The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Since I live in Minneapolis, where Target is headquartered, there are Targets EVERYWHERE and Wal-Marts are few and far between, so when I do make it to a Wal-Mart, I always make sure to pick up a Wal-Mart only ice cream. With the seeming demise of the Sam's Choice ice cream, I've started turning to the Great Value brand. Within *I think* the last year, the Great Value brand of ice cream has undergone a bit of a makeover - new packaging, new flavors, and slightly bizarre new names. Most recently, Banana Puddin' caught my eye. (Why, just why, is it "Puddin'" instead of "Pudding"? It's so unnecessary.) Banaa Puddin' is Banana flavored ice cream with whipped cream flavored ribbon and vanilla wafer pieces. Real talk, I was BLOWN AWAY by the base. I'm going to go there and say it's the best banana ice cream I've ever tried. From Wal-Mart. I KNOW. Banana puree is the first ingredient listed after the requisite dairy elements, so th...

Although it's still listed on Walmart's website, Sam's Choice Ice Cream seems to be no more, at least at my Walmart, but there are some interesting new released under the Great Value Brand including some new ice cream flavors as well as some new treats, including the O'Chunka Chocolate Ice Cream Cones, rich and chunky chocolate chip cookie dough mixed with super velvety chocolate brownie dough, nestled in vanilla ice cream side-by-side with chocolate ice cream and coated in chocolate flavored coating in a sugar cone. What is up with that name? Is it trying to be Irish? I don't exactly associate ice cream with Ireland. Some of the other new flavors and treats also had pretty weird names, but not ~fun~ weird or ~whimsical~ weird. Just weird. These cones would have been great had they been manufactured by Ben and Jerry's, and cost more per box, but as they were, it felt like Great Value was kind of skimping on the mix-ins. The cones are slightly smalle...

A looooong time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) someone made a request that we review Great Value Salted Caramel Truffle ice cream.  I rarely go to Wal-Mart because Minneapolis is the land of Target and the closest Wal-Mart is still slightly far away, and when I did go specifically to pick up this flavor there was none on the shelf.  I took this as a good sign that the flavor was as great as our reader claimed.  Months later I finally returned to Wal-Mart and was able to snag Salted Caramel Truffle.  By this point, I was quite trepidatious after reading Lizzy's review panning  Great Value Coffee  ice cream.  How could a brand that produced something that bad also produce something even approaching edible?  Well, contradictions abound because this ice cream was pretty damn good. This is described as "Sea salt caramel ice cream with sea salt caramel swirl and truffle candy pieces." The base was a plain caramel, light and mild and sweet. ...

In addition to the Blackberry Crumble ice cream my mom picked up, she also got Coffee ice cream from the plain old Wal-Mart brand, Great Value. Sam's Choice must be Wal-Mart's gourmet/luxury/something brand, and in fact, the Blackberry Crumble was good! So my expectations for this ice cream were not as high. Lo and behold, my expectations were right were they should have been, low. This coffee ice cream barely tasted like coffee. I looked at the ingredients and did not seen anything resembling coffee in the list. I did see some "natural flavors" and ingredients like carob bean gum and corn syrup. I also saw some stabilizers I hadn't heard of, like triacetin. Ewww. I felt like I could taste all the gums and stabilizers. The texture, surprisingly was not too bad. It was not great, but it was only a little gummy. It was also airy and soft. Well, I don't have much more to say. Bad reviews are often short reviews. If you're at Wal-Mart looking...