REVIEW: Dairy Queen Sour Patch Kids Blizzard
When you look at the list of possible Blizzard ingredients on the menu board, which oddly DQ doesn’t really publicize you can use to create a customized creation to your liking, just about everything has been already done between the regular Blizzard menu, Blizzards of the Month, a plethora of seasonal Blizzard menus, plus special Blizzards with movie tie-ins or for the second Tuesday of Lent. DQ has essentially admitted that all the reasonable combinations have been tried, as they tend to recycle some of the same or very similar Blizzards now and then.
Enter the Sour Patch Kids Blizzard, which as far as I can tell after four seconds of online research, is the first time DQ has used these sweet and sour gummies. This latest concoction features vanilla soft serve with Sour Patch Kids Redberry flavor (don’t worry, I didn’t know it was called that either) mixed with Sour Patch Kids Bitz.
The first thing that caught my attention was the smell, which is not something I normally notice or think about with a Blizzard. But this one exudes a fragrant essence of Sour Patch Kids, just like opening a bag of the tasty little fellows.
I’m not sure if the Sour Patch Kids in here were mutilated by the magic Blizzard machine, or if DQ calling them “Bitz” means they were already hacked to pieces before the mixing process. Either way, the pieces of kids are approximately the size of Nerds (which made me pine for the long-deceased Nerds Blizzard of years gone by).
The Bitz in mine didn’t seem to be as large or as plentiful as the promotional photos show, but I might have had a frugal and overzealous mixer. As you might have guessed, the coldness of the ice cream changes the firmness of the Sour Patch Kids a bit. They didn’t have the same soft chewiness you might be accustomed to, but I didn’t find that to be a drawback, and they do pack a sour punch.
The Redberry-flavored soft serve tasted great, like DQ somehow liquified a bag of red Sour Patch Kids and infused it into the ice cream. But before they liquefied the poor little kids, DQ apparently removed the sour coating because the ice cream flavor was all sweetness, and it was splendid. As a standalone treat, I’d eat the ice cream part all day (and all night).
The kicker is the little chunks of Sour Patch Kids, which of course still have the sour coating and seemed to have a delayed effect on my taste buds. So first you get the sweetness of the Redberry-flavored ice cream, then slowly you experience the sour flavor in your mouth as the Bitz free themselves from their ice cream cocoons, and then finally you get the sweetness again when you get to the gummy part of the Sour Patch Kids.
Sometimes you don’t know how much you wanted something until you see it, or in this case, taste it. Of all the possible things that can be thrown into a Blizzard, I’m not sure I would have thought of Sour Patch Kids. But I’m glad the Blizzard wizards at DQ gave it a try because it’s a winner in my book and a nice change of pace from some other recent Blizzards that always seem to revolve around chocolate, Oreo, or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Since Sour Patch Kids are not a regular DQ menu item, this one figures to be gone for good after July. You have been warned.
Purchased Price: $3.79
Size: Small
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (Small) 660 calories, 24 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 190 milligrams of sodium, 82 grams of carbohydrates, -1 grams of dietary fiber*, 86 grams of sugar, and 12 grams of protein.
*The DQ website inexplicably lists a negative amount of dietary fiber. I’m no mathematician or nutritionist, but that seems to be impossible on many levels.
