42 Years of Hilarious Fudge-Ups

Wait, it’s Chunky Monkey, right? It sure is. But when we launched Ben & Jerry’s pints in Japan, we hit a snag with translating the flavour name to Japanese, and the pints translated to “Chunks of Monkey”. People were (understandably) alarmed.

In 1986, we launched the Cowmobile, a modified mobile home that we used to bring ice cream euphoria all over the country. At the tail end of its very first trip, it burned to the ground outside Cleveland, Ohio. Ben said it looked "like the world's largest Baked Alaska." We’ll take your word for it, Ben.

In the earliest days of the first Scoop Shop, our co-founders were pretty bad at bookkeeping. After their first couple months in business, they decided to close the store for a day and hung a sign on the front door that said, "We're closed today so we can figure out if we're making any money." (As it turns out, they weren't.)

Co-founders Ben and Jerry opened their very first Scoop Shop in an abandoned gas station in Burlington, VT in 1978. In the early days, they sold soups, crêpes, and pottery alongside their namesake ice cream. Fans were most excited about the ice cream, though, so everything else was eventually dropped.

In 2004, we launched a line of six Carb Karma flavours, each boasting fewer carbs than regular ice cream. It was the height of the low-carb craze, and we thought we were right on trend. But fans were not on board, and the line is now spending eternity in the Flavour Graveyard.

Back in 2000, we launched Peanuts! Popcorn! which featured caramel ice cream, white fudge-covered caramel popcorn, toffee-coated peanuts & a caramel swirl. But we had to send it to the Flavour Graveyard after only a few short months. The culprit? Soggy popcorn. The white fudge didn’t protect the popcorn properly and it got mushy. Ick.

When we launched the flavour Black & Tan in 2006, we wanted to invoke the beverage popular in pubs in the UK, a mixture of stout and pale ale. Sadly, though, we had forgotten our British history and did not think of the drink’s original namesake: the paramilitary police force of British World War I veterans recruited during the Irish war of independence. Irish ice cream fans reminded us of the unsavory connection, and we apologized.

The very first pints we offered were Oreo Mint, French Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge, Wild Blueberry, Mocha Walnut, Maple Walnut, Honey Coffee, and Honey Orange. Sadly, none of them have survived the test of time.