7 Popular Ice Cream Bars, Ranked Worst To Best

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On one of summer's hottest days, there's nothing more refreshing than an ice cream bar. These frozen treats are just right for a day at the pool, a sweet ending to the perfect summer cookout, or even a simple midday pick-me-up from the office freezer. However you like to enjoy them, I think we can all agree that there is rarely a moment in which an ice cream bar doesn't make a situation better.

There are plenty of options for ice cream bars, in terms of flavors and brands, but some of the best ones are the classics — with a creamy vanilla base coated in a crackly layer of sweet milk chocolate. After all, there is a reason why so many brands have their own version of this timeless flavor combination!

With so many ice cream bars to choose from, I set out to taste and rank some of the most popular ones to determine which are worth buying and which you can skip the next time you have a craving for a frozen treat. I tried each of these bars blindly, taking into account the flavor and texture of their chocolate coatings and vanilla bases, as well as the balance between the two components in each bar. 

Unfortunately, it was not difficult to decide which of these ice cream bars belonged in last place. I rarely speak about food (and especially dessert) like this, but the Friendly's Vanilla Frozen Dairy Dessert Bars were truly abysmal.

The minute I unwrapped one of these bars, a smell akin to molten plastic hit me like a freight train. I thought nothing about these bars could be worse than the smell, but, somehow, the taste was. The paper-thin chocolate coating tasted like cardboard, and it quickly (and perhaps thankfully) disintegrated the minute it hit my tongue. Inside, the vanilla frozen dairy dessert was crumbly, and it splintered almost as if it had been thawed and refrozen, even though it was not.

Take a closer look at the Friendly's bars, and it immediately becomes clearer why they fell to the bottom of this list. These treats (if you can call them that) are not technically ice cream, but are instead classified as "frozen dairy dessert," which is a title given to products that do not meet the standards for milkfat or overrun (proportion of air by weight in the product) needed to qualify as ice cream. Essentially, it is a demotion from real ice cream — and it's the same reason the Massachusetts-based Friendly's restaurant chain is not one of the fast food chains serving the highest quality ice cream. 

I have something embarrassing to admit: When I first decided to include Breyers Carb Smart Vanilla Frozen Dairy Dessert Bars in this list, I was sure that they'd fall in last place. But this is why blind testing is so important! Although I can't say that these frozen dairy desserts (note the non-ice cream classification once again) were anywhere near the top of the list, they were certainly not the worst that I sampled.

While the Friendly's Vanilla Frozen Dairy Dessert Bars tasted truly awful, the Breyers bars surprisingly tasted ... like nothing. They had none of the unpleasant aftertaste that many of us might expect from a diet-friendly dessert. Neither the texture of the chocolate coating nor the vanilla base was off-putting nor entirely dissimilar from the other ice cream and frozen dairy dessert bars on this list. The Breyers chocolate had a similar (but not as offensive) artificial flavor as the Friendly's bars, but otherwise, I would say that the Breyers Carb Smart Vanilla Frozen Dairy Dessert Bars tasted like an ice cube dipped in chocolate sauce. 

Anytime I see a dessert advertising a low amount of net carbohydrates, I am immediately skeptical; however, I was pleasantly surprised that these bars weren't gross. If you are trying to cut down on carbohydrates and miss ice cream, check these out. That said, they are a tougher sell compared to the other bars on this list.

There is a certain nostalgia factor that is hard to ignore when eating a Klondike bar, but I did my best to do so while assembling this list. Although we are now officially in the territory of "good" ice cream bars (a threshold that the other two, sadly, could not clear), Klondike's Original Ice Cream Bars are still far from greatness.

Unlike its predecessors, the Klondike bar's chocolate exterior has the smooth and decadent mouthfeel you'd hope to find from a chocolate-dipped ice cream bar; however, it unfortunately still has a bit of an artificial aftertaste. The ice cream (real ice cream — not frozen dairy dessert) is exceptionally fluffy and coats the mouth with a silky texture, but it is also in desperate need of more flavor (of cream or vanilla, but preferably both). 

Finally, while ease of eating was not necessarily a criterion that played a large role in my ranking, it is worth noting that these were the only bars I tried that didn't have a stick or dowel to hold them up. The peel-away foil wrapping only goes so far in keeping your hands from getting sticky with chocolate and ice cream, especially as the treat starts to melt. As a hater of sticky fingers, it was impossible for me not to factor this into my overall enjoyment of these bars.

A small disclaimer here: My hope was to pick up the full-sized version of these Magnum Classic Ice Cream Bars. However, after visiting multiple stores and coming up empty-handed, I was forced to go with the Mini variety. Nevertheless, the show must go on — and since they have the same ingredients as their full-sized counterparts, I felt confident in including them on this list. 

The first thing that stands out about these bars is their thick chocolatey coating. Immediately, it tasted more authentic and complex than the coatings of the lower-ranked bars. After completing the blind test, I learned that this complexity can likely be attributed to the chocolate's 44% cacao content — significantly more than traditional commercial milk chocolates, which can contain as little as 10% (but here's what the cocoa percentage of chocolate really means). The vanilla ice cream had a notable fragrance and an aftertaste that reminded me slightly of coconut. It was definitely unexpected, but not unpleasant.

