Review: Ben and Jerry's "If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours" Ice Cream

As proud Canadians, we were excited to get our hands on this creation by Ben and Jerry's: If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours. Note the "u" in "flavours"! This is one of several Ben and Jerry's ice creams based on songs or bands, and is inspired by the Barenaked Ladies song "If I Had A Million Dollars". True, BNL has had some scandal over the past couple of years, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the song that still frequents the muzak of grocery stores everywhere. Especially when it comes in ice cream form.

Disappointingly, this ice cream does not literally contain 1,000,00 flavours, but I supposed that would have been extremely hard to fit into one carton. It's a "collision of chocolate & vanilla ice creams mixed with chocolate-covered toffee, white chocolate chunks, peanut butter cups, and chocolate-covered almonds." It's 999,994 flavours short of a million, but it still sounds delicious and does give more variety than the average pint.

We divided the cartoon between us and dug in to see just how many flavours we could find. There was a fairly even distribution of chocolate and vanilla ice creams, and the chocolate was quite nice. The vanilla tasted OK but it had this weird gritty texture to it. I didn't notice it at first, but once J called my attention to it, it was pretty hard to ignore. It wasn't ice crystals or mix-ins. It was almost...dusty feeling and not at all pleasant. And it was only present in the vanilla for some reason.

In the battle of penny VS peanut butter cup, the peanut butter cup takes home the prize!

As for the mix-ins, Ben and Jerry's did not skimp, especially on the peanut butter cups. Those suckers were HUGE. The white chocolate chunks were also a decent size, and while we found very few chocolate-covered almonds, they were a nice size. J swears she found a chocolate covered peanut in hers, not something listed in the ingredients. However, neither of us were able to find any toffee in either of our bowls. Overall, we felt like the distribution was more like "If I Had 1,000,000 Peanut Butter Cups" than "1,000,000 Flavours".

Our overall feeling on this flavour is that is was good but it felt more like variations on the theme of chocolate, rather than the true mix that is suggested by the name. We love peanut butter cups, and chocolate, but would have loved even more the addition of something like cookie pieces, caramel, nuts, coconut... And the dusty, gritty texture of the vanilla was really hard to ignore. Perhaps having a more even distribution of mix-ins would've made this a more exciting experience (and actually having some toffee would have been nice!)

There is also a nice article written about the band's reaction to the release of this flavour.

Recommend to a friend? Yes, especially if you consider yourself to be a chocoholic. We think that the texture issue with the vanilla was a freak occurrence, but if it was not, then we would be much more hesitant to recommend this.
Repurchase? J: If the texture of the vanilla was improved, yes. B: Since this ice cream was so much about the peanut butter cups, at least in our pint, I would be inclined to get Island Farms "Moose Tracks" instead and get more ice cream for my money.