How does this sell? You can buy chocolate, or vanilla, or strawberry, in any proportions. But instead, you choose to get exactly equal portions of each, all shoved in the same container, why? Why would you limit yourself like that? You can’t even eat your favorite flavor in isolation. You eat vanilla, some strawberry’s gonna get in. That’s just how it is.
And strawberry. Strawberry? What the heck is strawberry doing there? Who, at any time, would rather eat strawberry than chocolate or vanilla!? This was meant to be rhetorical. But informal polling has convinced me that there’s an awful lot of strawberry weirdos out there. To all of them I say, you are seriously weird. Seriously.
Growing up, my father would occasionally purchase neapolitan, just for kicks. And our family would destroy the chocolate and vanilla in about, oh, 35 seconds. The strawberry would just sit there. And sit. A few months later, my father would get a strange urge to buy another carton of neapolitan, and it would repeat. Eventually there would be three or four boxes of ice cream left, each with one carefully sculpted strawberry third remaining. Once in a while, my father would see these and begin to lecture us about waste and how much things cost.
How did strawberry even get in there? Rumor has it those were the most popular flavors when neapolitan ice cream was invented. I think there was just a really good strawberry salesman somewhere! (That’s a ripoff of Brian Regan’s cranapple bit by the way.)
It’s hard to believe they are still the most popular flavors. And indeed, they are not. Per the International Ice Cream Association, here are the top 10 flavors.
1. Vanilla, 29%
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neapolitan, 4.2%
6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%
7. French vanilla, 3.8%
8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%
9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%
10. Praline pecan, 1.7%
(Isn’t it funny that neapolitan is counted as it’s own flavor?) So it seems that the strawberry should be replaced with butter pecan. Which just sounds sickening, honestly.
That site has other gems. We all know the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” song, right? Well, they have the complete lyrics!
…Iceberg, Lindberg, Sol Berg and Ginzberg,
Ice cream Cohen.
I scream, you scream, everybody wants ice cream.
Rah, rah, raaazberry!
No, they really don’t write ’em like that anymore. They’d get picketed.
Update: This is from 2019. Neapolitan is now at number 10. This is a good trend. Cookies n’ Cream is the best flavor ever invented, and has moved all the way up to number 3.
- Vanilla
- Chocolate
- Cookies N’ Cream
- Mint Chocolate Chip
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
- Buttered Pecan
- Cookie Dough
- Strawberry
- Moose Tracks
- Neapolitan
I have my doubts about those numbers also. It’s all I could find though.
On the other hand, when I go to Dairy Queen, I always get the vanilla. But if I go to a “fancy” ice cream place, like Brewsters or Cold Stone Creamery, I get some variant of Cookies & Cream. And I would say Cookies & Cream is my favorite, just not at Dairy Queen.
I really do not believe that distribution of favorite flavors. Actually, I believe people could answer like that, but I fail to believe that it reflects reality.
If people are asked straight up what their favorite flavor is, I think the tendency is to pick the basic flavor that is your favorite.
However, are you telling me that Dairy Queen goes through 10 times as many tubs of vanilla ice cream as it does Cookies & Cream? Or 20 times more Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (which didn’t even make the top 10)? I might blurt out “Vanilla” if asked my favorite flavor, but given the choice in Dairy Queen, I’d take something more interesting, and rarely choose plain vanilla.