REVIEW: Dunkin’ Ice Spice Munchkins Drink

Have you ever wondered what’s better than having your cake and eating it too? Dunkin’ is here with your answer: having your cake donut, blending it with frozen coffee, covering it with caramel and whipped cream, and drinking it through a straw. That’s right, Dunkin’ has teamed up with rapper Ice Spice for a new Fall beverage, the Ice Spice Munchkins Drink, and the name says it all. It’s an icy, pumpkin-spicy, super-sweet concoction with pumpkin munchkins blended right in. If you’re not familiar, Ice Spice has a handful of Billboard Hot 100 hits this year, and the tie-in stems from her fans being called munchkins, a reference to her song “Munch (Feelin’ U).”

The drink is frozen coffee (cream, liquid sugar, coffee syrup, and ice) blended with pumpkin munchkins donut holes, served in a caramel drizzled cup that’s topped with whipped cream, more caramel, and a sprinkle of pumpkin spice. Before you go saying it’s weird or gross that the donuts are smashed up in the mix, let’s consider the fact that people throw things like spinach, bananas, ice, and milk together in a blender and call it a smoothie. This is a smoothie for the junk food crowd, and I won’t knock it until I try it.

My drink appeared to be missing any sort of obvious caramel sauce lining the cup, and thank goodness because it was apparent from my first sip that this thing was already plenty sweet. The dusting on top has nice brown sugar and cinnamon notes, but these will be completely lost unless you take off the lid and try it by itself because everything coming up through the straw is so saccharine it becomes one-dimensional. Or two-dimensional, if you count soggy donut crumbs as a dimension.

I originally found the drink’s thickness alright, kind of like a milkshake – albeit one with ice chunks – and the donut crumbles not totally out of place. It has some pumpkin/fall flavor, but the coffee is entirely undetectable and the main flavor notes are cream and sugar with bursts of caramel. It’s too sweet to drink very quickly and doesn’t improve as it sits.

Looking at a spoonful of the mixture evokes an image of what you’d get if you stirred pumpkin puree into whipped cream, and the texture is sort of like a soggy graham cracker. Not more than a few sips in, I was regretting my decision to get a medium.

I have to give Dunkin’ credit for a sort of clever idea for a collaboration (a.k.a. cashing in on a celebrity and the pairing at least making some sense), but it’s too cloying for me. With the absence of any coffee flavor, it’s layer upon layer of sweet things that scream for balance but is only met with wet donuts. Sorry, Ice Spice and Dunkin’, I’m not feelin’ you.

Purchased Price: $4.79
Size: Medium
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (medium) 830 calories, 39 grams of total fat, 22 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 105 milligrams of cholesterol, 300 milligrams of sodium, 115 grams of total carbs, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 102 grams of total sugar (96 grams of added sugars), and 7 grams of protein.