The Best Store-Bought Ice Cream Sandwich Comes From A Brand We Had Written Off

Plenty of labels just have more luster than others under the harsh glare of grocery store fluorescents. There's a reason why most folks refer to the majority of cold, jiggly desserts as Jell-O, and marshmallow squares as Rice Krispies Treats, for example. The dominance of those trademarks has become so ubiquitous that we tend to use them to give credence even to generics. That can work the other way, too, when we eschew less established, prestigious, or just plain popular brands in favor of flashier or simply better-known entities.

Blue Bunny, for example, typically sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Ben and Jerry's, the Talentis, and even the Häagen-Dazses of the world. But the humble hare actually placed No. 1 on Chowhound's ranking of the nine best store-bought ice cream sandwiches, even after Blue Bunny landed lower on our list of the best vanilla ice creams alone. Blue Bunny's frozen dairy-to-cookie ratio could not be beat in the sandwich category, its taste and texture were impeccable, and its price was easy to swallow, too. Even we were surprised by some of what Blue Bunny surpassed.

It was disappointing but not entirely surprising that Great Value's vanilla flavored ice cream sandwiches came in last, being that the literal cheapness implied by its name can also signal poorer quality. Make no mistake; plenty of more affordable foodstuffs are terrific, including inexpensive pantry items that professional chefs swear by. These bargain confections simply did not share that distinction. Their exterior cookies tasted overdone, they had an odd, crisp texture that didn't work in this case, and the interior dairy also failed to impress.

M&M's failure was a little less expected, given the independent legitimacy of the colorful cookie on its own. But freezing temperatures just turned those candies too cold and hard, studded in gritty, overly sweet discs straddling a cloyingly saccharine center. Klondike's entry sputtered, too, with a subpar performance versus its premium price tag. If Blue Bunny isn't hopping off the shelves at your local market, we also liked FatBoy ice cream sandwiches and the good, old fashioned Chipwich, which landed at No. 2 and 3 on our roundup respectively.