Sunday, June 30, 2024

Pistons -N- Pop Root Beer

This is one of those sodas that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. I stumbled on this bottle in a local antique shop that had a corner filled with various sodas. I'd never seen or heard of it before so picked up a bottle. It's bottled in Bonner Springs, KS, a suburb of Kansas City. I had assumed from the label that it might have been a private label from the folks running the Boulevard Drive-In Theatre in KC, but there's no mention of the soda on the Drive-In's website. Pistons -N- Pop don't appear to have a website, just a Facebook page... so you can see why this is confusing and begs the question... "What does this soda want to be?" Is it just some side experiment by someone at the Drive-In, a hobby for someone that got the Drive-In to give a little tie in promotion, something else entirely? They have more than one flavor but not an actual website, so do they plan to make a go of it as a business in the soda market? Hard to tell, but let's see how the soda tastes.

At only 150 calories for a 12oz bottle, there are certainly brands with worse calorie counts and they list cane sugar rather than corn syrup as their sweetener, which is always good. It has a pleasant root beer aroma, but the sound of uncapping it doesn't scream much carbonation. After a couple of healthy swigs and pondering the flavor on my taste buds I find it sort of limp for a root beer. I think it could use more carbonation and a bit more bite to give it a little something extra. The "root beer-iness" is pretty good though, just missing something to make it sing. If you're at a local event and see this, give it a try particularly if you're after some "All-American" nostalgia, but don't expect to be wow'd. 

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