There are times when I sit down to review a new product and have a solid framework for writing the piece. A primary analogy is established, jokes tie along the way, and the central conceit is stretched beyond the readers’ willingness to suspend their disbelief. (“We get it, Jasper, every junk food item somehow relates to the angst of your mid-20s.”) Other times, I get sent a package the size of a refrigerator box filled with samples for a whole hodgepodge of new products, and I struggle to develop any cohesive theme for the review. Guess which kind of review this will be?

The folks over at Popsicle are rolling out a new line of products (and a new portmanteau!) called Yosicles, These “Popsicle pops and yogurt together” come in three forms: Torpedo!, Layerz!, and Duos!. Additionally, they’re introducing Popsicle Sour Patch Kids, the latest item in the proud tradition of Popsicles with candy tie-ins. Layerz!, Duos!, and the Popsicle Sour Patch Kids all come in multiple flavors.

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to offer just four separate scores (Layerz, Torpedo, Duos, and Sour Patch Kids). For the sake of readability and my own sanity, I am going to stop using the exclamation points at the end of the product names.

Shaped exactly like the classic Firecracker Popsicles, the Torpedo Yosicles had three flavor segments (all yogurt-based) of Purple Berry, Watermelon, and Vanilla. The yogurt component clearly wasn’t meant to have the tartness of Pinkberry-style frozen yogurt; I would say its taste profile was much closer to soft-serve. The vanilla flavor was perfectly fine – the skim milk muted the richness, but at least I understood that it’s supposed to taste somewhat like vanilla ice cream.

For the other two segments, I tasted lots of mild and artificial flavors without really tasting any “purple berry” or watermelon. Even if they had executed the flavors perfectly, I might’ve still found the choices to be strange, as I feel like a number of other flavors are generally a better fit with any cream-based treats. On the plus side (and this goes for all the Yosicles), they melted much more slowly than I had expected. Also, every Yosicle is a good source of calcium, so I’ve pretty much ingested a kidney stone’s worth of calcium in the process of reviewing these products.

The Layerz Yosicles were very similar to the Torpedos, but with just two segments instead of three. The bottom segment was always vanilla, while the top segment was either cotton candy or orange. Again, I liked the vanilla fine, so I preferred the Layerz (50% vanilla) to the Torpedos (33% vanilla). The orange flavor was reasonably reminiscent of an orange Creamsicle, but the cotton candy flavor managed to taste extremely artificial while not capturing what cotton candy actually tastes like. (Isn’t cotton candy just sugar with food coloring? And isn’t “sugar with food coloring” the primary description for a lot of things we consume – frosting, cereal, purple drank? I don’t know how that was meant to be a differentiated flavor that I should have recognized.)

Differing from the other two Yosicle varieties and instead emulating the structure of a Creamsicle, the Duos Yosicle had a creamy vanilla center that was surrounded by a flavored ice shell of either purple berry or cherry. I liked the Duos much more than the Torpedos and Layerz, as the yogurt was limited to the vanilla flavor, and the flavored ice shell provided a contrast in texture and offered the familiar tastes of a classic cherry Popsicle.

Although they’re unrelated to the Yosicle product line, I thought the Popsicle Sour Patch Kids were the stars among the new product releases. The idea was simple but well-executed: take three single-fruit, tried-and-true Popsicle flavors (orange, lime, and raspberry) and coat them in sour sugar. The sour sugar on actual Sour Patch Kids is granulated and sandy, while the Popsicle versions I tried had a smooth, solid sour sugar shell.

Still, the satisfying sensation of sour subsequent to sweet stayed the same. (Sorry for all the alliteration – I was really on a roll there.) I thought these Popsicles would’ve been even better with a sourer coating, but they were still far and away my favorite new offering. Next time you hear the ice cream truck drive by this summer, definitely run outside and pick up a Popsicle Sour Patch Kid, and maybe consider trying a Duos! Yosicle, too.

(Editor’s Note/Disclosure: Jasper received all this frozen goodness from the wonderful folks at Popsicle for free, so right now I imagine his freezer looks like a treasure chest to eight-year-olds.)

(Nutrition Facts – Torpedo – 2 bars – 90 calories, 2 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein, and 25% calcium. Layerz – 2 pops – 90 calories, 2 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 50 milligrams of sodium, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein, and 25% calcium. Duos – 2 pops – 110 calories, 2 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 45 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, and 20% calcium. Sour Patch Kids – 1 pop – 40 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of sodium, 10 grams of carbohydrates, 8 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, and 10% vitamin C.)

