Limited Edition Foods

Limited Batch Ben & Jerry’s Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road Ice Cream is a special ice cream flavor that was originally released as a one week flavor in honor of Elton John’s first trip to Vermont and to raise money for the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF). Due to popular demand the flavor is coming back with the slogan “The Batch is Back,” which is a play on the Elton John song “The Bitch is Back.” The flavor itself, Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road, is also a play on an Elton John song title (”Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”). The limited batch of the flavor is expected to be available mid-May 2009 through the summer 2009, which I assume means August or Labor Day. The flavor is available in Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops and will also be available in pint size in retailers across the country that carry Ben & Jerry’s pints.

Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road ice cream has a chocolate ice cream base. Mixed in the ice cream is peanut butter cookie dough, brickle candy pieces, and white chocolatey chunks. I am not really a fan of chocolate ice cream, although my favorite Ben & Jerry’s is Phish Food, so the mix ins really can make even chocolate ice cream something I will eat. This one does sound like it has some good mix ins, especially the peanut butter cookie dough. I will admit, though, that I had absolutely no idea what the heck brickle candy pieces were until I Googled it and found out they are basically toffee bits, which sounds okay as a mix in, too.

Beginning Memorial Day 2009 (May 25, 2009) specialty bottles with limited edition labels in support of Operation Homefront and the Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund. The bottles are expected to be sold until July 4, 2009. The labels are meant to help bring awareness to the organizations. Operation Homefront supports troops, their families, and wounded soldiers by providing financial and morale assistance. The Terry Farrell Firefighters Fund is named after a firefighter that died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The fund provides equipment to underfunded fire stations as well as scholarships and medical services to families of active, retired, and fallen firefighters.

Today while searching through the limited edition news I found some interesting articles about the All Candy Expo taking place in Chicago this week. Several of the articles talked about the current Transformers limited edition candy (M&M’s Strawberried Peanut Butter Chocolate Candies and Snickers Nougabot Bar) that I already posted about here (http://www.limitededitionfoods.com/limited-edition-transformers-mms-and-snickers/). Later this summer both Snickers and M&M’s are going to have some other limited edition products as well.

The Snickers limited edition bar is a Fudge Bar. The limited edition Fudge Bar is expected to be released in August 2009. The Fudge Bar has a layer of peanuts in chocolate fudge on top of a chewy peanut butter nougat layer. The bar has a milk chocolate coating. Sounds like an interesting flavor and one I certainly would try if I found it to buy.

The M&Ms limited edition coming later this summer is Coconut Chocolate Candies. The Coconut M&Ms are expected to be released in July 2009. The tropical flavor of coconut sounds like a good release for summer, but honestly coconut, chocolate, and M&Ms sounds like a kind of odd combination. It sure has potential to be good, but it just does not outright sound like it should be a great flavor to try.

I recently tried Walgreens Banana Split ice cream and was kind of disappointed in it, but that did not stop me from getting Dreyer’s Limited Edition Banana Split ice cream when I spotted it at the grocery store. Honestly, Walgreens brand is cheap and for a reason. It is not as good as the more premium brands, but it at least is still a good budget ice cream if you cannot get to a grocery store to get their brand (note: I am particularly partial to some of Safeway’s flavors). Thus I expected Dreyer’s version to at least be decent if not way better than the Walgreens version.

Limited Edition Dreyer’s Banana Split Ice Cream has a base ice cream that is flavored banana. This part has a good distinctly banana flavor, which either the Walgreens flavor does not have or it totally fails at tasting like banana. The ice cream has swirls of chocolate and fruit (I think it is supposed to be strawberry) sauces. These really help make the flavor like a banana split without the whipped cream that I do not like anyways. The main problem with the Dreyer’s Banana Split ice cream is that it lacks any cherries, which the Walgreens version actually has. Even without the cherries it is way better than the Walgreens version and actually quite good. I fixed the cherry problem by adding some frozen dark cherries I had and that made it even better than a normal banana split because I do not really even like the maraschino cherries that they normally come with.

For a limited time the Pepsi company has released Throwback versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew. These Throwback versions of the soft drinks are like the sodas used to be made before they began using high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener in the 1980s. Thus the target for these are those that remember the sodas being made with real sugar. The packaging also emphasizes that they are made with natural sugar, so it is also marketed towards the trend of people wanting more natural products. Both Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback are sweetened with a blend of cane and beet sugar.

Personally I am not a fan of Pepsi and especially dislike Mountain Dew, so this limited time thing does not matter to me, however I have been reading a lot of people saying they love the Throwback version and are planning on stocking up before these are expected to be off the shelves around June 13, 2009. I find non-diet sodas usually taste too sweet and I kind of doubt having natural sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup makes it better, but I guess it probably does taste less sweet just like diet sodas do not taste as sweet as regular soda. Still I find Pepsi gets flat too fast and tastes bad if it gets even a little warm, so never worth having around here, especially with it being in the upper 90s and 100s lately. As for Mountain Dew, I just have never liked the taste of it.

To promote the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie coming to theaters on June 24, 2009, Mars Snackfood US is releasing limited edition M&M’s and Snickers. The limited edition M&M’s are called Strawberried Peanut Butter Chocolate Candies and the limited edition Snickers is called the Nougabot Bar.

The M&M’s Strawberried Peanut Butter Chocolate Candies have the normal chocolate shell of M&Ms. The filling is strawberry flavored peanut butter. This flavor is being released in singles (1.4 oz) and medium bags (11.4 oz) sizes. There are seven different limited edition package designs featuring M&M characters as Chocol-o-bots and Delect-o-cons and various Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen characters. The normal milk chocolate and peanut M&Ms will also feature special Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen package designs.

The Snickers Nogabot Bar is made to represent the most popular Autobot, Bumblebee. The Snickers Nogabot Bar has a bright yellow nougat with dark caramel, but sounds like it might taste at least similar to a normal Snickers. The packaging features the Bumblebee and Bits & Bytes, which includes Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie trivia and Snickers candy trivia.

These limited edition products are expected to be available at food, drug, mass and convenience outlets from May 2009 through July 2009. The limited edition candy release includes a major ad campaign with a commercial debuting on June 1, 2009, with Red and Yellow delivering the limited edition Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M’s, a digital scavenger hunt game on www.mms.com starting May 19, 2009, and the No. 18 M&M’s race car getting a special Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen paint job for the June 21, 2009, race at Infineon Raceway.

I found Limited Edition Dreyer’s Summer Peach Pie Ice Cream at my local Safeway the other day. I did not plan on buying ice cream, but this flavor sounded interesting and I was close enough to out of ice cream that it made some sense to get it now. It seemed like a very appropriate time to buy it because to me summer has officially begun now that we have had 100 degree days. The flavor is pretty unique in that I do not often hear of peach pie or even peach ice cream. Also, I love the ice creams with pie crust pieces, such as Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream, so I figured I would like this even though the Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream disappointed me recently. I was not disappointed by this flavor.

The Summer Peach Pie Ice Cream has a nice peach flavored base, which I enjoy. There are pieces of peach and pie crust that add to the flavor being good. The thing that annoys me, though, is that the added items seem to be majorly skimped on. If it was not bad enough that Dreyer’s is one of the brands that downsized their containers, they also seem to have been stingy with the mixed in items, such as the peach pieces and pie crust pieces. It is not too hard to find some pie crust pieces in this ice cream, however, I have had a least one serving without any peach pieces, as they appear to be quite rare in this and one would almost think they were not in it.