Tag: Ice Cream

REVIEW: Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream

Drew 4 Comments

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream

You see, Ben & Jerry’s? You see what happens?

Oh, I know how you think. “Old dependable Drew, he’s always around. We can just release new flavors anytime and anywhere we please, and he’ll go out of his way to track them down. So predictable.”

Well, guess what?

Now you have a new flavor out, and I couldn’t find it. And instead of driving to twelve different stores chasing it, I looked right in front of me and saw something else: Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream. And I chose it instead.

Sure, now you’ll realize your mistake and try to fix it. “We’ll release it to the grocery store closest to your house, Drew, we promise!” Sorry, Ben & Jerry’s. Too late. In this analogy, you’re the blonde cheerleader, and I’m Michael J. Fox, and Starbucks ice cream is the girl next door I always took for granted.

And also, I’m a werewolf.

So, to business. The carton bills this as swirled coffee and pumpkin spice ice creams. That’s not a typo, by the way — apparently the plural of ice cream is “ice creams.”

On the other hand, I’m a little suspicious about this container — the bar code is stamped over with a label reading “Sales Sample Not For Retail Sale,” although it still scanned at the self-checkout. Above it is more iffy spelling, “There’s a Starbucks in your freeze.”, followed by several sentences of what might be Latin or Italian or possibly Elvish.

I don’t know, I’m afraid to read it aloud for fear of invoking a demonic presence like Mephistopheles or Beetlejuice. (In all seriousness, it’s standard dummy text used in the printing industry. Though still possibly necromantic.) The whole thing is so damn weird that I’m including a picture, just so you don’t think I’m high as a monkey:

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream 2

Right? After comparing it to pictures I’ve seen online, it certainly seems like they sold me a rough draft of this flavor, which hopefully is limited to the packaging, not the ice cream itself. (Oddities aside, the carton is cleverly designed to look like a Starbucks coffee cup, including little boxes with check marks through the “Pumpkin” and “Coffee” boxes.)

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream 4

When you open the lid, you’re confronted with ice cream that’s a uniform beige color. It may be the least visually exciting dessert ever, but digging down a little deeper will reveal actual swirls of off-white mixed with the beige. I’m just guessing the off-white part is the pumpkin spice and the beige the coffee ice cream, but really, the whole thing could’ve used some orange food coloring. It’s pumpkin, guys, make it look like it.

And since that’s bound to be a question, yes, the pumpkin spice taste IS quite prominent, though not overwhelming. I enjoyed it without feeling like it was dominating my palate, though I did find that a little went a long way — this is an ice cream to have a few bites of every night for a week, rather than polishing off the entire pint in an evening. And while many products use the two terms synonymously, you’ll find there’s more of the spice flavor than of the pumpkin in this ice cream.

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream 3

As for the “latte” element, the coffee ice cream component was noticeable and roughly as pronounced as the pumpkin spice. Personally I like the balance, but considering this is a Starbucks offering, if you’re looking for a bold coffee ice cream that’ll put you in your place, this isn’t it. I didn’t have any on hand, but I suspect some chocolate sauce would go really well with this dessert, for what that’s worth. There’s not much of an aftertaste — the flavor hits your taste buds immediately and then fades as soon as you swallow it, with just a tiny trace lingering. It also tastes sweet but not overly so; those of you turned off by excessive sugary flavor needn’t worry.

Overall, this is an enjoyable ice cream, though I wouldn’t really call it a “must try.” As the holiday season winds down, if you see a carton in the grocery store, go ahead and pick it up. (Assuming you have the cash to spare, anyway… at five bucks for a pint, this stuff ain’t cheap.) But no need to go out of your way to pick it up, since the holidays will be a distant memory before you’ve even finished with one pint.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – 210 calories, 100 calories from fat, 11 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 50 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 21 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein.)