Item: Popsicle Yosicle (Torpedo!, Layerz!, and Duos!) and Popsicle Sour Patch Kids
Price: FREE
Size: 12 pack (Yosicles)
Size: 18 pack (Sour Patch Kids))
Purchased at: Received for free from Popsicle
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Yosicle Torpedo)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Yosicle Layerz)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Yosicle Duos)
Rating: 9 out of 10 (Popsicle Sour Patch Kids)
Pros: Yosicle vanilla segments were perfectly fine and appropriately vanilla ice cream-like. Orange Layerz tasted somewhat like an orange Creamsicle. Duos had only the vanilla flavor as its yogurt component. Duos followed the Creamsicle structure, so ice shell had classic flavor and added textural contrast. Yosicles melted slowly and are good sources of calcium. Popsicle Sour Patch Kids had sour sugar shells that were awesome. Free samples. Alliteration. Purple drank. Looking for one Simpsons clip and spending 2 hours watching old highlights.
Cons: Vanilla flavor was pretty mild. Non-vanilla Yosicle yogurt flavors were weird and artificial. Cotton candy flavor was particularly bad. Isn’t cotton candy just sugar and food coloring? Popsicle Sour Patch Kids could use a little more sourness. Exclamation marks at the end of product names. Not having any thematic cohesion in a review. Kidney stones.

Well kids, summer time is here.

As a resident of Florida that means I’ll be spending the next two months scurrying from one air conditioned location to the next trying to keep my eye balls from boiling in their own juices.

It also means I’ll be enjoying delicious, refreshing ice cream! Indoors of course. Not many people know this, but ice cream doesn’t melt outdoors in the Florida sun. It sublimates immediately into its gaseous form. One of my favorite activities as a teen was driving up and down Gulf Boulevard trying to spot fluffy mint chocolate chip clouds drifting off to Mexico. My friends and I would laugh and laugh at the disappointed children crying on the curb staring into their empty waffle cones.

I haven’t really been big into ice cream until recently. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been seeking it out more frequently. Though I still adhere to my belief that it is unacceptable for a grown man to order an ice cream cone alone. I keep a blonde wig and big sunglasses in my car in case the Golden Arches should catch my eye as I’m driving home.

This week I was able ride the cutting edge of candy/ice cream conversion and sample some of the latest offerings from Good Humor. They were these York Peppermint Pattie Ice Cream Bars and Mounds Ice Cream Bars.

I went at the York Peppermint Pattie variety first under strict orders from my wife to hurry up and open them already. She has a thing for Peppermint Patties and is a freakish ice cream-eating machine.

These bars follow the same structural specifications as a Klondike bar (Unilever makes Good Humor and Klondikes), except for the fact that they are round. They have a smooth “peppermint light ice cream” center wrapped in a layer of “dark chocolate flavored coating.” Despite that rather terrible product description, these bars are good. They would pass my patented Snack Flavor Recreation Closed-Eyes Flavor Identification Test with flying colors.

The ice cream in the center is very fluffy and airy, the flavor of the ice cream is a perfect re-creation of a Peppermint Pattie center, and the chocolate coating did indeed taste like that of a Dark Chocolate Klondike bar. It was great.

One thing I found myself wanting for the Peppermint Pattie was the Klondike foil wrapper. The Peppermint Pattie bars came in standard plastic (cellophane?) pouches which tore a little too easily. They did an adequate job of containing each bar as I ate them, but didn’t really comes close to the re-configurable convenience of the foil wrap. Perhaps the technology is not there yet for foiling round shapes.

I liked the Mounds bar even more. Same deal. Fluffy ice cream center that tastes like a Mounds bar with a dark chocolate shell. I was very glad they included coconut bits in the ice cream as there is nothing I hate more than coconut flavored confections sans bits. That is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.

The Mounds bars were oval-shaped and worked much better with the pouch.

Both of these ice cream bars are very straightforward. There’s nothing revelatory. They simply taste like their original counterparts, which is a very good thing. If you like a Mounds or enjoy a Peppermint Pattie, you will like these.

You could do worse this summer.

(Editor’s Note/Disclosure: Steve received free samples of both ice cream bars for review. We didn’t receive any monetary compensation for this review, nor would we ever accept monetary compensation for a review. But, if we did, we would totally disclose it and not use some cryptic disclosure standard or beat around the bush.)

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar (59g) – York Peppermint Pattie Ice Cream Bar – 170 calories, 10 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 40 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 15 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein. Mounds Ice Cream Bar – 190 calories, 11 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 50 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 18 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Other Good Humor York Peppermint Pattie Ice Cream Bar and Mounds Ice Cream Bar reviews;
On Second Scoop

Item: Good Humor York Peppermint Pattie Ice Cream Bar and Mounds Ice Cream Bar
Price: FREE
Size: 6 bars per box
Purchased at: Received for free from Good Humor
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Peppermint Pattie)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Mounds)
Pros: Perfect flavor re-creation. Coconut bits in the Mounds Ice Cream Bar. Summer. My wife.
Cons: Lack of Klondike foil. Boiled eye balls. Ice cream sublimation