Choco Taco was a

Good Humor-Breyers Good Humor-Breyers (Ice Cream USA) is the American ice cream division of Unilever and includes the formerly independent Good Humor, Breyers, Klondike, Popsicle, Dickie Dee and Sealtest brands. Based in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey it was formed ...

ice cream novelty resembling a

taco A taco (, , ) is a traditional Mexican food consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling. The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand. A taco can be made with a variety of fillin ...

. It consisted of a disk of waffle cone material folded to resemble a hard taco shell, reduced-fat

vanilla ice cream Vanilla is frequently used to flavor ice cream, especially in North America, Asia, and Europe. Vanilla ice cream, like other flavors of ice cream, was originally created by cooling a mixture made of cream, sugar, and vanilla above a container of ...

, artificially flavored

fudge Fudge is a type of confection that is made by mixing sugar, butter and milk, heating it to the soft-ball stage at , and then beating the mixture while it cools so that it acquires a smooth, creamy consistency. In texture, this crystalline can ...

peanut The peanut (''Arachis hypogaea''), also known as the groundnut, goober (US), pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small and ...

s, and a milk chocolate coating. The "Choco Taco" was marketed under the Klondike brand as "The Original Ice Cream Taco". Klondike discontinued the Choco Taco in 2022.

History

The Choco Taco was invented in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

in 1983 by Alan Drazen, Senior Vice President of the Jack and Jill Ice Cream Company. It was first rolled out in 1984 when it became popular in mobile vending trucks and convenience stores. It made its first appearance in supermarkets nationwide when

(who were manufacturing it in Richmond, Virginia) promoted it in 1996 as "America's coolest taco," at the Supermarket Industry Convention in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. In 1998,

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

introduced the Choco Taco to

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

under the name Winner Taco through its subsidiary

Algida This is a list of brands owned by the British multinational consumer goods company Unilever. Unilever's billion euro brands These brands have annual sales of one billion euros or more: * Axe/Lynx *Dove *Omo/Persil * Heartbrand (Wall's) ice ...

. In 1999 it was introduced in Sweden through another subsidiary,

GB Glace GB Glace (originally Glace-Bolaget until 1991) is the largest ice cream company in Sweden. It was founded in 1942 and after they had become a partner in 1973, was eventually fully purchased by the United Kingdom, Anglo-Netherlands, Dutch company Uni ...

, under the same name. In 2000 the Winner Taco was retired from the Italian and Swedish markets. After two years of campaigning by Taco fans however, in January 2014 Algida announced on their Facebook page the return of the Winner Taco in Italy. GB Glace also re-introduced the ice cream to Sweden in 2014. In 1999, the company improved the product, incorporating a shell which stayed crisper, and introduced new packaging. The same year, the company introduced a Klondike Cookies & Cream Choco Taco, containing

cookies and cream Cookies and cream (or cookies 'n cream) is a variety of ice cream, milkshake and other desserts that includes chocolate sandwich cookies, with the most popular version containing hand or pre-crumbled cookies from Nabisco's Oreo brand under a lic ...

ice cream and covered with cookie pieces. Choco Tacos were also sold at some

Taco Bell Taco Bell is an American-based chain of fast food restaurants founded in 1962 by Glen Bell (1923–2010) in Downey, California. Taco Bell is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. The restaurants serve a variety of Mexican-inspired foods, includin ...

restaurants. Klondike discontinued the Choco Taco in July 2022. According to an

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

fact check, Klondike discontinued the product due to a sharp increase in demand across its brands and to ensure the availability of the remainder of its products. However, Klondike

Tweeted Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

that “we are discussing next steps, including what to do with the last 912 (we counted) tacos at HQ. Stay tuned…” on July 28 2022, and the Tweet was still pinned as of August 30, 2022.

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

founder

Alexis Ohanian Alexis Kerry Ohanian ( hy, Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Ste ...

, who runs the

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm 776, tweeted at Unilever, offering to buy the rights to the product, and in a July 26 interview said that he has spoken with Unilever, but didn't yet have any news to share.

References

External links

* {{Unilever American brands Ice cream brands Unilever brands Taco Products introduced in 1983 Products and services discontinued in 2022