Item: Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream
Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Acme
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Beta-testing ice cream. Good spice flavor mixed with decent coffee taste. Not overly sweet. Cool packaging. You won’t want to eat it all at once. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Cons: Description possibly written in ancient Sumerian. Looks incredibly bland. Like everything Starbucks makes, way too expensive. Cons ligula eget arcu hendrerit blandit.

REVIEW: Wonka Ice Cream

Marvo 7 Comments

Wonka Ice Cream

I recently watched a biography about Ben & Jerry’s on Netflix while taste testing the flavors from the new Wonka Ice Cream line. Ever since then, I’ve been having a recurring nightmare that goes something like this:

NO, BEN!

NO, JERRY!

I’M SORRY!

I won’t cheat on you two ever again! Please don’t give me concrete shoes and turn me into Phish Food. No, Ben. I can’t take anymore whipping of my Cinnamon Buns. Jerry? What are you doing with that knife? No! Not the Banana Split! Not the Banana Split, Jerry! No more Bonnaroo Buzz, Ben. My nipples can’t take any more. Please, I don’t want anymore Schweddy Balls from another Chubby Hubby sitting on my chest. I can’t breathe. Please, can’t you Imagine Whirled Peace?

Maybe it’s my conscience telling me I shouldn’t cheat on Ben & Jerry’s. Or maybe it’s my body telling me I shouldn’t eat ice cream right before I go to sleep.

Wonka’s new ice cream line comes in seven flavors: Chocolate Snowflakes, Kerfuffle Truffle, Chipperberry Swirl, Chocolate Chipper Chip, Chocolate Mintropolis, Caramel Nut Kadoozle, and Kernelpuff Caramelstuff. And I’m going to review all seven of them right now in an order that does not follow the previous sentence.

Kerfuffle Truffle

Wonka Kerfuffle Truffle Ice Cream

If you were jealous of Augustus Gloop when he fell into the chocolate river, but not when he got sucked through a pipe, you can experience a near drowning by chocolate with Wonka’s Kerfuffle Truffle Ice Cream, which is made up of chocolate ice cream with chocolate truffles and fudge swirls. This was my least favorite of the seven flavors, but not because it tasted like what I imagine somekind of gloop tastes like or anything like that.

I hoped the three parts of the ice cream would create a flavor kerfuffle, but the firm chocolate truffles and almost pudding-like fudge swirl didn’t make the ice cream taste anything more than a regular chocolate ice cream. They did give the ice cream a variety of textures and it’s good for a chocolate ice cream, but because it doesn’t stray from that, it’s a little disappointing. Not very Wonka.

Chocolate Snowflakes

Wonka Chocolate Snowflakes Ice Cream

Much like Kerfuffle Truffle, Chocolate Snowflake is good, but it’s not a very creative flavor. Sure, the combination of vanilla ice cream with “melt in your mouth” chocolate flakes might have you thinking of something magical, but it’s just a chocolate chip ice cream. Yes, there was melting in my mouth, but it was the vanilla ice cream that did most of the melting, which it should’ve been since it’s heat-hating ice cream. The chocolate flakes do melt away, but it happens much later after the ice cream does. Perhaps, they should’ve called the ice cream “Chocolate Hail.” The vanilla ice cream is bright white, which makes it easier for the chocolate flakes stand out, and there are a lot of chocolate flakes. But, again, it’s a simple flavor.

Chocolate Mintropolis

Wonka Kerfuffle Truffle Ice Cream

When I bite into one of the mini peppermint patties in the Wonka Chocolate Mintropolis Ice Cream, I get the sensation of wishing it had a stronger mintiness that makes me get the sensation of my mouth feeling like it’s the lobby of the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel in Alta, Norway. Chocolate Mintropolis also has chocolate mint cookie chunks swimming in its chocolate ice cream, but the ice cream as a whole is not as minty as I would’ve liked.

