N!CK's Light Ice Cream

HAPPY NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY!

[By Nick] It’s not every day I get sent ice cream anymore, let alone an ice cream with my name on it! N!CK’s generously sent me 6 of their “Swedish-style ice cream” pints to try.

Ben & Jerry's New Moo-phoria Flavors

[New for October 2018] So I mentioned that there are 4 new Moo-phoria flavors but wouldn't it be nice if I actually showed them to you right? I mean, I'm not personally excited because I think this line up is just money-grubbing trash, but don't let my opinion sway you away from these. (why yes, I do feel like being harsh right now. Blame the pain I've had in my neck all week).

Ben & Jerry's Moo-phoria Light Ice Cream

Cherry Garcia with a twist, Chocolate Cookie Enlightenment,
Mocha Fudge Brownie, and P.B. Marshmallow Swirl

Culture Republick Light Ice Cream

[Note: Culture Republick called it quits on 12/16/2019]

Alright Unilever, what are you up to? Are you trying to get a gigantic leap on 2019 or are you just trying to hit us with some options for everyone stuck inside? Wait, should I stop asking questions and recap first? (see how that was a question to end the questions? ha, it won't stop!). So first Unilever hit us with 3 new Magnum tubs, then dished out four more Moo-phoria flavors from Ben & Jerry's, and now we've got probiotic filled....

Culture Republick Light Ice Cream
Get it? repubLICK??

Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Twirl

[New for 2018] Can I be a bit cynical for a minute? (and let's be honest, when aren't I?). It feels like Nestle has a done a decent job of gaining some social media traction by hiding their branding. As a literal person, this bugs me a little. I see people excited for Hostess flavors or candy bar flavors or super hero flavors and I think "yeah, that's just regular gummy Edy's/Dreyer's, it's nothing new!". It's good if it makes people happy I guess, but I feels a little dishonest to me. Sorry, I know I am overthinking it. Let's proceed with...

Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Twirl Ice Cream

caramel & vanilla light ice cream
with star-shaped caramel chips and a graham cracker swirl

Ben & Jerry's Caramel Cookie Fix Ice Cream

[New for 2018] Let's just cut the pleasantries and be honest with the fact that I hated the first pint of Moo-phoria I tried. P.B. Dough didn't work for me on any level and I literally threw it out (which almost never happens here at OSS). With that in mind, prepare for a review of...

Ben & Jerry's Caramel Cookie Fix Ice Cream

vanilla with salted caramel swirls & shortbread cookie

Ben & Jerry's P.B. Dough Moo-phoria Light Ice Cream

[New for 2018] When you are trying to keep your business viable and growing and you see a new trend popping up, what do you do? Do you wait for the trend to pass by like so many trends before it, or do you try to steal a little piece of the pie with a new line up? In general, you give it a shot, and that's where Moo-phoria comes in. Ben & Jerry's has dumped a bunch of calories and fat without resorting to sugar substitutes. On paper, it sounds like a winner.

Ben & Jerry's P.B. Dough Moo-phoria Light Ice Cream

chocolate light ice cream with gobs of chocolate chip peanut butter cookie dough

Arctic Zero Light Ice Cream Review

[New for 2018] So, are you surprised at how many companies have jumped on the (ultra) light ice cream bandwagon? I don't know if I am or not, but what did surprise me was when Arctic Zero decided to jump on this bandwagon with 7 new light ice creams. While most companies are reducing down to light ice cream,  the people behind a frozen dessert actually went up the ice cream food chain. Let's see if it's going to work out for them.

Arctic Zero Cookies & Cream Light Ice Cream

"creamy vanilla flavor with chocolate sandwich cookies"

Edy's Triple Peanut Butter Ice Cream

[New for 2018] You may have noticed on instagram that Edy's is up to a bit of repackaging this year, but not so much in the traditional sense. For one, their candy powered line up has completely lost all of its Edy's / Dreyer's branding, but on top of that, they are now dishing up light ice cream in brown containers instead of the traditional slow churned beige containers. Think about that for a minute. It's kind of.... would sneaky be the right word? Rovo and I were discussing it and he's wondering if they will go light ice cream across their entire line up. You could take that thought a bit further and question if it's a two-fold approach to both saving money and saving calories on the base, giving you more budget and calorie room for swirls and mix-ins.

Edy's Triple Peanut Butter (light) Ice Cream

peanut butter light ice cream with a peanut butter ribbon
and mini-chocolate peanut butter cups

Skinny Cow Ultimate Chocolate Sandwich

[New for 2016] First, a quick announcement aka bad news. I'm not sure if I can pull off posts every other day anymore, there's just not enough going on. I will do my best, but if you see me slip to three days here and there, that's why. It's part logistics, part availability, part monetary. I just wanted to warn everyone ahead of time so that I feel a little less guilty when it actually happens. That said, let's dig in to Skinny Cow's new line up of "fully dipped sandwiches". We've got creamy caramel, vanilla bean dream, and....

Skinny Cow Ultimate Chocolate Sandwich

low fat chocolate ice cream with chocolate wafers
fully dipped in chocolatey coating

Edy's Slow Churned Mississppi Mud Pie Ice Cream

[New for early 2016] I really wanted to start our reviews of the 2016 Edy's / Dreyers line up with something from their new grand candy line up but I still haven't seen any of them. So, we are going to grab one of the seven new slow churned options, each one named after a different state.

