Jones Vault-Tec Supply

By Martin Peyruc

What’s the matter smoothskin, never seen a Reckless Gastronome before? (Note to self, get some moisturizer.) I’m going to warn everyone now, that I’m a huge Fallout fan, so if you don’t get my references (and I plan to CRAM as many as I can) you probably should grab a copy of The Wasteland Survival Guide. I’ve been playing since Fallout 3 came out in 2008 and have played and continue playing almost all of them, including Fallout Shelter, but not Fallout 76 (I haven’t been cryogenically frozen, so I’m feeling my age and therefore need games that I can actually pause so I can go to the bathroom.) I’m even playing Fallout: London, a fan mod and I certainly can’t show you my Nexus Mods download list (yeah, there’s some really weird stuff out there and I’ve definitely taken the Wild Wasteland Perk.) So, with this in mind, grab your Stimpaks and RadAway and crawl out through the fallout, with me.

It just occurred to me that some of you may not be familiar with the Fallout series of games (I should have taken some Mentats.) The games are mostly 1^st or 3^rd person shooters with role playing elements that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future after the United States is nuked in 2077, which with the current state of affairs seems positively optimistic. What was fairly unique at the time though was that was an alternate timeline that the future was based on what people in the 1950’s expected. There is a darker current to this Retro-Futurism though with the lack of consumer safety standards, Red Scare fearmongering (with China replacing the Soviet Union), rampant corporatism, and nuclear proliferation. Thank goodness no one is trying to bring that to United States in this timeline. Hey, at least the music is awesome with midcentury bangers like “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” and “Rocket 69” (yes, it’s a real song, dirty songs aren’t a new development. You can think of the world like Mad Max after the Jetsons..

A big part of the new public interest in Fallout is the television show on Amazon Prime that came out in 2024. I’ll admit I was trepidatious, there hasn’t been a good history of video games turned into tv shows (with apologies to Captain Lou Albano.) The show follows Lucy MacLean, a young Vault Dweller (people who survived the bombs by hiding underground) as she travels the wasteland looking for her kidnapped father. She meets Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel (a militaristic group in power armor that believes they should control Pre-War technology) squire and The Ghoul, who has roamed the Earth for more than two hundred years thanks (but like a really sarcastic thanks) to the radiation turning him into a zombie-esque creature. Last but not least the cast is rounded out by the best girl CX-404 (later nicknamed Dogmeat, because every Fallout needs a Dogmeat, except for New Vegas which had Rex, a cyborg dog, but close enough.) The MacGuffin they are all chasing is the head of an Enclave (remnants of the Pre-War shadow government) scientist. It’s a really good show and you should watch it (and I should stick to food reviews and not TV.) Even better season 2 starts on December 17^th, 2025!

All this has led to a number of cross-promotions and merchandising (that I have been collecting like I need to upgrade a settlement.) Some of them are even food based like Bones Coffee Company (there’s not a Slocum Joe’s in my neighborhood and I scrapped my Luxobrew for steel) coffee and Coney Island Saucery hot sauce (I didn’t take the Lead Belly Perk and lack the intestinal fortitude of a Super Mutant), but I decided to go for Jones Soda Company and their Vault-Tec Supply Box. It has twelve bottles (four of each flavor) and it comes with some extra caps and Vault-Tec branded twist bottle opener (to save my precious digits.) I would’ve looked on my Pip-Boy, where to buy some, but I wasn’t allowed to expense one for this article, so I had to use my non-RobCo computer to figure out where to go. Super-Duper Mart didn’t have any so I had to brave raiders, mirelurks, and completely unreasonable long lines to find just one box (putting my S.P.E.C.I.A.L points in Luck paid off) at my local Costco. Unfortunately for readers in the New California Republic and New Vegas they are only available in the North East, from Far Harbor to the Capital Wasteland. There is good news though, according to the Jones Soda Co. website they are working on a greater roll out to the rest of the U.S. and possibly Canada (which will be annexed in 2059 anyways.) Now in no particular order let’s move onto the reviews.

