The battle of the late night talk shows just got a little sweeter — and creamier.
Last week, Ben & Jerry's teamed up with NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" to announce its new flavor "Late Night Snack": Vanilla bean ice cream with a salted caramel swirl and fudge-covered potato-chip clusters. The salty-sweet treat was developed in response to a "Late Night" skit in which Fallon and the show's band The Roots performed a song "Ladysmith Snack Mambazo" about Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
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But while the new flavor may come as welcome news to anyone who has enjoyed the forbidden pleasures of dipping a French fry in a Frosty, it was less well-received by Stephen Colbert, the other late-night talk show host to have his own Ben & Jerry's flavor. On last Thursday's episode of the "Colbert Report," the show's host, whose AmeriCone Dream features vanilla ice cream with fudge-covered waffle cone bits and caramel, railed against his new competitor, saying "Fallon, there's only room for one ice cream flavor in late night" before threatening to melt a pint of Fallon's dairy dessert with a hair dryer. Fallon then made a surprise guest appearance and the two traded ice cream insults before engaging in a brain-freeze inducing eating contest.
The new flavor has also drawn more serious ire from San Francisco-based artisan ice cream maker Humprhy Slocombe, which Eater reportshas a near identical dessert to the Fallon flavor - chocolate-covered Ridge potato chips swirled with caramel in Tahitian vanilla.
"It's flattering when people look at your work and want to use it as a point of reference," Humphry Slocombe co-owner Jake Godby said in a statement to Eater. "It's altogether a different matter though when it is a corporation taking the work of a small neighborhood ice cream shop and simply duplicating it on mass scale with no credit."
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Thus far, neither Fallon nor Ben & Jerry's has responded to accusations of a copy-cat dessert. But Fallon did fight back with Colbert, calling his competitor's ice cream a "palate cleanser for Tosh.0."
Of course, just like a late night ratings war, ultimately the ice cream victor will be determined by the consumer. So tell us, which ice cream flavor is most appealing to you?
