8 Of 7-Eleven's Ice Cream Flavors, Ranked Worst To Best

7-Eleven is, of course, a convenience store. It's also a cultural icon. It may not inspire the same loyalty as the heated Wawa vs. Sheetz rivalry, but the almost 100-year-old brand has given us products that now feel as American as the bald eagle: Slurpees and Big Gulps, for example. And in 2008, it sought to increase its proprietary footprint with 7-Select, a line of affordable private-label products like snacks and sodas.

As a convenience store, 7-Eleven is probably best known for these grab-and-go items to be enjoyed on the road (or just standing in the parking lot). But in 2015, 7-Select asked customers to consider the freezer section more closely with a line of ice creams. Like anything at 7-Eleven, its ice creams are affordable and convenient. But what else do they have to offer? I'm an ice cream fan, of course, but I am also a lifelong 7-Eleven patron; read my Slurpee flavor ranking to learn how someone can wax poetic about a gas station drink.

So I bought every 7-Select ice cream variety I could find and put them to the test. To be sure, I was looking for ice cream with an array of complementary yet distinct flavors and textures, and mix-ins in every bite. But most of all, I was looking for ice cream that was delicious and worth buying again. Read on to find out what you can't leave behind on your next 7-Eleven trip (don't forget a Slurpee).

Ranking this last may suggest I am a banana flavor hater, but that could not be further from the truth. This ice cream flavor was not just my least favorite; it was also my biggest disappointment. I love banana cream pie and banana pudding; the banana cake ranked highly in my Wegmans bakery cake tasting. But there were serious problems here: First, the texture was gritty throughout. It's difficult to say if the icy quality of this ice cream is inherent to the product or a result of some aspect of the supply chain. I did not have this issue with the other ice creams, so I doubt it.

Beyond that, the whipped cream-flavored ribbons tasted like almost nothing compared to the strong banana flavor; I only noticed them because they broke up the odd sandiness of the base. The pie crust pieces are a good size, but while they brought some needed textural intrigue, they didn't bring much to the table in terms of flavor. Both mix-ins for this ice cream were too mild for its base.

Ultimately, the texture of this ice cream makes it a big miss. A gritty, ice-crystal-laden pint is not something I could recommend to anyone, especially if the flavor isn't much to write home about.

Like the Banana Cream Pie flavor, the Brookie Dough ice cream sat low on the official ranking but high on the disappointment scale. I mean, it's brownie pieces and chocolate chip cookie dough pieces in a vanilla base. Already, it's sounding tantalizingly similar to Half Baked, the legendary Ben & Jerry's flavor. But it also has caramel and chocolate swirls throughout. So this should be a fully loaded, mix-in lover's delight. Right?

Well, wrong. Those mix-in bits shown in the photo are not the crumbs of larger pieces. They are, in fact, about as big as the brownie and cookie chunks get. They are just large enough to register on the palate, but then create sadness when they are too small to really savor. Ice cream should not create sadness. The vanilla ice cream base was tasty enough, if unremarkable, but the caramel swirls were extremely sporadic and appeared more as small pockets. It's a textural improvement on the Banana Cream Pie ice cream, but that's the lowest possible bar. All in all, despite the anticipated pops of flavors and textures, this ice cream was mostly vanilla and empty promises.

The 7-Select Strawberry Banana Shortcake features two separate ice cream bases, banana and strawberry. In my pint, the two were distinct, like a two-flavor Neapolitan. Interspersed in both ice cream bases are chunks of shortcake. I absolutely love strawberry shortcake, but this ice cream has little in common with that dessert.

First and most obviously, the inclusion of banana is a departure. The simplicity of a strawberry shortcake is part of what makes it work. Just a light sponge cake, whipped cream, and sweet strawberries. The banana here overwhelms and makes the delicateness of an ideal strawberry shortcake flavor profile impossible. It doesn't belong.

The strawberry element is also a miss. It's a classic strawberry ice cream, which isn't altogether a bad thing, but it tastes very different from an actual strawberry, which is what a strawberry shortcake has. The mix of artificial-tasting strawberry and banana gives the ice cream a decidedly Trix yogurt-like vibe, a real departure from the pint's flavor concept. A ribbon of strawberry jam would have gone a long way.

There are some positives here, though. The shortcake pieces are delicious and are nice and big. You get satisfying bites of the soft, light cake amongst the ice cream, and you get them often; this pint does not skimp on the mix-ins. That puts it in a category above the Brookie Dough flavor.

This ice cream puts all its eggs in one basket flavor-wise — caramel on caramel on caramel. Nothing wrong with that; some of the best ice cream varieties out there are about loading up on iterations of the same flavor. For example, have a spoonful of some double chocolate brownie ice cream and try to stop at just one. So I wasn't put off by the uniformity in flavor.

Salted caramel is an iconic ice cream flavor for a reason, and this is a solid rendition. The sweet-meets-salty-meets-rich taste pairs wonderfully with the texture and mouthfeel of the ice cream. But there are a few issues here. For one thing, the base is caramel, but the swirls are sea salt caramel. The swirls are present but do not have a particularly distinct flavor. The base itself tastes like salted caramel as well.

