It always gets a little sad around here. The night before Alice has to head home to California. Following her annual three-week-long visit with Daddy.
So, in an effort to lighten the mood a bit last Monday evening, I decided to hold an ice cream social in my daughter’s honor. But not just any sort of ice cream social. A Disney-themed ice cream social!
Which is why — last Monday afternoon — I headed over to our local Wal-Mart and picked up a huge pile of Blue Bunny products. (Blue Bunny — for those of you who don’t know — is the well-known Iowa-based ice cream making concern. A subsidiary of Wells’ Dairy, Inc. Blue Bunny recently acquired the rights to use various Disney characters in an effort to beef up their ice cream product sales. The first wave of these Disney-branded items began hitting stores shelves back in May of this year.) The items that I ended up purchasing for Alice’s party were:
Disney Crazy Cones
Disney S’wiches
And four different varieties of Disney Triples Ice Cream
That night — in a totally unscientific experiment — I tore open all the Blue Bunny novelty packages, pulled the lids off of the tubs of ice cream and laid out an assortment of bowls and spoons. I then told my daughter — and all our guests — to “… have at it.”
The next half hour or so … well, it wasn’t pretty, folks. A veritable ice cream orgy. With consenting adults swapping bowls willy-nilly. Walking up to underage family members and saying “Oh, you’ve just got to try this!”
Me? I worked the room just as a reporter should. Notebook in hand, quickly gathering people’s impressions of the various Blue Bunny products that they were noshing. Here’s a quick run-down on what was said about what.
The “Disney S’wiches” (translation: itty bitty ice cream sandwiches) were a huge hit with my 9-year-old daughter as well as her 6-year-old cousin, Gia. The girls really fanged those things up at warp speed … which — given that this Blue Bunny product is actually themed around Buzz Lightyear (the chocolate cookies that make up the “bread portion” of these ice cream sandwiches had these great likenesses of Buzz, Emperor Zurg and the Little Green Men baked right into them) — was kind of appropriate, don’t you think?
Anyway … when they were quizzed about how this particular Blue Bunny product tasted, Alice and Gia said that they really enjoyed the vanilla-flavored “Disney S’wiches.” Though I suspect that some of that enjoyment came from the green and blue food coloring that the technicians at Wells’ Dairy had used to give the filling of these ice cream sandwiches their distinctive hue. These two little girls nearly laughed themselves sick by repeatedly opening their mouths and showing each other their green and/or blue colored tongues.
The “Disney Crazy Cones” were quite popular both the adults and kids. A Tigger themed treat, the “Crazy Cone” consisted of vanilla flavored ice cream — which had been mixed with smallish chocolate Tigger head-shaped cookies — which was then stuffed deep down inside of an orange colored sugar cone. Then the top of the ice cream cone is dipped in chocolate fudge and decorated with orange sprinkles. The end result is a pretty Tigger-ific looking ice cream cone.
What the adults seemed to like best about the “Disney Crazy Cones” was that — just as you got down to the last bite of the sugar cone — you found out that there was a secret layer of chocolate fudge hidden inside the cone. What the kids particularly seem to really get a kick out of were the Tigger trivia questions that printed on the outside of the ice cream cone’s orange foil wrapper. (EX: What does TTFN stand for? Ta ta for now!)
Having enthusiastically disposed of the ice cream novelty items, the crew assembled for Alice’s ice cream social then moved on to the main course: those four 48-ounce tubs filled with different flavors of Disney Triples Ice Cream.
I’ll say this much. The folks at Blue Bunny have really come up with an intriguing concept. They promise — via the lettering on the outside wrapper — “Three Magical Tastes in Every Scoop.” How do they deliver on this promise? Well, each tub of Disney Triples is divided into three different colored sections. And each of these sections features a different flavor of ice cream. And then, each of these flavors of ice cream has a handful of different Disney-character shaped candy or cookie pieces folded into their particular mix.
The end result is a pretty playful dessert. Though — as each of those very vibrant colors begin mixing together — your bowl of Disney Triples ice cream can start to look pretty disgusting fairly quickly.
