Toucan Sam himself always told kids to “follow your nose!” And I’m glad he did, because I’ve got a good nose for B.S. (Bumbling Shenanigans).
What do I mean by this? Oh, just the last 5/11 of Steak ‘n Shake’s name. For a place that prides itself on its arctic milk products, presumably made by milking polar bears, a lot of Steak ‘n Shake’s milkshakes seem a little lazy—almost as lazy as putting only one apostrophe on a truncated conjunction that deserves two.
But that’s none of my fast food business, I say while sipping a milkshake like it’s hot tea.
The shakes, on the other hand, are my bloggerly business, and time and time again, I’ve been disappointed by S&S shakes that don’t make the most of their ingredients, instead seemingly dusting chunks of M&M’s, Kit Kats, Cocoa Krispies, or otherwise, when the more logical thing to use would be a flavored ice cream base.
This is why I’m remaining tentatively skeptical of the chain’s new Froot Loops Shake: joining a quintet of other breakfast flavors, this dairy concoction is far from daring. Not only has it been done before, but this Froot Loops Shake has huge talons to fill, as last year’s Burger King Froot Loops Shake was a fantastic tropical elixir infused with magical cereal syrup.
I don’t expect Steak ‘n Shake to use fancy strawberry ice cream or anything, but are a few pumps of mysterious fruit goo too much to ask?
The look of my Froot Loops Shake already put me on edge. It looked kind of like a kindergarten art project gone awry, with one giant cylinder of glue and a haphazard dusting of rainbow confetti, most of which charmlessly pooled around the edges instead of being equidistantly spaced across the top in a beautiful act of crumbled geometry.
You know, like you see in the movies.
And the first bite confirmed my worst fears: Steak ‘n[‘] Shake’s Froot Loops Shake is but a standard vanilla soft serve milkshake that’s been centrifuged in some industrial shake maker with pre-smashed Froot Loops bits, giving it an aura of tropical fruity cereal flavor, but not really any substance.
Sorry for the rambling rant. What I meant to say was, “It’s like a vanilla milkshake wearing a Toucan Sam costume. But not a good, full-bodied costume—I’m talkin’ one of those bootleg Dollar Store mascot costumes, which just had a mask and a t-shirt with a picture of the character.”
The decidedly gooey core shake has a great vanilla butteriness that’s sweet but not syrupy, and the vanilla beaniness is palpable, but the same praise can’t be given to the cereal flavor. At the troughs of each vanilla flavor pulse linger wisps of Froot Loop taste—like the spectrally candied blueberry ghosts of fading tropical childhood vacation memories—that just aren’t potent enough to overcome the vanilla.
All in all, it’s a hollow flavor infusion that’s the La Croix to Burger King’s Mountain Dew. Steak ‘n Shake makes a mean vanilla shake, but when judged on the merits of its novelty, the Froot Loops Shake doesn’t feel memorable enough. While it does get better and more Froot flavor-dense deeper into the experience, I happened to find some of the weirdly soggy and chewy cereal pieces to be too big and straw-clogging—Toucan Sam clearly isn’t a plumber; Cap’n Crunch is the Mario of the cereal world any way.
Despite that, my taste test partner stated “It may not be Froot Loopy, but it sure is fun to drink!”
So there you go: since BK doesn’t even make their Froot Loops Shake any more—a tragedy worthy of protests, or at least targeted whining until Burger King gives me coupons for free Twix Pies—you can still suck down Steak ‘n Shake’s downgraded version if you’re really hankering for a frozen Froot fix with an interesting mouthfeel twist, but the rest of us are better off driving to BK for a Twix Pie. Mmm, Twix Pie.
(I’m hoping if I say Twix Pie enough times, one will appear like Beetlejuice.)
The “Bowl”: Steak ‘n Shake Froot Loops Shake
The Breakdown: A vanilla shake with a hint of candied fruit sweetness, its taste boils down to branded window dressing.
The Bottom Line: 5 budget “Pelican Jim” costumes out of 10