by Lore Sjöberg

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Ben and Jerry deserve, at the very least, oral sex for giving the world Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. The amazing thing about this flavor is that it's been in front of us, lo, these many years; at any point, any one of us could have taken a cardboard bucket of vanilla ice cream and a pre-prepared refrigerated dough log and made this, but we didn't. And why didn't we? Because we are mere losers when compared with the keen, milkfat-soaked minds behind Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. A+

Coffee, Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz
This is the all-time winner of the "Dumbest Ben and Jerry Flavor Name" award, edging out "Phish Food" and "Pistachio Pistachio" with the decision to make "BuzzBuzzBuzz" one word. This is a pretty good flavor, if you're into coffee ice cream, but the decision to add real coffee grounds -- or, as they call them, "bean flecks" -- is a bit dubious. B-

Cool Britannia
This is a great flavor. It's lighter than some of the "dark chocolate ice cream with fudge goo and chunky sugar cubes" flavors, while still remaining decadent. It also manages to hold up the English theme very well, managing to incorporate distinctly British flavors (or, more accurately, "flavours") without resorting to "Banger Bits." A

Chubby Hubby
The weird thing about this ice cream is that it started as a practical joke, a spoof flavor designed to be barely edible. And yet Ben and Jerry, getting wind of this, made it into an actual flavor. A good one! A perfectly decent ice cream made with peanut-butter-filled pretzels, in a world where most manufacturers can't come up with a decent vanilla. At this point I'm willing to assume that Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield could make a decent pint of ice cream out of sweet-and-sour sauce and "corn niblets." B-

Wavy Gravy
Another close runner-up in the "lame name" competition, and the winner of the "Send a Rhino Into Insulin Shock" contest. I thought "gravy" was a poor choice of words to have in the name of an ice cream flavor until I tried it. It's very gravy-like. It gives you the same "my pores don't work anymore" feeling that too much gravy can impart. It's really good, but it takes a dedicated milkfat maven to toss back a whole pint. B

Chunky Monkey
This is your basic prototype for a B&J ice cream flavor. It has: 1) A rhyming, playful, yet completely unappetizing name. 2) At least one really odd ingredient. (Banana ice cream? Who eats banana ice cream?) 3) Chunks. All that, plus it's gosh-all-tasty. If it were named after a liberal icon it would be the quintessential B&J. Maybe if they called it "Chunky Chomsky." A-