Summertime is in full swing, and we all know what that means: abnormal heat waves and confronting the mounting horrors of climate change!

But also, ice cream. Ice cream is fun!

Growing up, I didn’t like chocolate much, which narrowed my ice cream choices. This was actually a problem when I was growing up in the late 1800s: your choices were basically vanilla, chocolate, or syphilis. Anyone who says the past was better is lying.

Freaks like me chose an alternate path: the fruity one. And back in the days when indoor plumbing was scarce, that meant three flavors: lime, orange, or raspberry, aka The Sherbets Rainbow.

In these capitalist times, there’s a true rainbow of sherbets. No longer are you groaning as you face down the stripe of orange, having already consumed the far superior lime and raspberry portions. Have it your way with all the sherbet flavors available. They probably even contain actual fruit now.

“A raspberry sorbet with an extra tart lemonade swirl and sour sugar bits,” the carton of Limited Batch Pucker Upper proclaims. “…a completely new ingredient, custom-designed for this Ben & Jerry’s flavor,” the press release continues, trying to convince you that the company reinvented Nerds.

The rest of the press release is pretty milquetoast, but here’s one paragraph I enjoyed:

“After 13 years with the company, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flavor quite like this,” said Laura Essaid, Ben & Jerry’s Associate Brand Manager who helped with the new flavor creation process. “It’s a perfect flavor for summer with a balance of sweet and sour, while light, fruity, and refreshing… plus, there’s no grill required.”

That’s a rough joke at the end there, Laura, but I understand. You’re just the Associate Brand Manager. It’s not like you need to put words together good for that position.

I gotta say though, I feel like I have seen a flavor quite like this before..

Yes, I know Laura is referring to the not-Nerds, which certainly are a new ingredient to Ben & Jerry’s. I just love the feverish hype press releases attempt to stir with these proclamations.

L-lemon? You there?

The main body of raspberry sorbet is delicious but ordinary. Tart, sweet, refreshing. The lemon swirl was indeed “extra tart” as advertised, but suffered some bitterness as a side effect. I’ve seen this happen to lemon sorbets before – the more tart you go on a lemon flavor, the more you’re upping the chance for that bitter aftertaste.

This is wisely countered by the addition of the sour sugar bits. They work nicely to counteract that small bitterness by giving tiny, crunchy bursts of sugar. If you snag a bit of lemon swirl with your raspberry, you’re guaranteed to get at least a few of them – there’s no shortage. They don’t taste sour at all, due to already being ensconced in lemon, but they add a welcome sweetness and a bit of crunch to an otherwise uniformly-textured pint.

According to the press release, Ben & Jerry’s used a dairy coating around them to prevent melting. It definitely works when you’re eating out of the carton, but it works less well when you’re spitting them out of your mouth to take a picture. Ghetto? Sure, but definitely faster and more delicious than waiting for a scoop to melt so I can filter out the milk-Nerds.

While the use of a dairy coating to keep the sugar bits from melting is ingenious, it does take Ben & Jerry’s Pucker Upper off the table as a vegan dessert treat. A bummer, but it doesn’t stop Pucker Upper from being a hit in my mind.

Berry and lemon sorbets go great together. It’s a slam-dunk summer treat, no doubt. But the addition of the sugar bits does turn this into something special. Maybe it’s not the most refined flavor palette, but summer is the time to indulge your inner child, especially as we all cook to death. That’s right, I brought us back around!

Ben & Jerry’s seems like a slam-dunk of a company from a leftist perspective. They even pay their employees a living wage!

That’s absolutely good to hear, until you see that employees on glassdoor.com are reporting wages of below $10/hour at Scoop Shops. And there are news stories of migrant workers at their dairy farms making unlivable wages, as recently as 2017. This has since improved, but the migrants had to fight for it.

I’m not saying Ben & Jerry’s is the worst, but when you bring politics into your ice cream game, as they have, you better make sure your house is in order!

Limited Batch Ben & Jerry’s Pucker Upper

• Score: 4.5 out of 5 BRING BACK ADORABLE CARTOON FRUITS!
• Price: $3.84
• Size: 1 pint
• Purchased at: Walmart
• Nutritional Quirk: Raspberry puree is the second ingredient. Take that, Rainbow Sherbet!