However, it’s a pleasurable ice cream with four different textures: the chocolate ice cream’s creaminess, the mini peppermint patty’s firmness, the chewiness of some of the chocolate mint cookie pieces, and the crunchiness of the other cookie chunks. The crunchiness surprised me because when I first started eating the ice cream, all I got were chewy cookies, but then I got a spoonful with a crunch, and then another. That surprise crunch is kind of Wonka-like, don’t you think?

There’s enough mini peppermint patties and chocolate mint cookies to ensure you have a bit of either in every spoonful. While Chocolate Mintropolis isn’t as minty as I hoped, I do think it’s a couple steps above Kerfuffle Truffle.

Chipperberry Swirl

Wonka Chipperberry Swirl Ice Cream

You know how I complained about how Chocolate Snowflake was a simple flavor? Well, Chipperberry Swirl pretty much takes the vanilla ice cream and chocolate in Chocolate Snowflake and makes it better with the addition of black raspberry ice cream. It’s the only flavor with any fruit flavor. The fruity ice cream is a little tangy, which makes Chipperberry Swirl taste like a frozen yogurt, but its nutrition facts and ingredients list assures me that it isn’t. The raspberry ice cream blends well with the chocolate chips, which there were a lot of.

Oh, I should mention the chocolate chips aren’t like the chocolate chips you’d find in cookies, they’re chips of chocolate, like the chips of ice one would find scattered around an ice sculpture in the lobby of the Sorrisniva Igloo Hotel in Alta, Norway. Much like the other flavors, there were a lot of add-ins in Chipperberry Swirl. There are so many chocolate chips that if you don’t get some as you scoop some out, consider yourself the worst scooper ever. But you’ll have many opportunities to practice your scooping because this is a hard flavor to put down.

Caramel Nut Kadoozle

Wonka Caramel Nut Kadoozle Ice Cream

Wonka’s Caramel Nut Kadoozle contains a caboodle of nuts. Within its caramel ice cream there are walnut caramel swirls and pieces of mixed nut brittle which have peanuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, and pecans. If you love caramel as much as I love the feel of baby oil on skin, you’ll enjoy the one-two punch of the caramel ice cream and walnut caramel swirls. The gooey swirls are sweet, but they’re also a little nutty and salty, which also are the red flags I look for when out on first dates.

What makes this ice cream extraordinary is the mixed nut brittle, which provides not only a crunchy texture, but also a bit of mystery with every chunk. With each piece, I wasn’t sure what nutty flavor I’d get after biting into it. It could be mostly peanuts, or cashews, or walnuts, or any combination of the five nuts. Your molars are the key to each mystery mixed nut brittle chunk.

Kernelpuff Caramelstuff

Wonka Kernelpuff Caramelstuff Ice Cream

I became sad when I looked through Kernelpuff Caramelstuff’s ingredient list and didn’t see popped popcorn kernels. I’ve had ice creams with bits of cakes, cookies, pretzels, and potato chips, but I’ve always wanted to experience an ice cream with popcorn mixed in. My ice cream/popcorn fantasy remains a fantasy because instead of popcorn, Kernelpuff Caramelstuff has bits of puffed millet. Here’s a Wikipedia link in case you’re like me and thought a millet was what one calls a mullet when it’s on a child younger than six years old.

Along with the puffed millet, Kernelpuff Caramelstuff is also made up of caramel ice cream, pecan pralines and salted caramel swirls. The puffed millet doesn’t really add any flavor, but their texture is similar to those tiny bits of popcorn you’d find at the bottom of the microwaveable popcorn bag or the tub of movie theater popcorn. It adds a different mouthfeel with the creamy ice cream, gooey caramel, and crunchy pecan pralines. The pecan pralines are divine; they’re more sweet than nutty, which helps this ice cream flavor differentiate itself from the nuttier Caramel Nut Kadoozle.