And the caramel truffles do not do much here, either. They are very small, with a hard-to-detect flavor. Not much real fudginess, or even caramel-ness. I'm not sure what denotes a caramel truffle, as opposed to a caramel cup, but it doesn't matter here. They amount to little more than small chocolate bites, and there aren't very many of them. This ice cream tastes good, unlike the Strawberry Banana Shortcake flavor before it, but it also doesn't stand out, and the mix-ins are disappointing overall.

Because of its name, I knew going in that the Chocolate Fudge Tracks flavor would probably have a lot in common with Moose Tracks ice cream, an iconic flavor consisting of fudge and peanut butter cups in a vanilla base. And the similarities are certainly there, with some key differences. The ice cream base of Fudge Tracks is chocolate, not vanilla, and it ups the ante on the Moose Tracks mix-ins by adding chocolate chip cookie dough pieces.

This is a very solid ice cream with lots of exciting bites. The peanut butter cups are small, but impart a nice crunch and distinct peanut butter flavor. The fudge swirl is luscious, and the cookie dough pieces are big. It's got a lot to offer, but there is a mismatch happening in size and distribution. The peanut butter cups are aplenty, but too small to really impart the unctuousness of peanut butter. And the cookie dough pieces are nice and hefty, but a rarity in the pint. It would be difficult, and maybe impossible, to get them all in one scoop. The variety in textures and flavors in this ice cream is better than that in the Sea Salt Caramel Truffle ice cream, but it still has room to improve.

At first blush, this ice cream seemed ambitious at best and confused at worst. Inherent to lava cake is its form: a chocolate cake that gives way to a liquid, chocolatey center when cut open. The addition of caramel is easy enough, but how could an ice cream capture the specific and dynamic textures of a lava cake? Well, I was a skeptic, but 7-Eleven met the challenge. The "cake" problem is solved with a pretty spot-on chocolate cake batter ice cream base, while the brownie pieces add the fudgy flavor and bite. Caramel is a natural addition to this rich and decadent combo, and contributes a silky texture that stands in for the liquid center of a real chocolate lava cake.

The execution of this flavor is excellent, and it pretty much sticks the landing. Unfortunately, like some other ice creams on this list, I spent a fair amount of time digging for mix-ins that I would have rather spent just enjoying it. As good as all the elements are, they become less relevant if they don't appear often enough. The playfulness of the flavor and the incremental improvement of the mix-in density brought Chocolate Caramel Lava Cake a step beyond Chocolate Fudge Tracks, and it probably would rank even higher if I'd had more caramel and brownie to enjoy.

The name of this flavor is a bit of a mouthful, and in my mind it felt like a lot of concepts colliding at the same time. But then I reasoned that if it were a Cheesecake Factory cheesecake flavor, it would seem relatively straightforward. Cheesecake and fruit are a classic pairing; fruit and white chocolate are similarly so. I should not have been surprised when I found them all to be so complementary and cohesive in this ice cream.

7-Eleven takes the tack with this flavor that it should have with the Strawberry Banana Shortcake ice cream; that is, the fruit component is represented with a sweet, jammy swirl, not with an artificial-tasting base. That base is put to much better use as the vehicle for the white chocolate flavor and creamy mouthfeel. The cheesecake pieces are rich little treasures, and the graham cracker swirls are salty, crunchy, and absolutely perfect.

I thought long and hard about putting White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake at the No. 1 spot. Its concept is interesting, and the components all work together in absolute flavor harmony. But without the labeling, I'm not sure I would have been able to name the ice cream base as white chocolate-flavored. Additionally, while the mix-in variety and volume beat out the Lava Cake pint, the cheesecake pieces were sadly rare.

In the interest of transparency, I should note that mint chocolate chip — or mint chocolate cookie or mint chocolate brownie — is my overall favorite ice cream flavor. Controversial as it may seem (I vehemently disagree with the toothpaste comparisons), I think mint is an excellent dessert flavor, especially when paired with chocolate. But not all mint chocolate chip ice creams are created equal, and I wasn't sure what to expect with the Mint Cookies 'N Cream. The label's description of fudge ribbons and chocolate cookie pieces was definitely promising, but I'd been let down by several highly anticipated pints on this list already.

It turns out my worries were unfounded. This is not only a very good mint-chocolate combo ice cream but also one of the best I've had. The ripples of fudge were bountiful and very thick, with a melt-in-your-mouth texture and strong chocolate flavor. The cookie pieces varied in size from crumbs to full-on chunks, creating a textural medley. The mint ice cream base was the right balance of mint; not too sharp or sweet. This pint is no revelation in the ice cream world, and it's not an innovation of flavors, textures, or ingredients. But it does everything very well, and I'd pick this ice cream out of any number of more artisanal options. In fact, I'm ready to grab another pint right now.

The flavors ranked in this article were chosen based on my local availability. All were purchased as pints, taken home, and briefly refrozen before photography and initial tasting. Each flavor was tasted again the next day. After photographing, large scoops were taken from each pint of ice cream to better gauge the size and distribution of mix-ins.

Each flavor was judged on the flavor and texture of both its individual components and the overall product. Every element of each ice cream flavor had to be distinct and detectable, while also complementing the other elements. The size and volume of mix-ins were also factors; I was looking for substantially sized chunks and swirls consistently throughout the pint. I took into account that the slight melting and subsequent refreezing of the pints could affect the texture and mix-in distribution. I also considered how accurately the product aligned with the intended flavor profile as stated on the product's labeling. Appearance and price were not factors in the ranking.