All that glitters is not gold, and all that is ice cream is not good. We won’t often turn our noses up at a late night pint of Ben and Jerry’s or a hefty scoop of Häagen-Dazs. But we also understand that nothing is perfect, not even ice cream. Hence, we put together this list of the worst ice cream flavors available.
It turns out, you actually can go wrong with dairy and sugar. We’ve come across some flavors that have struck fear in us. They’re not even classic horror triggers like “zombie flavored” or “student loan swirl,” but they’ve forced us to reckon with the reality that even something as beautiful and pure as ice cream can be ruined.
We know we’ll get some blowback from these opinions, but we don’t care. We’ve ranked the 10 worst ice cream flavors from bad to worst. You can bring on the hate mail, just please keep these flavors to yourselves.
10 Worst Ice Cream Flavors from Bad to Worst
10. Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
This isn’t a terrible ice cream, but it’s on this list because it’s such a darn shame. We’re just bitter that two good things are put together so poorly that the potential of both is totally squandered.
Perfectly lovely vanilla ice cream is interrupted by chocolate chips that would otherwise be delicious if they weren’t frozen solid by ice cream that doesn’t want it there anyway.
Leave each other alone, guys. In High School Musical 2, Gabriella and Troy knew they had to go their own way – you do, too.
9. Strawberry Ice Cream
We don’t know what kind of strawberries the creators of this flavor were eating that made them think this tastes anything like the real fruit.
Strawberry ice cream always tastes like 50 people played a game of telephone with the description of a strawberry, and this was the result. If strawberry ice cream showed up on its own mother’s doorstep, she would not recognize it. Strawberry ice cream just tastes like that sadness of something missing.
Maybe it’s good for your Barbie party, but there are many better-tasting options. It’s not nauseating, but it’ll always be the one we leave for last in the Neapolitan.
8. Spumoni
A slimy lawyer might get Spumoni off of this list on the basis that it’s technically not ice cream, it’s gelato. But even that lawyer would know they’re grasping at straws because Spumoni, the combination of cherry, chocolate, and pistachio, is simply not a good flavor of anything.
Spumoni is redeemed by both chocolate and pistachio flavors, but the cherry brings it down, as do the fruit and nut bits that are included. It’s a lot going on. Three flavors and assorted add-ins? Let us make our own sundae. We’ll do it better.
7. Cherry Garcia
We give it points for having a great name, but we deduct points for everything else.
Cherry Garcia ice cream doesn’t commit to tasting like cherries, and the chunks of cherries aren’t well dispersed enough to make up the difference. And, of course, there are those pesky chocolate chunks that turn into bricks when mixed into frozen ice cream.
Not worth the broken teeth, and especially not worth the dental bill.
6. Banana
There’s a time and a place for artificial banana flavor, and neither of those are in ice cream. We’ll take a pillowcase full of the Laffy Taffys at a trick-or-treat haul, but the creamy texture of ice cream has us wanting something less aggressively extract-y.
There’s really no winning for poor banana. If an ice cream tasted like a real one, we’d probably realize that they’re sweet and creamy and delicious enough on their own, and we would just eat an actual banana.
Ah, who are we kidding. We’d just dig around in the back of the freezer for a pint of something else. Fruit, begone!
5. Rainbow Sherbert
You know the big plastic tub from the grocery store. Yup, the one with the handle. Rainbow sherbert is supposedly a combination of raspberry, lime, and orange sherbet. But we all loved it as kids without ever being able to identify those. Ah, simpler times.
Now, we know better. This tastes so much like a seventh birthday party that we’re one pizza backwash-laden Sprite pitcher away from a nostalgia-fueled mental break.
Maybe we’re just cranky because we stayed up past our bedtime, but now we’re just confused by the overly sugary concoction. Sherbert in general can’t decide if it’s sorbet or ice cream, and in this case, it can’t even decide which flavor to be. Have a backbone, sherbert.
4. Cotton Candy
The best part of cotton candy is the whimsical texture. At least until we tell you it looks like you’re eating Trolls’ hair that a state fair worker definitely did not wear gloves while spinning. We’re not sorry.
Arguably worse than actual cotton candy, cotton candy ice cream tastes like unidentifiable artificial sweetness and also bothers our sensitive teeth. No, thanks. It is pretty, though. We’ll give it that.
3. Bubble Gum
People don’t even really like bubble gum-flavored bubble gum. So why did anyone think that more of these products was the solution?
Are they the same people who keep making more flavors of Peeps? Read the room and pump the breaks. We’re good on this. Now if you want to finally pump out the new season of Euphoria, we can talk.
2. Rum Raisin
We imagine that Rum Raisin ice cream would be Jack Sparrow’s last-ditch attempt to maintain sanity if he ever got stuck in a nursing home.
The bitter burn of rum clashes with the sweet pops of raisin, and it leaves our mouths confused about what’s going on. And our brains confused about if we should be a little tipsy.
Please, let’s leave the raisins for the oatmeal cookies and the rum for the pirates.
1. Superman Ice Cream
Superman saves the world multiple times and this is the thanks he gets? The worst ice cream on the list?
Firstly, we’re annoyed by the lack of standardization in this ice cream. The only common theme is that it’s red, yellow, and blue ice cream, but the flavors of those colors varies from brand to brand.
To make things worse, those flavors are, more often than not, sub-par. Red options include red soda, cherry, strawberry, or fruit punch. Pick your poison. Meanwhile, yellow choices can include lemon, vanilla, banana, and somehow also fruit punch? Talk to HyVee about this one, whose entire Superman flavor seems to be fruit punch.
Blue can be vanilla, blue raspberry, blueberry, and, most commonly, blue moon. Which is yet another unidentifiable flavor. Some people liken the flavor to Froot Loops, cotton candy, or bubble gum.
Honestly, if this ice cream didn’t already lose on inconsistency alone, it would lose on the indisputable fact that all of the options are bad options. Superman ice cream, pick a lane and use it to fly far away from us.
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