Just The Specials: Arizona Tea X Fallout

Welcome to the table,

Just the Specials is where your old pal Anton tries new, weird, and often unhinged menu items, food offerings, and branded collaborations that find their way onto the plate in front of him. It’s normally a fun time. When I found out Amazon was partnering with Arizona Tea to release a Fallout-themed collaboration to coincide with season two of the Fallout show, I got pretty excited.

I had tried the Fallout X Arizona Tea collaboration that dropped during the first season of the show and enjoyed it quite a bit. I actually ordered the apple flavor on its own for a couple of months after the initial run had launched. So I was excited when the new variety pack landed on my doorstep.

The tea arrived in a Vault-Tec-branded box, complete with Lucky 38 Fallout New Vegas iconography, the setting of the majority of the new season of the show so far.

Inside the box are twelve 15 oz. cans containing two each of six different flavors. Each can contains 190 mg of caffeine and is styled with art to showcase the characters from the Fallout series, along with cards, dice, and other trappings of the New Vegas setting.

The first one I tried was the Wastlander Sweet Peach. I have been on a peach kick lately, and it sounded refreshing. The flavor was solid, the peach comes through with the green tea, and while the caffeine felt a little weaker than a Ghost Sour Green Apple or a cup of coffee, it was enough to feel it around the edges mid-morning.

The Ghoul is the character on the can, and the cards blend in with the Arizona Tea design, working really well together. As someone who really likes packaging design, I’m a fan of how these cans look both in the box and front-facing on a store shelf.

A lot of energy drinks and pre-workout drinks have very chaotic and cluttered designs. I’m sure that’s to try and grab your attention in the morning or when you need a pick-me-up, but there feels like actual design work at play on these cans.

Next up, I tried the Atomic Red Apple. I was only having one a day, so don’t worry too much about my heart getting too much caffeine. I tend to drink a pot of coffee a day when I am on a coffee kick. When I was working my way through trying these, I only had one energy drink a day, so my caffeine intake actually dropped quite a bit.

The Atomic Red Apple is a solid apple flavor. I normally stock a few of the Ghost Sour Green Apple energy drinks in the fridge for when I don’t have time or motivation to make coffee, so an apple flavor in the morning is my normal go-to.

This is a far cry from the tart flavor of the Ghost energy drink, though. It’s a very clean flavor that comes across more like actual apple than apple-flavored candy. It’s very refreshing and would be something I drank on the regular if it were a bit more cost-effective to do so. I really enjoy this one and think it’s one of the most successful energy drinks on the market, and I have tried a ton of them, so this is not coming from a narrow scope of experience by any stretch. Lucy MacLean is the character on this can.

Next up was the Nuclear Pomegranate. The flavor profile on this one is very strange. It’s not unpleasant by any stretch. It’s just not really pomegranate; at least, no pomegranate I have ever tasted. The green tea comes across for sure, and there is a dryness almost akin to a red wine that has been very heavily diluted, but it lacks a lot of the flavorful punch of the first two.

Knight Maximus is on the can, and the design is super solid. All in all, this is still not a bad flavor by any stretch. If there was one on the shelf, I would pick it above a lot of other drinks out there.

Now, the next flavor is the Power Pomegranate, one of the low-cal flavors. I’m just going to rip the band-aid off here, it’s awful. I could drink Arizona Tea by the jug, and in my younger years, when I was less worried about my well-being, I did just that. It’s delicious and refreshing and goes down smoother than water.

This flavor, featuring the adorable Dogmeat, tastes like cleaning chemicals. Even though I am not one to waste food, I am reluctant to even give the other cans of it away. It is absolutely horrible. The can looks great, but that flavor is about as welcome as a fly in your soup.

Apocalyptic Orange was next up, and it works in a weird kind of way. It’s less citrus and more orange zest in flavor, and blended with the green tea that serves as the base, it comes across really nicely. It verges on earthy yet crisp, and that plays for me.

The T-51 Power Armor makes an appearance on this can, along with the Brotherhood of Steel logo.

Last up is the Low-Cal Wastelander Sweet Peach. It’s also pretty hard to drink. There is something that disconnects from the normal refreshing flavor of the Arizona Tea in these low-calorie options. I’m all for calorie-friendly offerings for those who need or want them. I myself regularly go for lean turkey, low-cal breads and tortillas, and a slew of other more health-conscious foodstuffs. These are a miss for me.

The cans feature Fallout‘s Cooper Howard, the titular Ghoul character, before the radiation mutated him.

Would I order the variety pack again? No.

The first variety pack, for sure, if it was cost-effective, but the low-cal options in the season 2 variety pack are not to my taste. I would probably pick up more of the Atomic Red Apple and may still do that, but only time will tell.

Until next time, see you in the Wasteland!