Summer always means ice cream, but in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana circa 1985, it means the shopping mall ice cream shop Scoops Ahoy—and maybe a few otherworldly, energy-sucking shadow monsters from the Upside Down.
When we last saw our Stranger Things heroes, they’d sealed the portal to the terrifying mirror world of the hit Netflix series, and at the start of season three, they’ve gone back to mid-’80s life as they know it: hanging at the mall, and in the case of the gang’s de facto babysitter with great hair, working a summer job at the local ice cream parlor.
But starting tomorrow, you don’t need to cruise the fictional Starcourt Mall to get the full Steve experience: Stranger Things and Baskin-Robbins teamed up to bring Scoops Ahoy to life, taking over an existing Baskin-Robbins shop for two weeks of nautical-themed ice cream and some serious throwback treats. Sure, there are multiple collab flavors that you can find all over the country, but here in L.A., we get our own IRL Scoops shop.
From July 2 to 14 at the Victory Boulevard shop, employees will be decked out in Steve’s blue-and-white, sailor-inspired uniform and scooping a range of special flavors.
You can opt for the flavor of the month, the USS Butterscotch, where butterscotch-flavored ice cream gets dotted with butterscotch pieces and swirled with a toffee-flavored ribbon, and it comes by the scoop, the packed pint or the three-scoop sundae from the show (ahoy, there be waffle sails). There’s also the Elevenade Freeze, a creamy slushie-meets-shake concoction of vanilla ice cream and Minute Maid lemonade.
Photograph: Courtesy Baskin-Robbins
There’s a very ’80s-throwback of an ice cream pizza (atop a giant chocolate chip cookie, no less), where rainbow M&Ms and lines of chocolate fudge replicate the Byers’ Christmas-light communication situation from season one. For more traditional eats, there’s the Upside Down ice cream sundae (cherries, nuts and fudge layered on the bottom) and the Demogorgon Sundae, where waffle cones replicate the monster’s face—and, naturally, it’s covered in strawberry “blood.”
You can also expect photo ops, plus merch like stickers, vintage-inspired Scoops Ahoy tees, magnets, Steve Funko POPs and themed ice cream cakes. It’s like a little taste of Hawkins in L.A.—you know, sans the shadow creatures, teeth-faced monsters, rotting pumpkins, child experimentation and government conspiracy—and what’s not to love about that?
The Scoops Ahoy pop-up launches at 1201 S Victory Blvd in Burbank on July 2 at 2pm, and runs through Sunday, July 14. Stranger Things season 3 premieres on Netflix this Thursday, July 4.