7 Ben & Jerry's Pop Culture Flavors, Ranked

Though summer's heat and longer days may have receded into autumn drizzles, the beacon of ice cream still calls to us from the comfort of our couch. And to help soothe us through the winter months, we count on America's favorite ice cream brand (according to Statistica), the Vermont-based, wholesomely quirky Ben & Jerry's.

While the world has been gifted over 60 original Ben & Jerry's flavors, the ice cream giant also looks to popular culture as a muse for its ever-changing list of pints. Even from the year of its inception in 1978, the eponymous founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield playfully christened a tub of vanilla ice cream whipped with cherries and chocolate "Cherry Garcia" in honor of the Grateful Dead guitarist.

Since then, Ben & Jerry's has exploded across America's public consciousness as one of the best dependable indulgences in the freezer section. The ice cream company continues taking cues from television, music, movies, and even sports to title its releases.

Cultural touchstones like Tina Fey's hit sitcom, "30-Rock," Will Ferrell's comedic blockbuster "Anchorman," and 2010's Bonaroo Music Festival have all been commemorated in 16-ounce ice cream containers. Though some referential flavors, like "Cherry Garcia" and "Phish Food," proved to have staying power, others, like Dave Matthew's Magic Brownies, have retired to the Ice Cream Flavor Graveyard, a cemetery in the creamery's home state. Join us as we taste through Ben & Jerry's (still-living) lineup of pop culture-influenced flavors.

One of Ben & Jerry's most ubiquitous flavors, Phish Food, salutes fellow Vermonters, the jam band, Phish. Like the group's never-ending tour, Phish Food's lasting power dates back to 1997; the chocolate-based ice cream mingles with lumps of marshmallows, caramel ribbons, and admittedly adorable chocolate fudge candies shaped like dime-sized fish.

Tasting like an almond-less rendition of classic Rocky Road, Phish Food's main attraction, the chocolate molded into aquatic animals, acts as more of a distraction to the twirl of milk chocolate ice cream and pillowy marshmallow streaks. Inevitably, this is less than a welcome amendment to a more mundane Rocky Road.

Not only are the baubles a little too brittle and slightly too thick, but schools of the dark-brown, fish-formed candies are tucked into nearly every spoonful of the pint, making them impossible to avoid.

While we respect Phish Food's longevity, we find the chocolate-on-chocolate flavor flattening, overly rich, and entirely one-dimensional — which isn't entirely off base on our sentiments of Phish's musical catalog so maybe the ice cream captures a certain je ne sais quoi of the group's overall vibe. We will say that the chocolate ice cream itself shows promise, and we only wish that it was threaded with a less cacophonous medley throughout.

A little outside of Ben & Jerry's usual wheelhouse of musician and media artifact homages, Colin Kaepernick's Change the Whirled flavor references the ex-athlete's reputation as an activist in racial justice more than the quarterback's past life as an NFL star.

One of the company's only ice creams solely sold as a non-dairy dessert, the caramel ice cream contains sunflower and coconut milk with cookie swirls, graham crackers, and fudge chips running throughout the non-dairy underpinning.

Surprisingly creamy despite its non-dairy nature, Ben & Jerry's makes sure to load Colin Kaepernick's namesake flavor with so many trifles that any discrepancies from the signature creamy base texture are easily sashed. Even more winning is how the handful of supplements somehow come together without overcrowding or overwhelming the pint.

Though we couldn't single out any distinct graham cracker bits, Change the Whirled overall tastes like an elevated, more adult cookies 'n cream. The cookies, crackers, and chips are expertly dispersed throughout the container, making every bite consistent. Benefitting Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp, an organization seeking to "advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization," Change the Whirled succeeds as more than just a gesture toward justice and sings as a crave-able flavor all on its own.

Netflix, America's most popular streaming service, according to All Top Everything, completes an evening on the couch with its Ben & Jerry's cobrand by featuring a sweet and salty medley of peanut buttery ice cream studded with pretzel pieces and chunks of fudge brownie.

Our first impression is of how intensely the peanut butter flavor in the ice cream's base shines through, and we were pleasantly delighted with the crushing presence of the nutty flavor. While other Ben & Jerry's pints with a vanilla ice cream base merely seem like vessels for the candies they enshrine (we're looking you Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough), we consider the peanut butter foundation of Netflix & Chill'd to be sturdy enough to house a serving on all on its own.

Lucky for sweet freaks, thumb-sized chunks of brownies interrupt the peanut butter-flecked ice cream. Still, the inclusion feels a bit superfluous, and a soggy texture intrudes on the television-centric flavor's otherwise smooth mouthfeel. The bits of pretzel, though also stale, lend themselves more favorably to the taste, and they intentionally continue the interplay between salty and sweet. Though, you might have to muddy your spoon searching for the dregs of the crispy snacks due to their scarcity in a pint.