At first blush, an ice cream flavor called “Turkey Day Fixin’s” sounds absolutely disgusting and something only that weird kid you knew in elementary school who used to try to get you to pay them to eat nickles and twigs would want to try.
I hate to say it, but I might be that weird kid you knew in elementary school because heaven help me, this ice cream actually sounds good? Let me explain before you try to DM me $10 to see if I’d eat a roll of nickels. (Which I obviously wouldn’t because a roll of nickles is $2, and thus, I would only have a net profit of $8. Clearly, not worth the $1,000 plus ER bill I’d have to take on.)
So “Turkey Day Fixin’s” is the Flavor of the Month for Baskin Robbins, and tell me after reading this description, you’re not at least a little bit intrigued. According to Baskin-Robbins’ website, Turkey Day Fixin’s (with its inexplicable apostrophe) is a “surprising combination of sweet potato and autumn spice ice creams mixed with honey cornbread pieces and swirls of Ocean Spray® cranberry sauce.”
To paraphrase the great (albeit fictional) Joey Tribbiani: Sweet potato? Good! Honey cornbread pieces? Good! Cranberry sauce? Gooooood! It does, however, have a truly terrible name.
Look, I get that it is probably the sign of a declining civilization that companies make weird flavored food, mostly for the attention (because it’s not the taste) and suckers like me are intrigued and end up buying said food items that probably never should have left the ideation stage of brainstorming. Like, intellectually, I understand there is no use for the gross soda flavors Jones Soda comes up with every year for Thanksgiving, like Turkey and Gravy. However, the part of me that shoved 20 sour Warheads into my mouth at 12 because someone bet me I wouldn’t (and ended up burning off my taste buds for a week in the process) kicks in, and I want all the weird, wrong food flavors in the world.
What’s not helping Baskin-Robbins is how they talk about this flavor, which, again, makes it sound really gross. “We continue to push the boundaries of flavor innovation at Baskin-Robbins and wanted to bring a unique scoop to the table that deliciously encapsulates all the sweet and savory flavors from your favorite Thanksgiving sides,” says Hannah Suits, director of Brand Marketing for Baskin-Robbins.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room: “Flavor Innovation” sounds like a suburb of Guy Fieri’s “Flavortown” planned community, and I’m not sure I want to go to there.
Secondly, Sweet and savory work well in many pairings, but it’s a bridge too far for me in ice cream. I speak from experience because I’ve tried sweet and savory ice cream flavors, like garlic. Will that description stop me from at least seeking out this corporate abomination flavor? Absolutely not. It has the same appeal of being told not to touch a hot stove. I know in my heart it will burn me, but not finding out what that feels like will burn me more in the long run.
(Featured Image: CBS)