Chocolate Chipper Chip

Wonka Chocolate Chipper Dip Ice Cream

Finally, there’s Chocolate Chipper Chip, which turns me into the demanding Veruca Salt because the combination of vanilla ice cream with chocolate and potato chips bark pieces makes me want to sing “I Want It Now.” The flavor is similar to Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack, except it lacks a caramel swirl and the potato chips don’t come in fudge covered potato chip ball form. But it doesn’t need the caramel swirl because the sweet and slightly salty combination works well with this ice cream.

Like the other Wonka Ice Cream flavors, there are a lot of add-ins in the 14-ounce container of Chocolate Chipper Chip. Every spoonful had a bit of the chocolate and potato chip bark. The potato chips taste like regular Lay’s potato chips, but 50 percent of the time it was hard to detect that flavor through the chocolate. I also noticed a lack of potato chip crunch as I scooped my way through the ice cream, which was extremely disappointing and made me think Ben & Jerry’s Late Night Snack got it right with their fudge covered potato chip balls. Despite these issues, Chocolate Chipper Chip is my favorite of the seven Wonka Ice Cream flavors, but not by much over Kernelpuff Caramelstuff and Caramel Nut Kadoozle.

You can’t go wrong with any of the Wonka Ice Cream flavors. There are a few boring flavors, but none of them are bad. As I mentioned throughout this review, each container of ice cream has a lot of add-ins and they’re in easy scoopable pieces. And that’s what stands out with these Wonka Ice Cream flavors. There have been several Ben & Jerry’s flavors I’ve tried that have had huge, hard pieces of brownies or toffee bars that forced me to stab into the pint of ice cream with my spoon like I’m getting revenge for making me chubby in order to break down those pieces into smaller chunks. That’s a nightmare I don’t like to face when I’m trying to enjoy some ice cream.

(Disclaimer: I received samples of Wonka Ice Cream for free in order to write this review. Too bad I’m not going through a break up right now, because if I was, the fat from the seven containers of ice cream in my freezer would fill the broken parts of my heart.)

(Nutrition Facts – 1/2 cup – Caramel Nut Kadoozle – 250 calories, 14 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 135 milligrams of sodium, 29 grams of carbohydrates, and 26 grams of sugar. Chipperberry Swirl – 210 calories, 13 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 30 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, and 18 grams of sugar. Chocolate Chipper Chip – 270 calories, 17 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 130 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, and 21 grams of sugar. Chocolate Mintropolis – 250 calories, 14 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 70 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, and 19 grams of sugar. Chocolate Snowflakes – 1/2 cup serving – 220 calories, 14 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 30 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, and 18 grams of sugar. Kerfuffle Truffle – 260 calories, 15 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 28 grams of carbohydrates, and 22 grams of sugar. Kernelpuff Caramelstuff – 230 calories, 13 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 130 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, and 23 grams of sugar.)

Item: Wonka Ice Cream
Price: FREE
Size: 14 ounces
Purchased at: Received from the nice folks at Nestle
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Kerfuffle Truffle)
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Chocolate Snowflakes)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Chocolate Mintropolis)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Chipperberry Swirl)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Caramel Nut Kadoozle)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Kernelpuff Caramelstuff)
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Chocolate Chipper Chip)
Pros: Chocolate Chipper Chip makes me chipper. Caramel Nut Kadoozle is a doozy. Kernelpuff Caramelstuff is the stuff. Chipperberry Swirl makes me squeal like a little girl. Chocolate Mintropolis is all right. Lots of add-ins in easy to scoop pieces. Upside down labels are a nice Wonka touch.
Cons: Not available nationwide, yet. As decadent as other premium ice creams. Comes in 14 ounce containers. Kernelpuff Caramelstuff doesn’t contain popcorn. Kerfuffle Truffle and Chocolate Snowflakes are boring.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Limited Batch Banana Cream Pie

Kelley 3 Comments

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Banana Cream Pie

When you do a search for something you think is innocuous like “cream pie” and Google Instant suddenly disappears, you know you’re about to learn about something you probably didn’t want to know.

When you do a search for “banana cream pie jokes” and it gets even worse, you just want to give up.

