Life is all about second chances. After a very lackluster experience with Phin & Phebes’ Vanilla Malt Cookie Dough, I thought I would give them another shot with a flavor profile I love – sweet, salty, and nutty. Simple enough, Peanutty Pretzel combines peanut butter ice cream with chocolate covered pretzels. How could I lose?

Going in for a scoop the aroma is solid with a great peanut aura that has my hopes up. Getting a taste the peanut flavor is decently pronounced and tasty with a good balance of sweetness and a hint of salt but the texture is just…off. It’s grainy and almost sandy in a way that I haven’t experienced with ice cream before. It’s not the kind of icy freezer burn or re-freeze texture you get from an unfortunate freezer accident but feels more like the base was simply made improperly or with a powdered peanut butter instead of the real thing (which it wasn’t, I checked the ingredients). When the ice cream softens, and even approaches melting, the problem doesn’t get better, but actually worse, and feels like tiny grains of sand inside the base – not appealing.

The chocolate covered pretzels are also a miss. The first two pieces I got were completely stale and soft with another undesirable texture that just adds to the overall off-ness of this flavor. Since I’m not a quitter I kept digging and managed to get a couple good pretzels that were properly preserved and popped with a salty crunch that was really tasty. Unfortunately that success was short lived as my next two pieces were once again soft, stale, and straight up not good, which is a big bummer because the bites with the good pretzels actually offset the weird texture momentarily and achieved a pretty solid bite.

While this pint had moments of quality spoons, my overall impression is once again very low of this up-and-coming and now distributed by Walmart company. While the first flavor I had from them suffered in balancing flavors and depth, this one had straight up miscues in quality that lead to an unenjoyable experience that left me not wanting to dig in for more. I’m not going to completely write P&P off of my list for tasting in the future but I’ll need to do some research on what their strongest flavor is and see if I can find any redemption.

Rating: 5/10
Found at: Grocery Outlet ($2.99)