I could see the Magnum Mini Classic Ice Cream Bars being somewhat polarizing among shoppers, but I had no real problems with them. That said, they are just not exactly what I would want when I am craving a milk chocolate-dipped vanilla ice cream bar. The slight bitterness of the chocolate and the lack of true vanilla flavor in the ice cream miss the mark, especially when compared to the top three bars.

We are now in top-three territory, and ranking the remaining bars got much harder at this point. As far as I am concerned, the following three are each winners in their own right. I can confidently say that Tillamook's Vanilla Bean Really Creamy Ice Cream Bars had the best ice cream. 

The "Really Creamy" label on these ice cream bars is not just a marketing tactic; it is a fact. After trying a whole bunch of ice cream bars with lackluster fillings, Tillamook's ice cream finally brought the richness and the pure vanilla flavor I was craving. Once I opened my eyes to see what I had been trying, it was clear why: The ice cream is peppered with flecks of real vanilla bean. While there are plenty of ingredients, toppings, and mix-ins that people will use to upgrade plain vanilla ice cream, Tillamook needs none of them. 

If I were merely judging these bars for their ice cream alone, the Tillamook Vanilla Bean Really Creamy Ice Cream Bars would land in first place without a contest. Unfortunately, ice cream was not the only criterion, and, as much as it pains me, the chocolate coating on these missed the mark. I felt like we went back a couple of steps and were once again in cardboard-tasting territory. The lackluster chocolate coating did such an incredible ice cream product a disservice.

On the flip side, if this ranking were based on chocolate quality alone, the Dove Vanilla Ice Cream Bars Coated with Milk Chocolate would have easily gone home with the gold. These ice cream bars had the thickest chocolate coating of all of the bars on this list — and thank goodness for that, because it is truly phenomenal.

The chocolate in Dove's ice cream bars expertly toes the line between being creamy, silky, and decadent, while also bringing a strong cacao flavor that tastes as authentic as your favorite luxe chocolate bar. It was all too tempting to begin nibbling the chocolate off of the bar until all that was left was a core of smooth vanilla ice cream.

However, therein lies the issue: The vanilla ice cream center just does not compare with the excellent chocolate that Dove coats its bars with. It is rich and creamy, but it does not give way to much vanilla flavor. I suppose that this allows the bar's chocolate coating to shine even more, but I also know that a combination of high-quality milk chocolate and real vanilla ice cream is always harmonious. If the chocolate coating is your favorite part of this type of ice cream bar, Dove's might be your favorite. However, Dove missed a real opportunity to knock this bar completely out of the park by using an even better ice cream.

Finally, we have arrived at the best of the best: the Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Milk Chocolate Ice Cream Bars. No other brand offers both a rich, chocolatey coating and an authentic, creamy vanilla base.

The chocolate on these bars is thick and sturdy, with a melt-in-your-mouth quality that will quickly bring you back for a second bite. Häagen-Dazs' ice cream is classified as super-premium (meaning it has an exceptionally high butterfat content and low overrun), and, when eating these ice cream bars, it is abundantly clear why. They are dense and unctuous, almost like drinking a glass of cold, sweet cream, but with a touch of fluffiness and a strong vanilla flavor to round it all out. It's no wonder that our taster ranked Häagen-Dazs first in a list of popular vanilla ice cream brands.

Importantly, the chocolate coating and the vanilla ice cream, each of which packs its own strong flavor, are deeply complementary to each other. There was not a moment where I wanted to solely eat the chocolate, nor crack open the bar in pursuit of just the ice cream. The flavors enhance one another and should be enjoyed together — and when it comes to selecting an ice cream bar, that kind of harmony is the most important quality of them all.

In order to assemble a ranked list of some of the most popular ice cream bars, it was important to first determine which bars were qualified to compete. To be included in the ranking, an ice cream bar box had to refer to the dessert as a "bar," rather than solely as a "frozen novelty" or "frozen dessert." A "popular" ice cream bar was defined as one that would be available at most major national supermarkets.

Ironically, not all of the bars on this list are actually technically ice cream; some of them are merely "frozen dairy desserts," which means they do not meet the butterfat and overrun standards to qualify as actual ice cream. That said, since consumers colloquially refer to them as "ice cream bars," and because the manufacturers of these two products still label them as "bars," they were included in the list.

To create as even a playing field as possible, the bars selected for this ranking all had a similar flavor composition: a milk chocolate coating with vanilla ice cream (or frozen dairy dessert) on the inside. The flavor composition across bars was kept constant in order to control for preferences for different ice cream flavors, and to ensure extra points were not awarded to ice cream bars with more interesting or inventive ingredients. I tasted the ice cream bars blindly, and each one was evaluated based on the flavor and texture of both its chocolate coatings and vanilla interiors, as well as the balance between the two components in each bar.