Anyway … the varieties that we had available for sampling at Alice’s ice cream social last week were:
Vanilla flavored (which is colored light blue, red and purple). This Blue Bunny ice cream features little caramel-filled Mickey Mouses, marshmallow Goofys and chocolate Donald Ducks folded into its mix.
Cookies and Cream flavored. This variety of Blue Bunny ice cream is Winnie the Pooh themed, which is why the various sections in this tub were colored Piglet Pink, Pooh Red and Tigger Orange. And deep within their appropriately colored sections tiny chocolate Tiggers, Graham cracker-flavored Poohs and vanilla-flavored Piglets were hidden.
Chocolate flavored. This Blue Bunny ice cream is themed around “The Lion King.” So down inside the separate sections of the tub (which were chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate flavored, by the way) were little caramel, marshmallow and fudge pieces … what these were shaped like, I really can’t say. Why for? Well, the people at Alice’s party were shoveling this stuff down so fast that no one had the time to discover what these shapes were supposed to be, anyway.
Rainbow Sherbet. This Buzz Lightyear-themed ice cream variety was particularly eye-catching. With bright blue raspberry sherbet right next to phosphorescent green lemon-lime sherbet next door to outrageously purple cherry sherbet. And — if that wasn’t odd enough sounding — this particular variety of Blue Bunny ice cream also has “Galactic Sour Stars with Poppin’ Candy” mixed in.
You heard right, people. “Poppin’ Candy” (I.E. Pop Rocks) mixed with ice cream. This is the sort of stuff that dentists just dream about. A new product comes on the market that will immediately allow them to buy a home by the sea.
Anyhow … of the four varieties of Blue Bunny ice cream that we served up last Monday night, the chocolate flavored was the obvious favorite. I think that tub got emptied in about 5 minutes flat. The Cookies and Cream flavored variety ran a close second (my ex-mother-in-law, Nancy Smith, particularly liked this variety. Especially the Piglet Pink section of the tub. Which — according to Nancy — was Snickerdoodle-flavored).
The Vanilla flavored ice cream wasn’t quite as popular with the guests at Alice’s party. Though I suspect that this had more to do with the fact that one of the sections was bright blue colored (What is it about blue colored food that we all seem to find so off-putting?) rather than having anything to do with the ice cream’s actual flavor.
Which bring us to Blue Bunny’s Buzz Lightyear-themed Rainbow Sherbet. Which — given that I was so busy taking notes at Alice’s ice cream social — was the only flavor left when I finally set down my pen and paper and began to eat. So I had a couple of bowls of that stuff … and then, roughly 12 to 18 hours later …
What’s a polite way to describe this? There IS no polite way to describe this. I began extruding green Play-Doh. I would exit the bathroom and think to myself: “This must be what it’s like when the Incredible Hulk goes to the john.”
After this unfortunate digestive episode had gone on for a couple of days, I finally phoned my doctor and explained the situation. He just laughed at me and said “Well, this is what happens when you consume the Wonderful World of Color, Jim.” He then went on to say that this is typical of what happens when someone eats an item that’s been laced with ‘way too much food coloring. “Just give it another couple of days, Hill. Then I’m sure you’ll reach the end of your rainbow.”
Just what I needed. A funny doctor.
Anywho … this one slight reservation aside (I.E. if you feed too much Blue Bunny’s Buzz Lightyear-themed Rainbow Sherbet to your baby tonight, you’ll probably find a multi-hued poo waiting for you in their diaper tomorrow morning), I can heartily recommend Wells’ Dairy, Inc’s new line of Disney-branded products. They were really a huge hit at my daughter’s ice cream social last Monday night. These products helped to make Alice’s last night in New England a lot sweeter than it normally would have been.
So go and pick up some Disney S’wiches, Crazy Cones and/or Triples Ice Cream today. I promise you that they’ll taste really great going down.
It’s the rest of their trip through your lower intestine that you may find somewhat disconcerting.
(I know, I know. TMI. Too Much Information.)
Anyway … your thoughts?