So let’s start over.

Awful sexual terms aside, when I think about cream pies, I think clowns. I think Stooges. I think classic comedy. The pie in the face is right up there with the banana peel on the ground. And this new Ben & Jerry’s Banana Cream Pie ice cream has cream pie and bananas!

While it may be tempting, please do not attempt to use a pint of this ice cream to hit somebody in the face. It will probably not be funny. Also, setting it on the ground will probably not result in a pratfall; whoever you’re trying to prank will probably just wonder why a perfectly good carton of ice cream is sitting on the ground, getting all melty. Also not funny.

Banana Cream Pie is an “Exclusive Batch”, which means it’s only available at Walmart. Which means I had to go to Walmart. The things I do for you TIB readers. It’s not even listed on the Ben & Jerry’s website, so you can sneak out to your local Walmart, pick up a pint, and be the envy of all your neighbors.

“Hey, I’ve never seen that Ben & Jerry’s flavor before!” They’ll say. “Where did you get it?” Then you can look all smug and tell them you’ve got secret ice cream connections. They’ll be so impressed. Also, your neighbors are fucking weird and you should really think about moving. Or, as the cow that just got pied in the face on the front of the B&J’s carton would say, “moooving”.

I’m sorry. In my defense, Ben & Jerry themselves say on the carton, “If you’re a fan of Banana Cream Pie, you’ll love the in-your-face taste of Banana Cream Pie ice cream.” Yes, that’s right. In your face. The puns, they just can’t be helped. You could say they are punstoppable. Someone help me.

Anyways, the official description of Ben & Jerry’s Banana Cream Pie is “banana ice cream with pastry cream swirls, marshmallow swirls & pie crust pieces”.

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Banana Cream Pie Closeup

Well, that sounds like a pretty close approximation to a deconstructed banana cream pie. Unfortunately, to me it tasted more “fallen apart” than “deconstructed”. I thought the banana flavor tasted a little artificial, but a quick look at the ingredients revealed that real bananas are used, which makes me wonder if some of the other ingredients tricked my taste buds.

There was a pleasant and authentic pie crust flavor, but there weren’t big chunks like I expected. Instead, it was more of a grainy texture, like the crust had been completely pulverized before being added to the ice cream.

As for the marshmallow and pastry cream swirls, well, I could see swirls, but they looked darker than marshmallows or pastry cream. In fact, they looked more like banana swirls than anything. If I tried really hard, I could taste a bit of marshmallow, but the pastry cream flavor was nowhere to be found, even if I closed my eyes and pretended real hard.

Ben & Jerry’s usually delivers on their flavors – even the wacky ones – but I feel as though they missed the mark on Banana Cream Pie. Without the marshmallow and pastry cream flavors, you’re left with banana ice cream that has some grainy pie crust flavor to it. I love B&J and their constant stream of new flavors, so I won’t threaten to chuck a carton of this ice cream at them. Perhaps if I hit them in the face with a real banana cream pie, they would understand what this ice cream should have tasted like.

(Nutrition Facts — 1/2 cup — 260 calories, 110 calories from fat, 12 grams of total fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 65 milligrams of cholesterol, 100 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 24 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein, 8% vitamin A, 10% calcium and 2% iron.)

Item: Ben & Jerry’s Limited Batch Banana Cream Pie
Price: $3.25
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 3 out of 10
Pros: Real bananas used. Classic pie-in-the-face joke. Pie crust was tasty and authentic. Classic banana-peel-on-the-ground joke. Tiny hint of marshmallow did taste good.
Cons: No pastry cream taste and barely any marshmallow. Learning from Google that “cream pie” is not an innocent search term. Pie crust was grainy instead of chunky. Clowns. Bananas tasted somewhat artificial even though they weren’t.

