Review Quatre

Maison Review #4 - Ice Cream Sundae Gumballs

You put a cherry on top of a sundae, but what do you top an Ice Cream Sundae gumball with? A Very Cherry gumball perhaps? Well, I ordered a case of the Ice Cream Sundae gumballs from Gumball.com to get my answer.

The gumballs came in 4 different flavors: pistachio, strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. At first, some of these flavors were a tad off-putting. The gumballs I grew up with were fruit flavored or simply infused with high quantities of sugar. So, I had my doubts – could a gumball truly capture the complex and varied flavors of a pistachio or the richness and pure pleasure of chocolate?

Sort of.

I’ll break it down one by one. First, the strawberry. It was fruity and creamy, capturing the essential elements of a strawberry ice cream. Its speckles, while certainly not visually appealing, provided the necessary flavor boosts of fruit to complement the cream. This gumball was tasty and accurate (well, as accurate as a gumball could be). But, a fruit-flavored gumball is certainly not the most challenging flavor to capture – it has been refined over the long history of the gumball.

Content with the first ball, I ventured for a second still more nervous and perplexed by the difficulty of the mission that this set of gumballs had set out to accomplish. Next up was vanilla. While certainly a more difficult task than its predecessor, this gumball had some leeway in my mind. While I am certainly no connoisseur in vanilla flavor, I am sufficiently experienced to state with a good deal of confidence that so-called “vanilla-flavored products” can, in fact, vary a good deal in taste. Vanilla is by no means a constant beacon of flavor – a metaphorical “golden arches” that will (no matter where one may be) serve up a deliciously average, low quality hamburger with a set number of seeds and meager quantity of pickles. So, while my expectations were high, they weren’t too high due to the flexibility of what one may classify as “vanilla.” Upon first chew, my taste buds immediately detected “vanilla.” Was it vanilla ice cream? Well, not exactly. It lacked that creamy texture necessary to simulate the melting, pleasurable feel of ice cream on the tongue. Despite the tad of inaccuracy, it was an enjoyable chew with superb texture and chewability and an excellent after-taste.

Next, I reached for a beaming, bright globe that was an almost lime green in color. It was pistachio, and I was mighty skeptical. I was especially worried that the brilliant taste of the pistachio nut with just a tinge of sweetness and an explosion of flavorful nut-ness would be lost in translation – from a nut to an ice cream to a 25 millimeter sugared orb. Surely such an inappropriate site for the unleashing of pistachio flavor would erupt into flames of failure. Ah, how wrong I was. The pistachio was beyond words. It was TERRIBLE. Yes, gumball and chocolate fans alike, this nutty ball was not meant for consumption. It was not meant for a game of marbles or as a stylish centerpiece. This beyond unholy, globular, scatological piece of chewing trash was, well, the absolute antithesis of deliciousness.

My hopes and dreams for the gumball now mutilated, I limped toward the finish line – the chocolate ice cream gumball. My expectations trashed, my mood ruined, and my mind focused on finishing the remainder of the tasting as quickly as absolutely possible, I inserted the gumball into my mouth.

I bit into it. Chewed it once, … twice, … three times. Stopped.

Ecstasy.

The plight of the now forever tarnished gumball had been lifted. The gumball had been restored to its once lofty position of prominence among candies and sweets. This gumball was good.

But, not great. It was an accurate interpretation of chocolate ice cream and a tasty one at that. But, it was nothing special. It was not the best gumball I’d ever chewed (far from it, in fact). But it was good, and that was all this humble gumball reviewer needed – reassurance that the gumball will live on.

I'm too shaken to give an in-depth grade. I'll give the Ice Cream Sundae gumballs 3.5 balls out of 5.