Wal-Mart's Great Value Brand Mocha Mudslide Ice Cream
Great Value Mocha Mudslide Carton
Past experience leads to hesitation...
My experience with so called bargain brands is that you get what you pay for, and, more often than not, the lower quality is not even worth the lower price.
I usually prefer national brands that may be more expensive but seem to be better quality. The Ice Cream brand I buy most is Breyer's because it usually is good quality and is not usually overpriced for the quality. However, this time I decided to try a flavor of Wal-Mart's Great Value brand ice cream called Mocha Mudslide.
Since it was a discount brand and based on previous experience with the mediocre quality of other items in that brand, I expected a much lower quality. I can honestly say though, that this time, the product exceeded my expectations and I was pleasantly surprised.
The experience and what is in it.
As I said in the last section, I was expecting an ice cream without much flavor, but I was wrong. The best way I can describe the flavor is this scenario: Imagine taking a cup of instant coffee, perhaps a little strong, and stirring in one scoop of vanilla ice cream and one scoop of chocolate ice cream. This is probably because one of the ingredients is instant coffee.
Even though the container says it contains Irish Creme ice cream with chocolate pie pieces and a chocolate coffee ribbon, only the chocolate pie pieces and what seemed like chocolate chips were noticeable to me.
The ice cream was creamy, chocolaty and it seemed to be of decent quality. The last serving (about two weeks after the first serving) was on par with the first serving in terms of quality and flavor.
The carton was sturdy and it was easy to open and re-seal, which may be why the ice cream remained good.
Information from the side panel
| Nutrition Facts | |
|---|---|
| Serving size: 1/2 cup | |
| Calories | 140 |
| Calories from Fat | 63 |
| % Daily Value * | |
| Fat 7 g | 11% |
| Saturated fat 5 g | 25% |
| Unsaturated fat 2 g | |
| Carbohydrates 18 g | 6% |
| Sugar 13 g | |
| Fiber 0 g | |
| Cholesterol 25 mg | 8% |
| * The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so your values may change depending on your calorie needs. The values here may not be 100% accurate because the recipes have not been professionally evaluated nor have they been evaluated by the U.S. FDA. | |
Value analysis
Price: $2.97 for 48 fluid ounces.
Breyers that week was $3.37 for the same amount of a similar product.
Based on my opinion, the ice cream was priced fairly for the quality, so I would say it's a Fair Value. I would not call it a Great Value though because the price was only slightly lower than a comparable national brand and the quality was certainly acceptable to me but not outstanding. That being said though, I did buy another container of Great Value Ice Cream when I was nearly finished with the Mocha Mudslide. This time I bought one of my favorite flavors...Mint chocolate chip. I feel generous and I will give it four stars out of 5.
