Baskin-Robbins is one of those names, like Nordstrom, that everyone seems to get wrong. (It’s not “Baskin and Robbins,” nor “Nordstrom’s”.) But however you pronounce it, B-R has been scooping up ice cream since 1954. It was the brainchild of two brothers-in-law: Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins. Since its inception the company has famously claimed “31 flavors,” based on the idea that ice cream should be an everyday treat–with one flavor for each day of the month. However, to date B-R has developed over 1400 flavors, and at any given store on any given day you might find more or fewer than 31 of those flavors on offer.

We’re talking Baskin-Robbins because today officially starts our week of seasonal treats from ice cream and donut shops. Fortuitously a new Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin [Donuts] shop just opened in the area, so I figured I’d drop in and welcome them to the neighborhood.

I was greeted by a smiling, friendly young woman with that kind of infectious enthusiasm commonly found in ice cream shops. But when I asked for “a Halloween-themed ice cream,” she looked like the android on Star Trek whose brain circuits fried when exposed to a paradox.

She kept searching through her 31 flavors (which were actually more like 20) and finally, triumphantly announced she had pumpkin cheesecake ice cream. “That’s kind of like Halloween, right?” It’s not quite what I was hoping for, but I’ve got a blog to write and tens of thousands* of loyal readers waiting breathlessly for today’s post. (*Like B-R’s 31 flavors, the actual number of my loyal readers may not exactly match the official slogan.)

So lets’ get down to business:

Conceptual Soundness: B-R took the idea of a dessert (cheesecake, which, it need not be said, is neither a cheese nor a cake), then gave it a seasonal pumpkin flavor, then turned the whole thing into an ice cream. That seems like a pretty good concept for a seasonal treat, assuming they can pull it off. 3 points.

Appearance of the Treat: Well, it’s an ice cream cone. The color of the ice cream is reasonably pumpkin-y. But the scoop really doesn’t look like it appears in Baskin-Robbins’ ads, which feature “cinnamon swirls” and “delicious ginger snap cookie pieces.” Observe:

The dissonance makes me wanna…

Let’s give the appearance 1.5 points.

Taste: Not bad. It has an exceptionally sweet flavor that could pass for pumpkin. It doesn’t have the chemically, off tastes that plague cheap ice cream and frozen yogurt. The consistency is very creamy, and there seem to be pockets of sweetened cream cheese. (I doubt it’s actual cream cheese, but somehow they got the consistency down pat.) So that’s pretty good so far as it goes.

I taste no evidence of the much-touted cinnamon swirl, which by all appearances seems to have been left out of this batch. What’s more, I don’t detect any of those ginger snaps. Some time ago I had a cheesecake-flavored ice cream that included chunks of graham cracker crust; now that’s how you make a cheesecake ice cream! This one, however, is just a creamy, pumpkin-y ice cream. I’ll give it 2 points.

Value: A one-scoop cone is five bucks. You can get a scoop of award-winning Thrifty ice cream for half that amount. (When I was a young tyke, Thrifty ice cream was 5 cents a scoop. Adjusted for inflation, that would be 49 cents today.) So clearly ice cream has far surpassed normal inflation. I’m mad about this and thus will award only 1 point for value.

Total Treat Score: 7.5 points/16 points. I advise saving your money and instead buying the treat I’m reviewing tomorrow. You’ll thank me later.