After much research and the consumption of at least 1.2 pints of the stuff (hey! I'm pregnant! It'll all come off in six months or so...), I've determined that (a) the ice cream is very good but (b) it's not the most popular because of the taste. In market research that's actually scientific and not just the informed opinion of one very hungry gourmet, Americans have been proven to love plain ice cream flavors the best. The favorite flavor with a whopping 29% of the vote is vanilla. Plain, ordinary vanilla -- and that's 32.8% if you include "French" vanilla, which is really just vanilla with a little more egg yolk. Not only is "Cherry Garcia" not on the list, but no mention of cherry flavors appears anywhere in the survey results.

Evidence that people do buy the flavor because of their fandom? Perhaps. Read on.

Given the success of Cherry Garcia, it's no surprise that Woodstock was the inspiration for the next "celebrity" flavor, Wavy Gravy. I know, you're about to say, "Wavy Gravy isn't a celebrity!" Au contraire. Which is French for, "no waaaayyyyy, maaannnn." Wavy Gravy (I just learned) is a celebrity, of sorts. He was a clown and an MC for Woodstock, a fact I suppose I don't know because I really don't know much about Woodstock, beyond that it's in New York. I also learned that it was his idea to feed granola for breakfast to the audience there, which explains why granola to this day is synomous with hippies. After the mud dried, he went on to become an activist for disadvantaged children, and a portion of the proceeds from Wavy Gravy go for scholarships so that homeless children and those of Native American descent can go to his Camp Winnarainbow.

Because of my former cluelessness, I just assumed it was called "Wavy Gravy" because those hippie ice cream lovers are fond of tie-dye. My curiosity wasn't even piqued. Of course, that was before I read the description of the flavor: "caramel and cashew brazil nut ice cream with a chocolate hazelnut fudge swirl and roasted almonds." I guess all the nuts are why they call hippies "crunchy," but my: that sounds delicious. I think I'll have to pick some up next time I'm celebrity ice cream shopping.


If we seem kind of stuck in the whole hippie music scene, it's true! We are. And if the Grateful Dead were such a brilliant inspiration (and sales-lifter) for Ben & Jerry's, why not turn to the band many still consider simply a teenaged extension of the Dead, Phish? Phish Food was introduced in 1997, and the gang at Ben & Jerry's proved that, while they're good at mixing ice cream, they're not into reinventing their customer base. If you loved Jerry Garcia's fave flavor, I suppose the thought process went, you'll at least like Phish Food.

If you ask me, the obviousness of the inspiration was (at least) redeemed by the sticky yumminess of the flavor, "a medley of chocolate ice cream with marshmallow nougat, schools of grinning fudge fish, and a gooey caramel swirl." Let's just accept that the fish are silly and love the caramelly smores flavor. (She writes, raising a heaping spoonful to her drooling mouth.) And it worked! Though marshmallow-and-caramel appears resolutely nowhere on America's aforementioned favorite flavor list, Phish Food quickly shot up to #7 on the Ben & Jerry's top 10 roster.

Lest you think Ben & Jerry's is all hippy music, no... umm, anything else, you should know that around 1996 the company introduced a sorbet named after the comic strip Doonesbury. Doonesbury has never recorded an album, although it might be said that Doonesbury, much like all the other celebrity inspirations for Ben & Jerry's flavors (are comics celebrities? oh, well, let's just go with it) is just about as liberal -- and as political -- as a comic strip can be.

But back to the real live human flavors. Ohh, that didn't sound quite right. Now that we've done the Dead, and Phish, who's next? I'm sure the people at Ben & Jerry's reviewed lots of peoples' Napster libraries before determining that a predilection for hippie rock icons had a high correlation with a band that used to play in the fraternity basements at my fantastically conservative college: Dave Matthews. I won't tell the College Republicans if you won't, but One Sweet Whirled sent proceeds to the Global Warming Fund long before the right ever acknowledged the existence of climate change.

I also won't remind my husband of the Dave Matthews Band's obvious liberal bent. He's quite the little conservative and we actually played a Dave Matthews song as our "first dance" at our wedding. And I'm here to tell you that I did purchase a pint of One Sweet Whirled for him, right around the time we got engaged, just because he likes the band so much. Even though the flavor is much more me (caramel and coffee ice creams, caramel and marshmallow swirls, coffee flavored fudge chips -- YUM) than him, he ate it happily in honor of his favorite band.


The latest thing to come from the liberal celebrity band flavor division: Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownies. Having neatly consumed a pint of this in about three days (yes, while in the midst of my quart of Cherry Garcia, it's all in the name of research!) I can tell you that the flavor's a winner, and the "harmonic blend of rasberries and brownies" may be quite small in the fight against global warming, but, well, I took the bus to the grocery store to pick it up, so there's that.

Given the probability that the company's celebrity ice cream flavors sell for the celebrity and not so much for the relative value of the actual flavor, I think it's a stroke of brilliance that the upcoming addition to the lineup of creamy spokespeople is none other than Stephen Colbert. Really, the tongue-in-cheek "conservative" comedian is the single most popular figure among the liberal cognsocenti (i.e. the modern and geeky version of hippies). Does anyone really want to eat an ice cream filled with fudge-covered waffle cone bits? It wouldn't be my first choice, but let me tell you, since it's called "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream," I can guarantee that shelf in the freezer section at my local grocery store will be empty a few hours after the Unilever delivery truck shows up.

What have we learned in the trip through the history of Ben & Jerry's most famous inspirations? Firstly, that people (well, liberals) do like the taste of celebrity, very much, actually. Secondly, that it could have been pistachio ice cream with granola-gooseberry swirl, and anything named after Jerry Garcia still would have been popular. Thirdly, that we're happy at least the people at Ben & Jerry's have good taste in flavors, even if they aren't truly American.

I wonder what would have happened if Ben and Jerry had grown up in Midland, Texas? Would we be licking our lips over Rush Limberry Ice Cream? Hmmm.... sounds like a good storyline for Doonesbury.