We Tried The Stranger Things Surfer Boy Pizza. Here's How It Went
Special delivery! If you have watched the new season of "Stranger Things," you know Surfer Boy pizza shop plays a pivotal role in the lives of the California crew, the Byers. The shop and its delivery van show up in multiple scenes. They even include an actual phone number, 804-45-PIZZA, which, if a person calls, gets a recorded answer by our favorite Surfer Boy employee, Argyle (via Netflix). If you watched the new season and wanted to try this totally tubular pizza joint, then you're in luck: Netflix and Walmart have teamed up to bring four Surfer Boy pizza favorites to locations all across the country.
Argyle says, "our ingredients are always fresh and never frozen. Except our pineapple, that comes from a can." As it turns out, fresh pizza does not travel long distances particularly well, so the real-life pizzas, pineapple included, are frozen. Surfer Boy Pizza is made by the popular frozen pizza brand Palermo's, a company that has been around since 1964. The box is decorated with a classic red and white pizza box design and the back of each box features a description of the pizza in question, a picture of a character from the show, and some pop-out cardboard glasses that say, "You gotta see it to believe it, my dudes!" Although nothing can beat a fresh pizza pie, we set out to see if Surfer Boy could make our taste buds sing.
What's inside the 'Stranger Things' Surfer Boy Pizza?
Surfer Boy Pizza offers four "totally rad" flavors, all of which use a traditional red sauce base. They come with a "gnarly range of toppings." The first is a classic pepperoni. The second is a multi-meat pizza that comes topped with sausage, pepperoni, and ham. Unfortunately, both of these flavors seem incredibly popular with the masses, as they were completely sold out at every location where we tried to acquire them.
We did manage to get ourselves another classic, the supreme pizza. This pizza is topped with sausage, pepperoni, green peppers, red onions, black olives, and mushrooms. This one was also nearly sold out at our local store.
Finally, we have the only vegetarian option from Surfer Boy, the pineapple jalapeño. This pizza is topped with juicy cut pineapple and mild jalapeños. Possibly due to the bad reputation pineapple has on pizza, these were still available in abundance — poor pineapple pizza.
How much do they cost?
The price point of Surfer Boy Pizza is pretty reasonable for a special-edition product. They aren't that expensive at just $6.98 for a single pizza, which will likely get you six slices, though you can cut it into eight. That, of course, is if you can find them individually at a location near you, which isn't a guarantee. Four-packs of the pizzas can be ordered on Walmart's website, but the four-packs cost $49.98, nearly twice what buying four individual pizzas would cost you in the store.
At about 10 inches and 23 ounces per pizza, $7.00 seems reasonable, but $12.50 seems like a stretch, even as branded marketing goes. But who knows, maybe these pizzas are totally mind-altering and worth the price. Either way, some people hope to recoup the pizza costs by selling the empty boxes after enjoying the pizza. That is one way to have your pizza and eat it too.
Where can you buy the 'Stranger Things' Surfer Boy Pizzas?
It is no surprise that anything on the shelves related to the smash hit "Stranger Things" has a hard time staying there. That is the case with Surfer Boy Pizza. The pizzas have now been released, but it can be a challenge finding them on the shelves. They are a Walmart-exclusive product, meaning you won't find them anywhere else. We only managed to find two different flavors, the supreme and the pineapple jalapeño, in our local Walmart. If you hit up your local Walmart and see them, be sure to grab one quickly, as they are only available for a limited time, as long as supplies last.
Walmart does offer scheduled in-store pick-up and delivery in some areas, but as we experienced, just because it says it has it on the website doesn't mean it will have it come time to fulfill your order. Alternatively, four-packs can be purchased from Walmart online, but you will pay a pretty penny for them. This will at least guarantee pizza for the upcoming episodes.
How does it compare to other frozen pizzas?
