What company makes ice cream sandwiches?

Whether it’s chocolatey and creamy or kind of cardboard-y, there’s something fantastic about an old-school-style ice cream sandwich—the kind made from vanilla ice cream and two chocolate wafers that stick to your fingers. For us, ice cream sandwiches conjure memories of having summers off, gathering with family, and chasing down the ice cream truck as a kid—or an adult.

These days, your local supermarket, bodega, and gas station all have freezers filled with ice cream sandwiches in a variety of shapes, sizes, and flavors. Despite those delicious variations, we still love the traditional ice cream sandwich—and not all are created (or taste) equal. So which one do we love the best? We decided to find out.

To find our favorites, we tasted 12 nationally available old-school-style ice cream sandwiches (including a few dairy-free options). We specifically looked at ones that could be found easily in stores, because when you want an ice cream sandwich, you probably want it right away.

Ultimately, we discovered that even if someone handed us the worst ice cream sandwich, we’d still eat it. But here’s the ice cream we’d scream for the loudest (grouped by dairy and non-dairy options).

Our favorite dairy-based ice cream sandwiches

These are the real deal, with ingredients to match. The Whole Foods ice cream sandwich is one of the few candidates we tested that uses ice cream made with egg yolks, resulting in a deliciously sweet, custard-like texture. It was also the only sandwich we tested that we thought had equally delicious ice cream and wafers. The texture is soft and has a nice balance, with a fudgy cookie and a creamy ice cream that oozes vanilla flavor. One tester described it as a “classic ice cream sandwich,” although we would say it’s even better, since it doesn’t taste like cardboard.

Target’s house-brand ice cream sandwiches offer a surprisingly delicious bang for your buck, making them perfect for backyard barbecues and kids’ birthday parties, as well as just to have on hand all summer long. In taste and price, these are almost interchangeable with Walmart’s Great Value sandwiches. But because of their lighter, airier flavor, the Favorite Days edged out the Walmart sandwiches. They look like a textbook old-school ice cream sandwich and feature a sweet, soft cookie and creamy vanilla ice cream. One tester noted that they had an almost custard-like taste, which is strange because there aren’t any eggs in the list of ingredients.

Walmart’s Great Value ice cream sandwiches are a little harder, denser, and slightly less-appealing-looking than Target’s Favorite Day offerings. But the Great Value sandwiches are still, well, a pretty great value. These ice cream sandwiches have a decent flavor, with a good amount of sweetness. What knocked them down a peg from the Favorite Day sandwiches is that the Great Values are slightly more bland, and the ice cream’s yellow color (which comes from food coloring, not egg yolks) is a little off-putting.

If you like a high ice cream–to–cookie ratio, this is the sandwich for you. The FatBoy lives up to its name, housing the most ice cream of any of the sandwiches we tested. (And if you want less ice cream, there’s always the FatBoy Junior.) This sandwich’s cookie is super-thin, and the taste is negligible due to the overwhelming volume of ice cream. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since we found the ice cream to be creamy with a nice vanilla flavor. However, those cookies basically serve as a wrapper, existing more so that you aren’t just walking around with a giant fistful of ice cream rather than as an equal part of the eating experience.

This is the pinnacle of an adult ice cream sandwich. And by that, we mean adults will know to hoard these in a special place in the freezer, since there are only four of them. Also, unless your kid has a sophisticated palate, they probably won’t appreciate the tiny flecks of vanilla bean swirled throughout the ice cream. Those flecks gave this sandwich the strongest vanilla taste of any of the sandwiches we tested (though it definitely had cookies-and-cream notes). Multiple testers commented that this one tasted like real, good-quality ice cream—almost as if someone took a big scoop and put it between two cookies (not all of the sandwiches we tasted were filled with ice cream you’d want to eat on its own). Alden’s also makes Old School Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches, but some of our testers couldn’t find them locally. The ones who did try them noticed the ice cream was different than that of the round sammies: It didn’t have vanilla bean flecks, and the addition of egg yolks gave it more of a classic custard flavor. The sandwiches were also a bit sweeter.

