New Archer Farms Gelato and Ice Cream lineup at Target. I try the one with Cookie Dough in it.

[2015-2016: these products lines only lasted for two years and are now gone]

Last week, a couple of fellow ice cream enthusiasts let us know that there were some gelato and ice cream changes going on over at Target. Apparently their gelato has changed format again plus their in house Archer Farms name is back in pint size form. Nick and I were both intrigued and I finally got a chance to hit Target at lunch today and make a nice mess of their shelves to get you guys a bunch of pictures... I hope my Target doesn't mind. Oh, I also picked up one of the ice cream pints, so that review will be after the pictures.

Three shelves worth of choices... where to start?
(please excuse the blurry opening shot)

All natural Simply Balanced Ice Cream Pints. 7 flavors and the pint I checked had 7 ingredients. We've got vanilla bean, chocolate, strawberry ice cream with strawberry pieces, coffee, butter pecan, cinnamon (review here), and chocolate chunk (chocolate ice cream with chocolate flavored pieces). That's an interesting choice to make your basic flavors all natural, and leave the fancy stuff for the other pints. Well played Target.

Archer Farms Gelato Pints. I found three flavors (clear picture) and then found a forth (blurry picture). I edited them together cause... iunno... it was a challenge? The four five I found are:

Salted Caramel: caramel gelato with salted caramel swirl & a hint of sea salt
Triple Chocolate: choc gelato with a chocolaty swirl & white choc flavored chunks (review)
Tiramisu: tiramisu-flavored gelato with coffee chocolate flavored swirl & pound cake pieces
Pistachio: pistachio gelato with pistachio pieces
  -update 6/10-
Amaretto Cherry: amaretto gelato with a cherry-flavored swirl and cherry chunks

Archer Farms Ice Cream Pints. There are at least seven eight flavors.
(Shelf life appears to be 12 months)

Banana Almond Caramel: banana-flavored ice cream with almonds & a caramel swirl
Strawberry Blondie: strawberry ice cream with strawberries & blondie brownie pieces (review)
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup: chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cups (review)
Caramel Fudge Brownie: chocolate ice cream with a caramel ribbon and brownie pieces
Coffee Toffee Crunch: coffee-flavored ice cream with toffee chunks
German Chocolate Cake: chocolate cake flavored ice cream with coconut caramel swirl & chocolate flavored pieces (review)
Belgian Chocolate Chunk: chocolate ice cream with chocolate flavored chunks

Archer Farms Cookie Dough & Brownies Ice Cream

vanilla flavored ice cream swirled with cookie dough and

chocolate ice cream swirled with brownie bites

I remove the neat lid seal and realize that the pint in my hand weighs almost nothing.

Whoa, yeah, that sure looks like light ice cream!

The Parking Lot Scoop: I take my first bite and am.... underwhelmed. Back when they tagged their larger ice cream containers with the Archer Farms logo, it was a fairly heavy product, but now, whoa is this light. I kind of feel like I'm eating a giant hoodsie cup. At least this hoodsie cup has giant brownies and cookie dough balls.

The most important thing I want to stress right now is that for $2.99, I'm pretty sure I could destroy this pint in a single sitting. There is zero resistance going on here. It's just chomp scoop chomp scoop chomp scoop. For the most part there is a brownie (in chocolate) or cookie dough (in vanilla) in every bite, but I just wasn't filling up at all. It's so light that I had trouble going slow, I just wanted to dig for treasure.

Speaking of treasure, it makes a decent first impression. The plentiful brownies are actually fairly light, borderline cakey and not some heavy, dense thing. The cookie dough is large and has a good amount of flavor to it. That said, both felt off to me in some way. Nothing I could nail down during the inhaling, but I will have to elaborate later this afternoon.... cause I'm still hungry!

The Afternoon Scoop: Ice cream time! I'm headed right for the brownie bits... I want to say there is an unexpected complexity to them unless that's the base chocolate messing with me. Hmmm, maybe it is the base. There's a... iunno, something off to it. Let's switch to the vanilla. It's ok, nothing remarkable. Cookie Dough bites aren't bad, aren't awesome. The problem is that the chocolate/brownie side is lingering on my taste buds. And again I've eaten too quickly. All I can think about is a giant hoodsie cup, and that's not necessarily a compliment. I wanted this to be a high end surprise, but it's just a budget snack. Yeah, really not digging the lingering chocolate aftertaste. I left some tomorrow to see if I change my opinion, but at this point, I say meh.

Verdict?  $2.49 $1.99 would be better price
Buy Again?  will try the other flavors