Review: Starbucks Vanilla Bean Frappucino Ice Cream

In my last Starbucks ice cream review, I wasn't necessarily against the product, but I just couldn't get on board with coffee flavored ice cream.  With that, I was curious to try out one of their coffee free flavored ice creams with this Vanilla Bean Frappucino ice cream.  Inspired by the drink made of vanilla, milk and whipped cream, this one was essentially the same thing except it is frozen and lacks whipped cream.  Okay, I guess it is not essentially the same thing, but it is close.  Like the last pint, I picked this up at Meijer on clearance (making room for more Ben & Jerry's) for a bargain basement price of $1.97.  Each serving in the pint is 210 calories and there's four servings per pint, as usual.

Being that this was vanilla ice cream, I wasn't expecting a whole lot.  It's basic frozen milk with little and might I say plentiful specks of vanilla bean spread throughout the pint.  The camera of my beloved iPhone 4 doesn't do it justice, but you can see a lot of the specks in the photo above and I can assure you that when you actually have it in front of your face, the specks are a lot more visible.  A lot of vanilla ice creams can be kind of boring, but when you add in the vanilla bean component, it adds a whole new dimension to an ice cream and I was looking forward to see whether that applied to this pint of ice cream as well.

I can  honestly say that the beans did help the flavor in this pint because they added a nice little additional hearty kick to what was already a thick and creamy vanilla ice cream.  In fact, I'd say that it made it more vanilla-y.  Yes, I know that is a preposterous way to describe it, but remember, you aren't dealing with an award winning author here.  Outside of the strong taste and smell of vanilla, there's not a whole lot else I can say about this one since vanilla is all that is really going on.

Buy It or Fly By It?  Seems kind of stupid to review a vanilla ice cream, but I had to do it.  While this one did taste pretty good, it probably isn't worth paying full retail price for something that is just a kicked up version of vanilla, so it gets a FLY BY IT rating.  I've seen this in stores at a regular price of $3.99 or higher, so it definitely isn't worth that.  In that case, I'd just go with the bargain basement flavor vanilla and be happy with it.  So, in summation, this is a good flavor effort by Starbucks, but it is just at a very bad price point.

FLY BY IT!!