Since the first Pop-Tart was piped full of sweet goo and flapped over like an Agatha Crispy book…since that first Pop-Tart thwapped out of the toaster with enough velocity to spook the family dog two feet into the air…and since the first celestially blessed starchild opened a Pop-Tart pouch to find three inside instead of two…I’ve been on this blog, prolonging the intro to an ice cream review like it’s an SAT essay to delay the inevitable post-lactose malaise of eating it.

And right on schedule, here I am: with a Good Humor Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tart bar sitting lusterlessly on a plate before me. Clearly just palette swapping the Strawberry Shortcake bars that are perhaps Good Humor’s most iconic, these Pop-Tarts bars bring the other most beloved toaster pastry flavor into the chilled spotlight of the freezer aisle.

Alright, I’ve made peace with myself and my god, and am ready to plunge deep into dire dairy digestive disarray—yes, I use alliteration as a coping mechanism.

First things first: these Pop-Tarts “dairy dessert” bars are far fuglier than the box art would lead you to believe. I get the whole idea of enlarging to show texture, but my rounded rectangular Brown Sugar Cinnamon prism looks more like a flash-frozen corn dog that got stepped on and kicked beneath a school cafeteria’s oven, or perhaps a McDonald’s hash brown that fell on hard times.

Either way, this crusty countenance is but the first of many disappointments Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts Bars have in store. Contrary to my palate’s expectation, this loose “breading” in particular contributes very little to the overall flavor discourse here. Sure, it’s sweet, but it’s far from streusel and more like a tiresome, filler-some barrier between the outside world and what vague joy is to be found within.

The mantle and core layers of cinnamon sugar ice cream in Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts Bars taste virtually indistinguishable from each other. Remarkably brown sugar-forward, this ice cream (but not really really ice cream) is a marked contrast to Edy’s/Dreyer’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch ice cream, which went so heavy on the cinnamon spice that it incinerated any logical connection to its namesake cereal. Though it could use a touch more cinnamon, I think I like this filling better as I have to admit that it comes pretty close to emulating a real Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tart’s cozy innards. However, there are still two main problems with this frozen facsimile:

For one, the poor quality of the actual “dairy dessert” is fairly evident. Hardly denser than marshmallow fluff, this stuff lacks the indulgent satisfaction I would expect from a toothsome treat—especially one I’ll be gastrointestinally paying for hours from now. At the same time, while the taste may do a solid job of mimicking real filling, jellied cinnamon paste alone does not a Pop-Tart make. Lacking the flaky, golden-brown biscuit dough hull that grounds a Pop-Tart’s filling, these Good Humor bars, with their pathetically pliable and powerless crumbly coating, lose any authentic Pop-Tart ethos they may have within seconds of each bite—as that faintly cinna-sugar goodness dissolves into the cold night of sweet nothingness.

Overall, brown sugar and cinnamon just can’t seem to translate as impactfully as strawberry can to this compact—yet weightless—medium. While there’s some promise in each Pop-Tart bar’s core, they don’t have the proper pastry crust scaffolding and genuine ice cream density to make this product more than a forgettable novelty. If there’s one way I can recommend getting your money’s worth out of Good Humor Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts bars, it’s slipping out the stick and wedging the whole bar between two actual Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts. Such an act might slay weaker stomachs such as mine, but if you’re already gonna double-down and combine Pop-Tarts with ice cream, you might as well quadruple it, too.

The Bowl: Good Humor Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts Dairy Dessert Bars

The Breakdown: Poor cream and breading quality make for a mediocre melt of a concept that sounded promising. With little in the way of cinnamon and only fleeting bits of fun to be had with molasses-kissed filling, you could dream about these bars for free and get just the same amount of vapid enjoyment.

The Bottom Line: 4 McMarooned Potato Pucks out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 140 calories, 9 grams of sugar, 0 grams of fiber, & <1 gram of protein per bar)

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