Store Review: Rocket Fizz

For anyone who loves nostalgia, Rocket Fizz, the new retro soda and candy store that opened this summer in Westwood, is a dream come true. And since it’s located near Chipotle, its the perfect dessert destination for Bruins looking to pack in some sugar in addition to the calories in a Chipotle burrito.

As soon as thirsty customers enter the store, they are transported to a time when it was still acceptable to use the word “swell.” The shop is decorated like a 1950s soda parlor, and bottles of all shapes, colors and sizes and with all manner of labels greet consumers with promises of refreshment.

There are so many different types of soda on sale, in fact, that it can at first be a little overwhelming. There is a refrigerator filled with soda for customers who intend to drink their soda immediately, but the vast majority of the soda is sitting on shelves around the store at room temperature, ready to be taken home and saved for later.

Sheer quantity aside, the quality and variety of sodas offered at Rocket Fizz is also great. There are multiple brands and styles of just about every soda imaginable, from a legion of cola varieties to a small mob of root beers.

There is also a wealth of sodas in other flavors ranging from slightly unconventional to completely off-the-wall. Ginger sodas are a wonderful and spicy change of pace, coffee-flavored sodas are an interesting take on the caffeinated staple and black cherry flavored sodas offer a refreshing difference from standard fruit-flavored sodas.

Some sodas in the store are not for the faint of heart. One line of sodas in particular, Lester’s Fixins, are for only the most adventurous of soda-drinkers, with highlights including bacon soda, sweet corn soda, and buffalo wing soda.

Rocket Fizz also features a wide range of different candies, ranging from contemporary favorites to old-style novelty candies. And though the candy in the store is largely overshadowed by the soda, it still provides something else to look at while browsing.

When the veritable sugar rush of options becomes a little too much to handle, visitors can always walk around the store looking at the “vintage” memorabilia. Lining the walls are dozens of tin advertisements and even more concert posters from artists such as the Beatles.

The store has also taken steps to ensure that customers come back for more soda by offering a stamp card. After buying eight bottles of soda (which are priced at just over two dollars each), customers get one bottle of soda for free.

If nothing catches a visitor’s eye, he or she can always window shop without fearing the judging eye of an employee. Workers at the store seem to understand that just as many people intend to just look at the different sodas as intend to buy a bottle, and so they tend to leave people alone to wander.

In a time when sleek lines and muted colors are increasingly in style, it’s nice that Rocket Fizz exists. The soda shop is a refuge from modernity, a place where students can go to escape the stress of work in a brightly lit and vibrantly colored room filled with sugar and the easygoing attitude of another time.