodicals in the preceding paragraph is not a sign that Texas was a hothouse of "plain vanilla" idiomatic experimentation; it just underscores how poorly other states are in their accessible post-1920s newspaper databases. The Portal to Texas History archive is limited to small-town newspapers and college newspapers—but it still manages to host a respectable amount of relatively recent searchable content.

The predominance of Texas periodicals in the preceding paragraph is not a sign that Texas was a hothouse of "plain vanilla" idiomatic experimentation; it just underscores how limited other states' accessible post-1920s newspaper databases are. The Portal to Texas History archive is restricted to small-town newspapers and college newspapers—no big metropolitan dailies with their many copyrighted and syndicated stories from wire services and prominent national newspapers—but it still manages to host a respectable amount of relatively recent searchable content.

[[UPDATE (June 25, 2018): Ace researcher RaceYouAnytime has found an even earlier instance of "plain vanilla" (actually, "vanilla plain"), with the implication of simplicity and purity made explicit. From "Woman's Pet Tipple," in the Fort Worth [Texas] Daily Gazette (August 31, 1887):

You see, it's this way: The school girls all want strawberry and vanilla mixed, and the dark ones coffee or chocolate, and the blondes they take pineapple or lemon, and the old ladies call for sars'p'rilla, 'cause it’s cooling to the blood, and the girls who come in with fellows want 'just vanilla plain'—kind of innocent and simple, and the young widows always ask for Vichy, with 'a touch of lemon.'

The source of these insights is a waitress who works at a soda fountain.]]