If we asked you to epitomize failure you might suggest "Ishtar," Mel Gibson's sensitivity trainer or, if you're particularly unimaginative, you might suggest our mother. (In which case, we'd respond with, "No, your mother.")

But none of that is as bad as turning ice cream from a wonderful treat into something terrible. The following flavors, however, do just that.

1. Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter & Jelly
Understand: Ben & Jerry's found a way to make this fail. It's Ben & Jerry's and peanut butter and jelly -- like, America's favorite three things.

Unfortunately, the grown-ups in the flavor department of this massive national chain forgot to ask a single 7-year-old child why they like PB&J. But, really everyone knows that the whole point of the sandwiches is the combination of textures. Rendering them all down to the same soft-scoop sensation makes as much sense as describing Angelina Jolie by Morse code (rather than with a picture).

Keep reading for more frozen atrocities.



2. Wasabi Ginger
Cold Stone Creamery celebrated "National Ice Cream Month" in 2005 by releasing wasabi ginger ice cream.

Wasabi is such an incredibly powerful flavor that it's primarily only used to balance raw fish; including it in a confection is like icing a cupcake with a thermonuclear resin.

Note: "National Ice Cream Month" is terrifyingly real -- terrifying because it was announced in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, who (despite this clear evidence of mental breakdown and reversion to childhood) was allowed to keep his hand on the big, red "End of the World"-button for another five years.


3. Caviar
Philippe Faur is an exclusive French artisan who decided to freeze joy in its tracks by releasing a costly caviar confection, which retailed at $150 for about 3.4 ounces.
It's unclear whether this is because of the incredible cost of the raw materials, or because eating more than 3.4 ounces would allow relatives to legally prove your insanity and take all your money.



4. Black Licorice
Cold Stone Creamery outdid its previous efforts to be the first ice creamery suffering from self-hatred by releasing black licorice-flavored ice cream -- an impossible sale. The only surviving grandparents who insist that stuff's really candy have neither the teeth nor the diabetic tolerance to enjoy it.

Those of us who are used to wearing shoes and not being stabbed by Vikings shouldn't have to put up with it.



5. Failure Beyond Flavor
The WWF (now WWE) Ice Cream Bars weren't so much a flavor as a concept -- and that concept associated ice cream on a stick with vast, sweaty slabs of steroid-tainted muscle.

You had children all over the country licking pictures of naked musclemen, and it took more than 20 years for anyone to have a problem with it. It was not a high point of the '80s, and that's a decade that includes everything else from the '80s.


6. Cold Sweat Ice Cream
We don't know what they do at ice cream parlors in North Carolina, but it's clearly the sort of stuff that creates Lex Luthors. Or, as this ice cream auteur wants to be known, Sunni Sky of Sunni Sky's Homemade Ice Cream.

This is the only ice cream on Earth to require a legal waiver. The restriction is something of a logical paradox: It forbids anyone with neurological problems from eating it, but anyone ordering triple chili pepper, double hot sauce ice cream obviously has some kind of brain damage.


7. Black & Tan
How would you like a nice cold bowl of Gestapo? No? That's a pity, because Ben & Jerry's made a great big bucket of ice cream named after the infamous police force that burned down chunks of Ireland in the 1920s, shot random civilians, ditched the body of a priest in a bog and basically did as much as humanly possible to not sound like delicious candy.

Quite apart from the autocratic-execution implication, it was the most pointless ice cream flavor since water ice crunch. A black and tan is a half-and-half pint of pale ale and stout (or porter), a rarity even for drinkers, much less the children and non-alcoholics who comprise the ice cream–purchasing public. You might as well advertise it in Klingon, because there's no market.

8. Candied Bacon
We intended this candied-bacon-flavored ice cream to be the crowning insanity of the awful flavor-a-thon. But, secretly, the more we look at it, the more we want some.

The ice cream consists almost entirely of bacon, eggs, sugar and rum. If things that are bad for you taste great, this should have more awesome flavor than wiring your tongue straight to God's fusebox.

So we salute you, David Lebovitz, and only curse the fact you're safely sealed away in France where you can only remotely torment our tongues.