REVIEW: Skinny Cow Slimited Edition Mmmmocha Truffle Bars

Jasper 2 Comments

Slimited Edition Skinny Cow Mmmmocha Truffle Bars-WM

As a reviewer at The Impulsive Buy and a natural-born impulsive buyer, I am often swayed into checking out new items based on the punny-ness of the products’ names. It should be obvious, then, that I needed to try the new Skinny Cow ice cream bar, as its name offers puns both inspired (Slimited: so straightforward yet so effective) and confusing. (Is “Mmmmocha” supposed to represent me saying “mmmm” with delight, or it is an oddly-executed play on cow onomatopoeia?)

Plus, swimsuit slimsuit swimsuit season is right around the corner, so I figure a review of a low-fat product is in order. Each Mmmmocha Truffle Bar has just 100 calories and 2.5 grams of fat while somehow containing 3 grams of fiber. Let’s all take thirty seconds to do a Google search of “how could there be fiber in ice cream” and see how terrifying the results are. Ready? Hey, not that terrifying! We should just act like ice cream fiber is totally normal so I can get on with the review.

Slimited Edition Skinny Cow Mmmmocha Truffle Bars Closeup-WM

When taken out of its packaging, the ice cream bar looked pretty appealing. It was a slightly lighter color than the photo on the box, and the chocolate drizzle was neatly latticed. As I took my own photos, I was surprised by how quickly the bar began to lose its shape. Without a hard chocolate shell like many other ice cream bars, the Mmmmocha Truffle Bar just melted very quickly. The Skinny Cow ice cream really needed a Spanx-like chocolate shell to maintain its form, but all it had was some fishnet stocking chocolate drizzle.

The bar had a pleasant coffee taste that wasn’t particularly strong or sweet. The chocolate drizzle added moments of more acute sweetness, and the slight crunch of the chocolate provided a little bit of a textural contrast. I was mildly surprised at how creamy it was, but my expectations for low-fat ice cream were probably unreasonably low. In the end, it didn’t quite satisfy my ice cream fix for the day, so I threw away the last few bites and grabbed a scoop of the premium stuff in my freezer.

Overall, I felt decidedly “meh” about the Skinny Cow Slimited Edition Mmmmocha Truffle Bars, especially since $6.99 for six bars felt kind of pricey. Still, they may have a role to play in your dieting plans (prepare for the most back-handed recommendation ever): As a friend was explaining to me recently, great-tasting low-calorie foods actually ruin plenty of diets because people feel justified in eating more servings and always end up finishing the whole box. These ice cream bars are fine but not so tasty that you’ll want to eat all six servings at once. If you’re really committed to dieting but can’t give up ice cream completely, the Skinny Cow Slimited Edition Mmmmocha Truffle Bars will be a very nice fit for you.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar – 100 calories, 25 calories from fat, 2.5 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein, 6% vitamin A, and 20% calcium.)

Item: Skinny Cow Slimited Edition Mmmmocha Truffle Bars
Price: $6.99
Size: 6 bars
Purchased at: Food Emporium
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Pleasant coffee taste. Chocolate drizzle added sweetness and a slight crunch. Creamier than I expected. The word Slimited. Working Spanx into a well-shaped metaphor. Also having premium ice cream in the freezer right now. Sticking to diets.
Cons: Melted really quickly. Still not that creamy. Kind of pricey. The word Mmmmocha. Backhanded recommendations. Not actually thinking ice cream fiber is normal.

REVIEW: Breyers Blasts! Limited Edition Oreo Birthday Blast!

Drew 12 Comments

Breyers Limited Edition Oreo Birthday Blast

It seems like many longstanding companies don’t know quite how to feel about their own longevity.  Staying in business for a long time is, of course, something to celebrate — the company I work for recently hit a major milestone and celebrated with both a family picnic and a black-tie dinner, which was cool.  But a lot of companies seem to want to downplay their past in an effort to appear cutting-edge and in touch with today’s consumers.  You understandably see it a lot with tech companies, but also in some industries you wouldn’t expect.  DC Comics has the richest history of any comic company on Earth, but when it comes to their original characters from the 1940s, the powers that be generally alternate between killing them off, writing them out of stories, and pretending they don’t exist.  (Because characters created in the ’50s and ’60s are so much more relevant, presumably.)

