I Scream

Dear Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Holdings, Inc.:

One sure sign that a product of yours is not up to my high quality standards is if I mine. When I mine your bucket of ice cream, I chisel my spoon deep in the the frozen mass of fat and sugar in search of the elusive chunks of gooey, goodness advertised in excess on the front of your package. If a product is particularly lacking in gooey, goodness, then what’s left after my mining exhibition is merely a carton full of bland, boring ice cream.

If I had wanted just ice cream, rather than ice cream packed with cookie dough and chocolate chips, then I would have bought a carton of plain ol’ ice cream. But I didn’t want just ice cream. I wanted the falsified depiction of vanilla ice cream packed with not only cookie dough, but also free-floating chocolate chips that your “Nestle® Toll House® Cookie Swirl” flavor promised.

And you took your advertising ploy one step further; you stamped two golden seals on the package, suggesting that this worthless product won a “Best Taste Award” issued from the American Culinary Institute. And because your marketing ploy was that good, I purchased your product.

But I was horribly disappointed. After mining your carton, I found only one solitary chunk of cookie dough— a fraction of the amount found in the standard cookie dough ice cream that your company also produces.

My extreme disappointment in your product, coupled with the bold packaging made me feel cheated. Later, I researched the ACI’s Best Taste Awards and realized that you received a general award for all of your ice cream products rather than for this particular flavor. But you were sneaky, carefully choosing which packages to emblazon the award seal on so it appeared that those actual flavors received the award instead of your entire company.

So, this is why I will shy away from your products in the future. But also because I have always preferred Ben and Jerry’s ice cream over yours, and here’s why: they have mastered the art of gooey, goodness-filled ice cream and you have not. By skimping on the gooey goodness you advertised in excess on your packaging, you’re lying to your consumers and missing what’s most important. For Ben and Jerry’s, they follow a basic prinicpal; they regard ice cream as a mere lettuce leaf bed upon which the main course resides. With their philosophy, the ice cream is a base that the mouthwateringly gooey goodness of ingredients require as a glue to unify them into one food product. In other words, the base of ice cream is not the entire product.

Note: This is a draft of a letter written almost exactly one year ago that I still intend to mail to Dreyer’s. I’ll let you know if I actually get off my lazy ass and send it.