On September 13, Dunkin’ released a new drink collaboration with the famous rapper Ice Spice. Known for her catchy songs and signature orange hair, the artist is new to fame but has fostered a huge fanbase in a very short time. The fanbase in question is fondly referred to by Ice Spice as “the Munchkins,” so this collaboration with Dunkin’ was seemingly the perfect match-up. With a base made up of pumpkin Munchkins® donut holes and several pumps of caramel drizzle, this concoction is a formidable new addition to the celebrity meal food chain.
The drink was brought to the world stage with a premiere at the MTV Video Music Awards starring not only Ice Spice but also actor Ben Affleck, who has been appearing in a series of ads for Dunkin in the past year.
When the advertisements for the drink were released, the masses were immediately intrigued, and I was no exception. With such an audacious introduction to the public, the Ice Spice Munchkins® Drink was the newest topic of conversation.
But all that matters once the purchase is made is if the taste lives up to the hype, right?
As a lover of all things sweet, I arrived at the Dunkin’ drive-thru with high hopes and an empty stomach ready to be sated. I ordered not only the Ice Spice Munchkins® Drink but also a regular pumpkin donut so I could see how it would fare on its own.
After a rainy drive home and finally settling down at my dining room table to have this celebrity-endorsed Fall treat, my taste buds were met with…coffee. Nothing spectacular, nothing to write home about, simply a frozen coffee. That is not to say that the drink was bad, but the taste definitely did not reflect the marketing behind it. This was my first time having the pumpkin donut from Dunkin’ as well, and it was honestly better on its own.
Could it be that the Dunkin’ worker who made my drink did not make it right? Perhaps.
So, I got the drink again at a different Dunkin’ location and surprisingly, it was great! This time I got a sweet drink with strong notes of pumpkin and caramel that put me in the seasonal Autumn mood; a taste so decadent that it brought upon visions of strolls through pumpkin patches and trees letting go of their leaves that recently turned to warmer shades. This is the fast-food curse. The fact that what you order will not come out the same way every time.
As I got down to the last bits of the drink for the second time and the blended chunks of pumpkin Munchkins® grew more prominent, I realized something: all this commotion was never about the quality of the drink. The consumers clamoring to Dunkin’ for the Ice Spice Munchkins® Drink were not driven by the desire for the taste itself but for the ability to say they had consumed a celebrity food item.
The act of ordering off these fast-food menu items without the promise that you will be receiving something good calls into question how we as consumers interact with celebrity food collaborations.
The partnership between fast food conglomerates and celebrities has been growing in recent years. These meals arrive in restaurants with a craze surrounding them time and time again as every celebrity food collaboration manifests its own pop culture moment. The meal plugged by rapper Travis Scott had leagues of adolescent boys driving to McDonald’s and filming themselves ordering the meal for views on social media. The BTS meal had the South Korean boy band’s fanbase ordering meals and selling the branded paper bags on second-hand sites for unreasonable prices.
All this uproar for meals that never offer anything profound or revolutionary either. Just nuggets, fries, burgers, coffee. They aren’t reinventing the wheel here, yet consumers continue to travel in droves to fast food windows all over America requesting meals that aren’t anything special past the shiny name attached to it.
These cultural moments can be fun to engage with, but they should provoke some reflection as well.
Are we really at a point with consumerism and celebrity idolization that you could put a famous person’s name on any piece of food and the masses would flock to it?
This is something one should be more critical about especially when a large Ice Spice Munchkins® Drink packs a caloric punch, coming in at 1080 calories for a large, according to the Dunkin app. It isn’t cheap either, at more than $4 for a small.
These aspects of nutrition and whether the cost is worth the taste simply go out the window when it comes to celebrity food items in a way that should be re-examined. So, would I get the famed Ice Spice Munchkins® Drink again? Probably not.
But stamp the next famous person’s name on it and I, like many others, might think twice.
