Graphic : Oscar Mayer

Branding is a difficult business to begin with. If your product has been around a long time, it’s even tougher to find ways to keep it fresh, to appeal to new consumers, and to know when it’s time to shake things up a bit.

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For Oscar Mayer (that venerable purveyor of processed meats and music festival lodging) the time is apparently today, National Ice Cream Sandwich Day 2019, and the vessel through which it will connect with the people is an ice cream sandwich flavored with spicy mustard and hot dog meat. Bear witness:

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The “Ice Dog Sandwich” contains candied hot dog bits (we repeat: candied hot dog bits), hot dog sweet cream, spicy dijon gelato, and a “cookie bun.” And not only does it exist in defiance of God and country alike, but if you’re in the New York City area the week of August 12th, the Wienermobile will serve one to you, or can slide into Oscar Mayer’s DMs and try to sample it elsewhere. As referenced in the above Tweet, it also arrives just a day after Los Angeles-based ice cream company Coolhaus partnered with French’s for another, different mustard ice cream.

Since The Takeout won’t be passing final judgement on the Ice Dog Sandwich in any way until we maybe, just maybe, have a chance to try it, we’ll leave you instead with a now-necessary inversion of one of our favorite questions: is the Ice Dog Sandwich a hot dog?