Why Ben & Jerry’s “Dastardly Mash” Ice Cream Vanished in New York

Dastardly Mash was one of the earliest Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors and it was one of the most unusual for the Vermont-based company.

Although it was quite popular for over a decade, the special variety of chocolate ice cream enhanced with a bunch of quirky ingredients was killed by the guy who invented it.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started the iconic company in a gas station in 1978. According to a 2013 Esquire interview, Cohen created Dastardly Mash and all of the special ice cream flavors before they sold the company to Unilever.

In the interview, Cohen spoke passionately about Dastardly Mash which was chocolate with nuts, raisins and chocolate chips. He said things were fine with the flavor until he started not to like the raisins "because they were mushy."

Ben and Jerry tried to deal with the problem by reducing the amount of raisins. But that apparently was deemed unacceptable because people who didn't like raisins still found them and those who loved them thought there weren't enough.

Dastardly Mash was discontinued by the company with little fanfare in 1991. It did make a brief return in 1999 as a "Flavor Flashback" but that apparently was the last time it was sold.

A request to Ben & Jerry's "PR and communications team" for information about Dastardly Mash was not acknowledged.

Dastardly Mash was one of the first dead varieties memorialized in the Ben & Jerry's "Flavor Graveyard" when it was built in 1997 next to the company's plant in Waterbury, Vermont.

The question in 2025: Will Dastardly Mash ever return - even temporarily? The people who have the answer are not talking. At least for now.

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Contact WNBF News reporter Bob Joseph: bob@wnbf.com or call (607) 545-2250. For breaking news and updates on developing stories, follow @BinghamtonNow on Twitter.