10 Fun Flavor Facts that You Definitely (Maybe) Don’t Know

March 20, 2018

Quick! What’s your favorite flavor?

Great choice. We love that one, too.

But do you know what year it was released? And do you know the story of how it was created? In other words, are you a fan of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, or are you a super-mega-fan?

This list is for you, all you flavor completists, who make it a personal mission to travel the country (or the internet, we know how it is) seeking out the weirdest, most little-known factoids about Ben & Jerry’s. If you think you’ve found them all, we think you’ll be surprised:

  1. Strawberry Cheesecake was originally called Primary Berry Graham.

    It was launched in 2004 as part of a consumer contest and our partnership with Rock the Vote. We renamed it in 2005 and it became one of our top 10 flavors!

  2. Chocolate Therapy and Oatmeal Cookie Chunk are the only Limited Batches we’ve made full-time flavors.

    Limited Batches are meant to be just that. But Chocolate Therapy proved so talented at making people feel really, really good that we had to extend its office hours. As for Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, well…

  3. Oatmeal Cookie Chunk may be our most missed flavor.

    We miss it too! But when our cookie supplier stopped making those amazing chunks, we couldn’t find new cookies that could carry out this amazing flavor combination. Trust us, we looked everywhere. Rather than disappoint fans with subpar chunks, we decided to let this one end on a positive note.

  4. Everything But The… and Half Baked have one unique thing in common.

    These two flavors are the sole survivors of a 2Twisted! line we launched in 2000. 2Twisted! flavors mixed 2-3 of our current flavors to get a new and fun combination. The 2Twisted! flavors that ended up in the graveyard are Entangled Mints, Monkey Wrench, Pulp Addiction, From Russia with Buzz, Jerry’s Jubilee, and Urban Jumble.

  5. Our S’mores flavor was originally called Marsha Marsha Marshmallow.

    We all must have been humming the Brady Bunch theme song when this flavor launched in 2005. We changed the name in 2007, to the delight of campfire enthusiasts everywhere. (Hey, anybody remember when Marcia and the family went camping? Season 1, episode 8.)

  6. Dastardly Mash was truly a one-of-a-kind flavor.

    This dastardly concoction was the only one ever to include raisins. Ben conjured up this flavor, but ultimately came to think that the raisins tasted too “mushy.” When he couldn’t find a solution that satisfied, it was off to the graveyard! (Ben and Jerry still don’t see completely eye to eye on this one.)

  7. Bourbon Pecan Pie can only be found in one state.

    (And no, it’s not a state of mind.) This pie-inspired flavor can only be found in the great state of Texas. Last year, we took a road trip through Texas and asked fans to decide which Texas-inspired flavor deserved immortality. It was a battle royale between Bar-B-Que Peach (Ancho-spiced peach ice cream, sliced peaches and a barbecue caramel swirl) and the eventual winner, Bourbon Pecan Pie. If you want some, better practice your two-step…

  8. Chubby Hubby started out as an office prank.

    Two coworkers convinced their pint-obsessed boss that this flavor was real. It wasn’t. So they felt bad and mixed up the concoction themselves at home. Their boss loved it so much that he and his employees wrote to us about it. We loved it too—no joke—and launched the flavor in 1994.

  9. We launched Dilbert’s World Totally Nuts in an airport terminal.

    We gave pints of this long-ago-discontinued flavor to every bleary-eyed passenger stumbling off a red-eye flight. Nothing clears the cobwebs like a free pint of ice cream!

  10. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is the result of a customer’s anonymous tip.

    Long ago, in our first Scoop Shop, there was a bulletin board where customers could leave suggestions. We knew this one was special right away. But it still took us something like six years to figure out how to sell it in pints, because the huge chunks kept clogging up our ice cream-making equipment!

So there you go, 10 fun facts you can use to impress absolutely everyone at any party… or whenever you find yourself in an impromptu trivia battle at your local Scoop Shop. What are your favorite Ben & Jerry’s fun facts?