When I walked into my local Walmart to pick up some miscellaneous office supplies, I had no intentions of buying any ice cream. Muscle memory kicked in at some point though, because I found myself slowly walking down the freezer aisle in hopes of finding something new and exciting. That’s when I saw yet another flavor from the Breyers Blasts lineup of frozen dairy desserts. It seemed like they were up to their old antics of using marketing rather than letting their product speak for itself. The flavor, Cookies & Scream, wasn’t even new when I looked a little closer. They had simply changed the carton design of their standard Breyers Blasts Oreo Cookies & Cream flavor to incorporate a Halloween theme and attract some attention. After remembering I had received some coupons for a few free cartons of Breyers back when I received their toppings to review, I ran back out to my car to grab one and proceeded to cash it on this.
Vanilla flavor with other natural flavors. That’s how Breyers decided to describe their contributions to this carton. That should have served as red flag number one. I shook my head in disapproval as I pulled back the lid to this 140 calorie per serving frozen dairy dessert, which isn’t anywhere light enough to warrant not using ice cream at all. Even though Edy’s autumn themed Slow Churned Pumpkin Patch had felt too light and fluffy, they had managed to keep it contained to just 90 calories per serving, a much more appropriate number if you’re compromising quality for nutrition content. Judging from looks alone, this seemed very similar to all the other cookies and cream creations I’ve had with one small difference.
As soon as my spoon hit the “vanilla flavor with other natural flavors” it began to melt down quickly. These aforementioned flavors seemed overly artificial, over-sweetened and provided a bumpy start to this redesigned carton. The only redeemable quality from Cookies & Scream came from the fact that it was loaded with real Oreo cookie pieces, an approach Breyers takes routinely to try and save their low-quality product. These soft, chocolate cookies were still only able to pull this up from an F to a D. Don’t let Breyers fool you into picking up this carton by simply adding some holiday-decorations and not actually improving their product.
Where I Found It: Super Walmart
Grade: D