First, we have Nuka Cola Quantum, I’m no Sierra Petrovita, but I’ll give a quick history of it in the game and then actual tasting notes. Developed on 2076 as a new version of Nuka Cola (the game’s equivalent of Coca-Cola) it promises "Twice the calories, twice the carbohydrates, twice the caffeine, and twice the taste!" It also has a beautiful blue glow from a “completely safe” isotope of Strontium 90 (it does make your urine glow, however.) In the real world it’s a sour berry lemonade flavor and it doesn’t glow unless you rig an LED. It is surprisingly refreshing. There’s something about seeing an opaque blue beverage (and I’ve drank more than a few) that I’ve come to expect it to be sickly sweet and repulsively tart. The Jones “Beverageers” really put the work in and created an excellent drink. If I was to describe it in a single word, I would say balanced. All its elements, sweet, sour, fruity, and fizzy elevate each other instead of compete. If it wasn’t a “scary” blue I could easily see it compete on store shelves with Sprite.

I’ll be honest, there isn’t that much lore about Nuka-Grape in the games. John-Caleb Bradburton, the founder of Nuka-Cola (his name is a portmanteau of John Pemberton and Caleb Bradham, the inventors of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola respectively) bought the patent from an over seas company and sold it in the States. Bradburton survives the war as a frozen head in his theme park outside The Commonwealth (Boston, not one of the others). When it comes to evaluating a grape soda there is but one gold standard that all others must strive for, and that is Grape Nehi (“Radar” O’Reilly wouldn’t lie to us). Head-to-head (much like a Brahmin) Nuka-Grape is slightly less sweet and less carbonated/acidic (carbonation doesn’t have a taste per se, but rather it forms carbonic acid on your tongue and what you “taste” are your taste buds being attacked) but with a minor increase in Concord grape flavor. I still prefer Grape Nehi, but Nuka-Grape is an easy second choice.

Now for the one I was most excited to try, Sunset Sarsaparilla (also the one that is giving my autocorrect fits.) First of all, I should probably explain just what sarsaparilla is, especially for those readers who aren’t in the States or 100 years old. While frequently mistaken for root beer (and having many of the same ingredients), sarsaparilla is a soft drink made from the eponymous vine as opposed to the oil of sassafras root (which has been banned in the US since 1960 as a possible carcinogen). In the U.S. one of the most common ingredients is birch oil which is also used in root beer further muddying the distinction. Taste-wise sarsaparilla is considered to be more intense with a more bitter and earthy flavor, but both are made with a lot of sugar.

Hopefully that definition did ol’ Festus proud. In the Fallout universe bottles are primarily found in New Vegas, but they have been added to Fallout 76 more recently. One of the things that Sunset Sarsaparilla has is the blue stars found under some of their bottle caps. Legend tells of a great treasure if you can collect fifty of these caps, but beware other collectors travel the Mojave and may come to hunt you. In the real world the Jones Soda Company has hidden blue star caps under some of their bottles and if you use the QR code you enter a contest to win some pretty sweet Fallout Merch (fingers crossed for a Pip-Boy!) I’ve put Big Iron on the radio, and now its time to crack open a bottle. Oh, it’s really good! If you like sarsaparilla or root beer, you will certainly like this. It is distinct from root beer (which frequently has wintergreen, anise, and vanilla flavoring) it is also much less sweet (although to be fair this is my third soft drink in a row, so my sense of sweet may be a little burnt out) and it lets the earthy almost medicinal taste of the sarsaparilla shine through. Alas, I didn’t find a blue star cap, but I do have three more bottles and hope springs (unlike Bitter Springs) eternal.

If you can find the Vault-Tec Supply box I strongly recommend stocking your Vault, safe room, or Pulowski Preservation Shelter (“Pulowski: Nuclear protection on a budget!”) with as many as you can get your hands on. Not only are the drinks good, but it’s also way more affordable, since each four pack of soda, if you can even find them, retails at $24.99 and the box was around $20 (whoops, I lost my receipt.) As a final note I will say that none of my urine has started to glow, and I’m not even sure how many Rads I’ve taken since my Geiger counter is in the shop (I see you Deacon, hiding in the crowd.) War never changes, and neither do soft drinks.

Found Exclusively at Costco (although you can find the individual sodas at boutique candy stores)

Special bonus review! Last year I found some Nuka Cola Victory (don’t worry it hasn’t expired, although who worries about that after an apocalypse) and since I didn’t do an individual review of it then, I’ll combine it with this one. Nuka Cola Victory was limited release in 2077 coinciding with Liberation of Anchorage. It was mainly available in the Southwest, but it was also available at Nuka-World and was marketed as having "a taste as sweet as freedom." I guess freedom is peach mango flavored. I’ll admit I don’t generally like peach or mango flavored drinks (eating them is fine) but this is greater than the sum of its parts. I will say it is much sweeter than any of the other Fallout sodas I’ve tried, but having a cold one on a hot day hits like nothing else.

Found at Rocket Fizz