Compared to Walmart's in-house Great Value brand, the $7.00 for Surfer Boy Pizza is a little bit expensive. The Great Value rising crust pepperoni pizza, which is similar to Surfer Boy, at least in theory, comes in at just $3.28. Of course, you don't get the fun box or whimsical experience, and some Great Value products aren't very good. Additionally, Palermo's, the company that makes Surfer Boy, makes its own Rising Crust pepperoni pizza which costs just $4.98 and, at 30 ounces, is a bit more substantial than the licensed Stranger Things brand. However, it makes sense that you will pay a premium for limited-edition licensed items, and $7.00 isn't an absurd price for a frozen pizza.
If you don't care about the "Stranger Things" branding, you get almost all of the Surfer Boy pizza flavors as regular Palermo's pizzas. Palermo's offers a four meat pizza that provides the pepperoni and sausage of the Surfer Boy multi-meat and swaps the ham for bacon and adds beef on top. It also offers a supreme pizza that has the same exact toppings as the Surfer Boy variety. For those looking for a more tropical feel, the company does offer a Hawaiian pizza featuring pineapple and ham, though there's no jalapeño.
Nutrition
The vegetables on the supreme pizza are not enough to put it in the healthy category. At first glance, it doesn't seem that bad: 32% of your daily sodium and 23% of daily fat intake isn't great but could be worse. But then you realize that is for just one-fifth, or a little more than a slice, of this moderately-sized pizza. No one expects frozen pizza to be healthy, but if you eat enough to be satisfied, it will likely contain most, if not all, of the daily sodium or fat intake a person needs.
The pineapple jalapeño comes in a little better at 22% and 14% of the sodium and fat recommendations. Neither flavor comes with many vitamins or minerals, but they do have between 10-15% of your daily calcium, which isn't nothing. Ultimately, the pizzas' long ingredient lists and marginal nutrition aren't the healthiest choices. But hey, the 1980s weren't known for their healthy food trends.
How do they taste?
So will we be running up that hill for these pizzas? Probably not. And we think the company likely knows that. The pizzas are what they need to be. They are entertaining with their retro-stylish boxes and pop-out glasses. The marketing was done well and includes lots of surfer slang. Ultimately, the pizzas just can't compare with fresh ingredients, or even just better frozen pizzas. The sauce, which was described as "rich," was not all that flavorful, and the mozzarella cheese was a little sparse.
One thing the pizza got right was the crust. The crust on frozen pizza tends to be either soggy or dry as bones. This hand-tossed style — though not actually hand-tossed — crust had a nice bottom that supported the toppings of both pizzas without sogging out or crumbling. The crust was a bit bready, which is not uncommon for frozen pizzas, but had a bit of chew which we appreciated.
The final verdict
The supreme pizza wasn't terrible. It came loaded with toppings, which were all nicely distributed; the problem was that they didn't always have much flavor. Neither the pepperoni nor the sausage had any zest or kick behind them, and the mushrooms and onions were barely noticeable. We actually had to double-check to confirm they were on the pieces we were eating. They were. Luckily the olives provided a nice salty note to save the pizza from total blandness.
The pineapple jalapeño pizza was a bit of a surprise. As we mentioned, this was clearly the least-popular flavor. Before you turn up your nose entirely, listen to Argyle: "Fruit on your pizza is gnarly you say, well I say try before you deny." So we did. And surprisingly, it wasn't half bad. The pineapple was juicy and tangy. The sweetness and tang played off the natural saltiness of the pizza. Unfortunately, this meant pineapple was pretty much the only flavor we could taste. The jalapeños were so mild we couldn't make them out, much like the mushrooms and onions on the Supreme. It wasn't just that the jalapeños had no kick. It is that they had no flavor whatsoever. Ultimately though, we did like the pineapple jalapeño more than the supreme.
Our final verdict: Surfer Boy is good pizza to have on a night in while binging "Stranger Things," but for the price, you may be better off picking up a better frozen pizza.