The food industry seems to play both sides of the fence.  You’ll see plenty of brands where the companies seem to constantly try new flavors or fillings or variations on the original — coat it in chocolate, fill it with berries, age it ten years and throw some parsley on top — but at the same time, there are a number of products that have really stood the test of time, and their makers rarely miss an opportunity to point that out.  The fact that they often do so while simultaneously introducing the “new and improved version!” of the product that’s lasted forever in its original form is an irony not lost on me, and Nabisco provides us with a fantastic example of what we’re talking about.  As you probably know, Oreos are celebrating their 100th anniversary in 2012, and I’ll bet you cash money Nabisco has rolled out more variants on the Oreo in the past ten years than they did in the ninety preceding it — Double Stufs, Triple Doubles, Neapolitan flavor, Berry Burst, Strawberry Milkshake Creme, Cakesters… the list is endless.  Celebrate the past, just so long as no one thinks you’re afraid to make changes to keep with the times appears to be the credo.

Breyers Limited Edition Oreo Birthday Blast Closeup

Be that as it may, part of any good birthday celebration is ice cream, so Nabisco has teamed up with Breyer’s to bring us… almost ice cream.  “Frozen dairy dessert,” if you want to get technical.  I don’t tend to notice the difference until it’s pointed out to me, but I know some of you (like my wife) do, and once she mentioned it, I definitely could detect the slight aftertaste that smacks of “almost but not quite ice cream.”  Like blinking your eyes or breathing, it’s the sort of thing you don’t consciously think about, but then once it’s brought to your attention, you can’t stop noticing it.  It didn’t totally ruin my enjoyment, but it definitely diminished it slightly; naturally, your mileage may vary.

Oreos, of course, have a proud tradition of partnering with ice cream as the classic cookies n’ cream flavor, or the slightly less classic “creme (with cookie chunks)” by stores afraid of violating copyright laws.  By appearances, the anniversary ice cream looked to be exactly that, just with rainbow sprinkles added, so that’s what I was expecting.  It’s also basically what I got, so here’s to judging a book by its cover!  But I was pleasantly surprised to note that along with the rainbow sprinkles came a bit of cake batter flavor too.  It’s not overwhelming, but it pairs with the Oreo cookie chunks pretty well.  The dessert is fairly creamy — not Ben & Jerry’s quality, but still, not bad.

Overall, you pretty much know what to expect from this frozen dairy dessert if you’ve had cookies n’ cream before, as that’s the dominant base.  I’d love to tell you it’s more exciting than that, but this is just a decent but not outstanding flavor that loses a point or two for the aftertaste.  It’s not bad by any stretch, but it doesn’t really live up to the monumental milestone it was designed to commemorate either.  As it stands, I don’t think you’d find anyone arguing Oreo Birthday Blast was worth waiting 100 years for.

(Nutrition Facts — 1/2 cup — 130 calories, 40 calories from fat, 4.5 grams of total fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 60 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 13 grams of sugars, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Breyers Blasts! Limited Edition Oreo Birthday Blast!
Price: $3.79
Size: 1.5 quarts
Purchased at: Giant
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Visually appealing rainbow sprinkles.  Most Oreos don’t look a day over 70.  Tasty cookie chunks.  Hard to be TOO disappointed with what is, essentially, cookies n’ cream.  Certainly not healthy, but could be a lot worse.  If you make a wish before digging in your spoon, it stands as good a chance of coming true as if you were wishing on a candle.
Cons: Can’t un-notice the aftertaste after it’s been pointed out to you.  (Sorry.)  Not real ice cream.  Companies that want to celebrate their longevity when convenient while ignoring it the other 99% of the time.  Not exactly overflowing in creativity.  Could be slightly creamier.