While we wait for President Obama to bend to the will of the people, and sign Executive Order 13687 – Putting The Weed Directly In The Ice Cream, cool ice cream uncles Ben and Jerry are doing their best to indulge all other aspects of a certain lifestyle, while also adding dessert. As reported in People, this April 20 will see the introduction of the BRRR-ito—an ice cream burrito—to all Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops and that ever-growing lineage of pandering to its most obvious fanbase.
Much as people who smoke pot don’t really need 4/20 as an excuse, you don’t really need to eat ice cream in the form of a burrito. Nevertheless, both are pretty fun—and judging by the Apple-aping ad below, explicitly meant to be enjoyed together. “You’ll see why 4.20 will be exactly like 4.20,” the announcer says. What does that even mean? Who cares, dude. Ice cream burrito.
Like its relatively more conservative predecessor, the Choco Taco, the Brr-ito is made of a “soft and chewy” waffle crepe, which is then folded around two scoops of any Ben & Jerry’s flavor and topped with fudge and chocolate cookie crumbs. The company’s website offers up several possible flavor combinations for those who can’t decide which arrangement of chocolate, fudge, and cookies should go in their chocolate, fudge, and cookie wrap, though the decision is ultimately up to you and whichever Scoop Shop employee is tasked with rolling it for you.
“Is guac extra?” you and 100 other people will joke to these poor, sticky wretches, and they will force a smile every single time.
But making chocolate burritos for stoners would be like just making chocolate ice cream without a bunch of other chocolate shit in it. So Ben & Jerry’s is also reaching out to the little-heralded, yet equally as fervent ice cream-eating drunkard market, partnering with New Belgium on the first-ever Ben & Jerry’s beer. Due this fall, the Salted Caramel Brownie Brown Ale has an ABV of 6.3 percent, combining brown ale with what it calls “chocolaty, salted-caramel vanilla goodness.” Normally to get that flavor combination, you have to drink a six-pack and eat a pint of ice cream, then throw up. This will definitely cut out the middleman.
Of course, not everyone is excited about that. “It’s a crass, corporate greedy move to put a brand name like Ben & Jerry’s on a beer,” says Bruce Lee Livingston, whose watchdog group Alcohol Justice prowls the night, exacting vigilante revenge on the alcohol industry. To Livingston, the fact that proceeds from the Ben & Jerry’s beer will go to help Protect Our Winters combat climate change isn’t nearly enough to keep this from seeming like a surprisingly corporate action from the frozen novelties division of multinational conglomerate Unilever. But even more importantly, he asks, did the people putting the ice cream in the beer ever stop to think about the children?
“It’s bad for children—who will start looking at beer as the next step after ice cream,” says Livingston, who has apparently never seen a child taste beer before. Why, the disappointment of tasting beer while also believing it to be in the same wheelhouse as ice cream would be enough to create an entire generation of straight-edge kids, and two dozen terrible hardcore albums.
Still, Ben & Jerry’s beer “does no favors for the youth of America,” Livingston says, to which Ben & Jerry’s strenuously disagrees, as it keeps on doing everything it can think of to capture the hazy magic of your indolent 20s (and “dreamer” 30s) in dessert form. And until Ben & Jerry’s introduces an ice-cream lazy roommate who’s always playing Xbox and never pays rent on time, these all still sound like favors to me.
[via Uproxx]