Walmart: Ice Cream Sandwiches That Don’t Melt After 12 Hours Outside Just Have Less Cream

You see an ice cream sandwich and think, “Mmm, ice cream sandwich!” But wait — it’s been sitting out for more than 24 hours… and it’s still recognizable as an ice cream sandwich. Something seems freaky here.

We joined one woman in a collective side-eye at the idea of an ice cream sandwich that refuses to melt, even after spending hours outside of the freezer’s frigid embrace. It just didn’t seem right, the Cincinnati mom told WCPO News (warning: link has video that autoplays), after she found her son’s ice cream sandwich sitting mostly intact on the patio table, 12 hours after he left it there, on an 80-degree day.

“I thought that’s quite weird,” she said of the Walmart Great Value brand sandwich. “So I looked at the box, and it doesn’t say artificial ice cream. It says ice cream.”

She repeated the experiment with another sandwich and got the same result. That made her wonder what could possibly be in there to extend the life of a very meltable food past what would seem reasonable.

Walmart says it’s just got less cream in there, making it more affordable, it said in a statement to WCPO (*editor’s note: a previous version of this post said there was more cream, based on the print statement accompanying WCPO’s news story. That statement appears to be wrong or at least contradicts itself in the video with a totally different statement regarding the amount of cream.).

So basically don’t worry about it not melting, it’s cheap!

Other ingredients might have something to do with it as well — WCPO points out that the Walmart sandwich includes corn syrup, guar gum and cellulose gum. A cup of Haagen Dazs ice cream with no syrups or gums left out by WCPO melted into a puddle quickly.

All the ingredients in the ice cream sandwiches are A-OK under Food and Drug Administration guidelines, so we’ll just have to get used to ice cream that doesn’t melt, or buy something that does.

Why don’t ice cream sandwiches melt anymore? [WCPO News]