Faygo Rock & Rye

Been in Indiana recently. Home of blah, blah and blah, whatever it says on Wikipedia today, but most importantly: the home of Faygo. Well not home of, I guess, but they have it there. Close enough.

I mainly avoid the stuff, no offense to my homies in the ICP who are seriously going to get their GEDs some day. But I saw Faygo Rock & Rye recently and was intrigued. The only Rock & Rye I ever knew was the alcoholic kind. Back when we were tapping the cab in high school my dad’s bottle of Mr Boston’s Rock & Rye was the ultra high class stuff. It had slices of orange in it! Even as teenagers we recognized that this was not a booze to be idiots with. Just a sip to help the jungle juice go down, and then off to the local mall to shop for new patches for our denim jackets. Perhaps Overkill or Death Angel today? Who knows where the day will take us.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell Faygo Rock & Rye has naught to do with the alcoholic stuff, so I’m not sure what the deal is there. On their 1999 website, they suggest it as an ingredient in something called Burger Bean Pie, so apparently they are not sure what the deal is either.

So OK already, did drinking this take me to a land of magic and wonder? Depends. Do you consider my cubicle a land of magic and wonder. Some may– it is a lion’s den of a cube, with the Christmas lights, the latest Transformers all on display, and a couple of pretty excellent Star Trek Successories pinned up on the walls.

If you Google around you can find some people debating what exactly the flavor is; many suggest it’s like a cream soda mixed with a cherry cola. I’ll say: cherry vanilla cream, and let all debate cease there. I liked it, but not as much as Mr Boston’s. Man when I was 16, I thought I had everything figured out, but then time passed and I recognized that mindset as the solipsistic folly of youth. But now a few more years have passed and I find myself re-reconsidering everything. Look: at 16 I was drinking high class booze on my parent’s nickel, but now as an adult I’m spending the hard-earned on a just-OK soda sort of named after it but not really. What if I really did have it all figured out at 16, and have only been kidding myself ever since? I mean I am not about to bust out the denim jacket, but maybe I will find my old cassettes and see if I can listen to Overkill without having to lie down, and then just go from there.

7 thoughts on “Faygo Rock & Rye”

  1. Ok so I’m in MI, and when we want something cheap we go for the Faygo.
    I LOVE that rock and rye shit. I’ve got no idea what the fuck it tastes like but since I was a kid it’s been my fav.
    Ok and I like the Red Pop they have too, not gonna lie.
    I wish they would make a diet version so I could drink it more often.
    Anyways, it was cool to pop in and see one of my childhood favorites. (halmark moment over and out)

  2. has anyone ever tried cola champagne? that cream soda/cherry coke taste applies to it – but i’m not sure what it is either.

  3. Mollie…are you talking about Cheerwine? I used to love that stuff. I used to drink Faygo like crazy too. They sell it here in Georgia at the low budget grocery stores.
    Speaking of blasts from the past…I was in California last week and saw Shasta and Vernor’s for the first time since I was about 8. I didn’t buy any though. Instead I fell for the propaganda a got some SmartWater. Tasted like water to me, but I was in Palm Desert and it was 114 degrees, so it more than likely was just spontaneously assimilated into my lips and tongue before I could even taste it.
    Josh

  4. As a kid growing up in Detroit, there was nothing better than the hot summer day your mom brought home a whole case of Faygo – one of each flavor.
    We fought over the Rock n Rye and the Strawberry.
    Now that stuff would make me gag.

  5. God, dude, okay, so I moved to Chicago from Ooooklahoma a year ago, and one of the weirdest things to adjust to has been seeing the name “Faygo” used on an actual consumer product. I mean, obviously there have got to be fucked-up regional product names in my home state that I’m not thinking of here, but every time I hear “Faygo,” I think of that scene in “Auto Focus” where Willem Dafoe is defending himself after touching Greg Kinnear’s butt during some videotaped group sex session, and he says “I–I’m not some faygalah!”
    Okay, possibly it’s just got some disturbing sonic connotations attached to it for me as well. But still.

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