Did Ben & Jerry's Ditch A Flavor Cause Of Dave Matthews' Poop Fiasco

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is now available in 35 countries, but it’s really only a huge hit in the United States. Part of it might be because the names of a lot of their flavors are hard to translate to foreign languages without losing all their inherent, red-hot horniness that you don’t find with other dessert companies (aka cowards.) “Boston Cream Pie,” “Chubby Hubby,” or “Schweddy Balls” are just some examples of all the times when the Venn diagram of selected Ben & Jerry’s flavors and Pornhub categories was a perfect circle.

The “One Sweet Whirled” flavor didn’t have those problems. It was named after an incredibly popular Dave Matthews Band song, and proceeds from it went to the Save Our Environment Action Center, “a collaborative effort of the nation’s most influential environmental advocacy organizations.” But the Dave Matthews Band flavor was discontinued in 2004 and since then frequently made lists of B&J flavors that should make a comeback. So why did the company scrap it in the first place? It might have something to do with number two.

See, there was another thing that happened in 2004. On August 8, the DMB tour bus decided to empty its septic tank into the Chicago River. Now, that was bad enough coming from (and out of) a band with a long, public history of environmental advocacy. But the problem wasn’t that they basically pooped in a river. Quite the opposite, actually. The real problem was that they MISSED the river and dumped 800 pounds of DMB BM on a sightseeing boat passing underneath the Kinzie Street Bridge. All of a sudden, the passengers on the suddenly very-aptly-named poop deck were covered by a “downpour of foul-smelling, brownish-yellow slurry.”

The event came to be known as “Poopgate” because there apparently was only one scandal in all of human history. Anyway, in the end, the bus driver was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 150 hours of community service, but there was another casualty of Poopgate: the One Sweet Whirled flavor being taken off the shelves. The Dave Matthews Band suddenly being linked with a shower of poop didn’t help, but the final nail in that coffin was probably the fact that One Sweet Whirled contained “Caramel Swirls & Coffee Flavored Fudge Chips.” And while it is true that, like, 50% of people only eat ice cream when they’re in a shitty mood, there are limits to how much they want to think about human feces when having dessert, especially when that dessert, well, does sort of look like a brownish-yellow slurry.

However, the weird thing is that Ben & Jerry did bring the flavor back under the name “One Sweet World” in 2017, fudge chunks and all. Perhaps the larger lesson here is that it takes about 13 years for the world to get over any poop-related incidents on your part, so … I guess stop worrying about the time you crapped your pants in front of everyone in elementary school. Science says most people are over it now. There’s your inspiration for the day.

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Top Image: Ben & Jerry's, slgckgc/Wiki Commons