What’s Going on With Ice Cream?
This weekend Men in Black 3 opens just about anywhere there’s a screen, but I’ll bet you didn’t know that not one, not two, but three ice cream treats have been chosen to mark the occasion.
Since the beginning of the month, in fact, Baskin-Robbins has, in recognition of this cinema event, been serving up something called “Pink Surprise Cake,” supposedly inspired by a scene in the movie, along with two sundaes, “Lunar Lander” and “Agent 31.” Both are built on scoops of “lunar cheesecake” ice cream-a flavor last sold when NASA first landed men on the moon. Since that’s not happening again any time soon, they must have figured it’s okay to bring it back for a movie about aliens coming to Earth.
Then, just the other day, came word that Carl’s Jr., a fast food chain in the western U.S., has started selling something called a Brrrger. It looks like a burger, with a thick brown slab between what appear to be buns, and ketchup and mustard seemingly running down the side, next to overhanging lettuce. But it’s actually a less-than-savory-looking ice cream sandwich, a chunk of chocolate ice cream between two cookies and dressed up with icing to create the effect of dripping condiments.
And I have to ask: What is going on with ice cream? Has it been reduced to a simple marketing prop or worse, a burger wannabe? How, after so many billion delectable licks, has it come to this?
But there’s hope. Some impressively innovative and, in some cases, truly bizarre things are happening to our cold and creamy chum.