Moose Tracks: Compare and Contrast

For those of you who don't know, Moose Tracks is a flavor of ice cream produced by Denali Flavors and licensed to local brands across this great land. It also happens to be freaking awesome.

Moose Tracks is vanilla ice cream stuffed with peanut butter cups and shot through with ribbons of chocolately goodness. My God, that stuff is good.

Now, the stuff sold at our local chains; Albertson's, Fry's and Safeway, is all certainly called Moose Tracks, but each of these stores produce it themselves under license. There is, therefore, a big difference between these flavors.

In the interest of science, and because, I, of course, consider it my sacred duty, I have sampled each and have found a clear winner. (And by "sampled," I mean I've eaten a large pile of ice cream.)

Drum roll.

Fry's version beats the pants off Albertson's and Safeway's. Both of the latter are very icy, not a good trait in vanilla ice cream. Also, both of the peanut butter cups used in the latter come up short in the peanut butter to chocolate ratio.

Also, Safeway is often mysteriously out of Moose Tracks and instead chock full of Bunny Tracks, some godforsaken pale imitation some focus group invented. Note to Safeway: No one was asking for chocolate bunnies in their ice cream. Also, filling ice cream with hard, brown, raisin-sized lumps is an unfortunate choice for a product named Bunny Tracks.

Think it through.