Today I’d like to discuss symbolism in junk food, and I’m putting the spotlight on the Hostess Cupcake squiggle.
Nothing made my chubby little ass dance with excitement more than opening my lunchbox and seeing the signature squiggle atop a Hostess Cupcake. It helped signify that I was getting the very best cupcake that 25 cents could buy, and that my parents loved me a little more on this particular day. The whimsical squiggle let me know to expect an eruption of cream when I sunk my teeth into the cupcake – that this wasn’t some cheap knockoff garbage.
The squiggle defines the Hostess brand, and few things in life excite me more (to this day) than does “the Squiggly.”
Butttt I think I may have found one:
Hostess Cupcakes Ice Cream
Hostess Cupcakes Ice Cream! Good ole’ Squiggles is now bathing in a tub of ice cream, and I can feel something squiggling around in my pants as I stare at it.
I haven’t been this excited since I threw a Hostess Cupcake at the wall.
I opened the lid hoping for a big fat squiggly across the top. Not quite.
Hostess Cupcakes ice cream is chocolate cake ice cream with cake pieces and a cream frosting swirl. I took a few spoonfuls and my squiggle quickly subsided: this doesn’t remind me of Hostess Cupcakes at all.
It tastes like chocolate ice cream.
They may have called it “chocolate cake” ice cream, but this tastes like plain, run-of-the-mill chocolate ice cream to me. Maybe that’s not terrible in and of itself, but combine that with non-optimal texture and it just feels cheap and uninspired. It melts quickly and becomes creamy & whipped in a hurry. I felt like I was eating low-grade melted soft serve the more I consumed. The base is too sweet to call to mind the dark cocoa in a Hostess cupcake.
The ice cream is strike one.
The chocolate cake pieces in Hostess Cupcakes Ice Cream are small and few & far between – a pretty big dilemma for a cupcake ice cream. The cake pieces freeze tough and taste like brownies more than a cupcake base. At least with the , the base is reminiscent of a signature flavor in the snack cake (the cream). Here, the chocolate ice cream is the pervasive and dominant flavor. It simply doesn’t do the cupcake justice, and the cake pieces aren’t impactful enough to bridge that gap.
The cake pieces are strike two.
The frosting swirl doesn’t save the day, either. Again there isn’t much of it, and it’s not a fluid streak throughout the ice cream. I stumbled across tiny little “flakes” of a white swirl whose flavor cannot overcome the sweeter chocolate ice cream. The best part of a Hostess Cupcake is that huge blast of fluffy cream in the center, and this ice cream doesn’t capture that magical bite.
The swirl is strike three.
If you’re a fan of regular chocolate ice cream, go ahead and pick up Hostess Cupcake ice cream for some cool packaging. But Nestle Dreyer’s needed to do a lot more to differentiate this from something we’ve had time and again. This desperately needed more squiggle.
I’m so disappointed I could throw some ice cream at the wall.
Three strikes, you’re out.
Throwing Ice Cream at Your Wall Rating: 9 out of 10
Cleaning Ice Cream off Your Floor Rating: 3 out of 10
Overall Rating: 5.5 out of 10
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