Edy's Slow Churned Mississppi Mud Pie Ice Cream

chocolate light ice cream & vanilla light ice cream with a fudge swirl and cookie pieces

Perry's Piece Of Cake Light Ice Cream

[By Nick] I have no witty intro for this review. I could take the easy way out and say it was a piece of cake picking this ice cream up while I was at the Niskayuna Co-op. Oh wait, I guess that works.

Perry's Piece Of Cake Light Ice Cream

Light Yellow Cake Ice Cream
with Chocolate Flavored Frosting Swirls and Pound Cake Pieces

Friendly's Coconut Fudge Frozen Yogurt

[By Nick, New for early 2015] With companies like Turkey Hill discontinuing flavors from their "healthier" lines, I was surprised when I saw Friendly's was coming out with a handful of new light and frozen yogurt flavors. With Dubba finding all of the new products first, I need to take what I can get it seems this year. So I jumped on this carton when I saw it at my local Shop Rite.

Friendly's Coconut Fudge Frozen Yogurt

Coconut Frozen Yogurt with Chocolate Flavored Chunks

Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Ripple Light Ice Cream

[By Nick] I'll give Dubba credit, he put in a valiant effort there at the end to make this Turkey Hill limited edition contest even remotely competitive. That said, it's time to put the nail in his coffin and end it all with one last TH limited edition review for 2014. [Finally tally: 8 to 6]

Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Ripple Light Ice Cream

Vanilla flavored light ice cream with a roasted peanut butter swirl, all with no sugar added

Perry's Creme Brulee Light Ice Cream

[By Nick, discontinued] ‎We get requests to review Creme Brulee ice cream pretty often for the site. The problem is with both Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs discontinuing their versions recently, there really aren't that many on the market. Enter Perry's and their light version of Creme Brulee that I found at the Niskayuna Co-op!

Perry's Perfectly Churned Creme Brulee Light Ice Cream

Light Caramel and Custard Ice Cream with Swirls of Carmelized Sugar

Enlightened Peanut Butter Low Fat Ice Cream Bar

[New for 2014] I got an email a few weeks ago asking if I would like to try ENLIGHTENED, "the good-for-you ice cream". I had contemplated buying these as they started popping up at Shaws and Whole Foods, but I just wasn't sure which flavor I should try first. Their current line up is made up for 5 bars and two sandwiches. All the treats are low cal, low fat, low sugar, high fiber, and with no artificial sweetener. Yes, all that and it's still technically ice cream. ENLIGHTENED did ask if I could try their new Peanut Butter flavor first if I was able to, and well, I was able to. Here we go!

Enlightened Peanut Butter Low Fat Ice Cream Bar

Edy's Coffee & Cookies Delight Slow Churned Light Ice Cream

[by Nick, New for 2014, Returned for 2015 & 2016] Since Dubba doesn’t do coffee flavors and he’s pretty much reviewed all the other Edy’s Limited Edition Bakery Treat flavors, I guess I should get around to trying their Coffee & Cookies Delight flavor.

I just wasn’t all that excited about this flavor. In fact, I was actually irritated by the flavor’s description. Edy’s describes it as “coffee light ice cream with chocolaty covered cookie pieces”.  To the average person, this might be an acceptable description but people like me get irrationally frustrated and in their mind they’re screaming “WHAT KIND OF COOKIES?!?!?”

Mars switches to light ice cream

So awhile back (wow, 3 years already), Mars added variations to all of their candy bar flavors. Snickers got Rocky Road (hard to find), Twix got peanut butter (hard to find), and they added a Milky Way flavor. There wasn't a whole lot of movement on this lineup since then until they decided to switch all the flavors to light ice cream, because what makes lackluster ice cream better than switching from regular to light ice cream? (wait, that wasn't very nice). Oh, and where did the website for these ice creams go? Yeah, that's never a good sign.

Twix Ice Cream

Caramel flavored light ice cream

with Twix caramel cookie bar pieces and a chocolatey swirl

Edy's Slow Churned Cinnamon Bun Fun!

[New for 2014, Returned for 2015 & 2016] After I posted the grand version review a few weeks back, someone commented that the slow churn version was a bit of a let down. The comment did get my attention, and then adding in the fact that we blew through the grand version, I decided to investigate.

Edy's / Dreyer's Slow-Churned Cinnamon Bun Fun!

Vanilla light ice cream with a rich cinnamon bun swirl

Kemps Black Jack Cherry Frozen Yogurt

Wow.... over three years since a Kemps review... my word how time has passed. They make a lot of products in the midwest, but in my defense, the only Kemps products around me are frozen yogurts, and it's rare for me to see anything beyond a handful of standard flavors. Kemps had pretty much passed out of my radar until I was reading up on last year's ice cream sales. Apparently the $350 million froyo market was up 21% last year, led by store brands, healthy choice (really??), Ben & Jerry's, and then Kemps at almost $30 million in sales [reference, though I think Dreyers/Edys should be in there] . Keeping in mind that US ice cream sales are at $5.5 billion with another $4.2b for novelties, so 30 mil is a small number, but I still feel like I should try something by them.... and then pawn it off on my wife.

Kemp's Black Jack Cherry Low Fat Frozen Yogurt

(one of those descriptionless flavors)

Halo Top All Natural Light Ice Cream

[By Nick] Besides a few scandalous requests, I actually do enjoy reading our review request form. It gives me an idea of what you guys are looking to see as well as tipping me off to brands I’ve never heard of. In fact, the request form led to today’s review of Halo Top Creamery.

Never having heard of them before, I made my way over to their website to see what they were about and where I could find them. Of course, seeing as I live in the middle of nowhere, no one close carries them. A few emails later with a Halo Top rep (who's been a fan of the site for years) and every flavor in their line up appeared on my door step.