Our favorite dairy-free ice cream sandwiches

With a smooth, dense texture and tender cookies, the dairy-free So Delicious sandwich was a favorite among vegan and non-vegan testers alike. However, we must warn you: If you don’t like coconut, you will not like this treat. There’s no escaping that coconut taste, yet we didn’t think it was overpowering. (There’s an almond milk option too, but we didn’t test it.) We would have liked a bit more ice cream in these, since it didn’t stretch to all four corners of the cookies. Then again, we could have eaten this ice cream in pint form and been totally happy.

We found the soy-based Tofutti Cuties to be the closest to a dairy-style ice cream sandwich in looks and texture. But they just don’t have the same taste: One tester said the flavor was sweet and slightly artificial, and a few others mentioned that these tasted overwhelmingly like cookies (specifically, for one of our testers, graham crackers). These are a go-to for many vegans, though, since they’re widely available and inexpensive. And they are the only dairy-free sandwiches we tried that don’t include palm oil, which is something people may appreciate due to sustainability issues related to the use of palm oil.

This version of Alden’s Round Sammie isn’t quite the same as the dairy-based one we tagged as a favorite, but it does have the same shape and vanilla bean flecks. The cookie is a bit lighter, and the ice cream isn’t as creamy—perhaps because this sandwich, rather than being coconut- or soy-based like the others, is more a mishmash of fats and starches (coconut oil, oat flour, brown rice, and pea protein, to name a few). But the Alden’s sandwich does have more of a vanilla flavor than our other two dairy-free candidates. And out of the three dairy-free treats we tried, this one had the most ice cream—it may actually be too much for little ones. Like that of its dairy-infused counterpart, this one’s price is more in the adult-treat realm.

Other ice cream sandwiches we tried

We would do a lot for a Klondike bar, but considerably less for this slightly flat-tasting ice cream sandwich. It’s not bad, but it is disappointing, especially when you consider the brand recognition and price. We wouldn’t exactly throw one of these on the ground, but they definitely had a thinner, blander, more cardboard-like cookie than our top picks. And the ice cream tasted more like whipped cream, with not much vanilla flavor.

When the first ingredient on a box is “dairy product solids,” you know you’re in for something special. Unfortunately, that something is a not-so-delicious ice cream sandwich. Don’t get us wrong—it hit all of the necessary flavors you might imagine being dialed in by a research and development team, and none of these sandwiches went to waste in our testing. But we found Nestlé’s ice cream lacking in creaminess and volume. Also, in two different test packages, every single sandwich looked like it had been run over by an ice cream truck. For sammies that cost nearly as much as some made with premium ingredients—and priced more than double our better-tasting budget picks—these just don’t seem worth it.

Even though they’re labeled “Mini,” these sandwiches were a substantial bite of, well, something. We’re not sure what, though. Out of the box, each sandwich looked pale (one tester called it “sickly”) and had a taste to match. We thought we may have gotten a bad batch, but we found several online reviews describing a similar experience (in a less-flattering way). Overall, these just didn’t have a lot of flavor. But if we had to pin it down, according to one tester, this sandwich “tastes like ice with a sugar aftertaste.”

Despite their pleasant name, these things won’t make you a lot of friends. From a company that’s best known for slinging ice cream, this sandwich was a disappointment. The cookie looked dark, rich, and chocolatey, but it was too dense and too dry, and it had an artificial aftertaste. The ice cream didn’t taste like anything, and it was more like whipped-cream frosting or Cool Whip in texture, but not in taste (one tester described it as being “foamy”).

How we picked and tested

First, we polled Wirecutter staffers on their favorite old-school ice cream sandwiches, which we defined as being vanilla ice cream between two chocolate wafer cookies. That meant no Chipwiches or It’s-It treats, although both were shouted out (quite loudly) as being staff picks. (We also had a staff-wide argument about whether or not Oreos counted as wafer cookies.)

Next, we scoured eight local grocery stores (in Massachusetts), while also using product websites to keep tabs on availability in a few other regions around the country. When we want an ice cream sandwich, we want it pretty immediately, so we disqualified anything that was available only in limited regions or through mail-order.

Once we had a list, we went shopping, and we found that a few of our original 19 candidates were not so readily available. One company (Blue Bunny) sold everything but ice cream sandwiches in our area; another one’s sandwiches (Carvel) couldn’t be found (even by emailing customer service); and yet another (Turkey Hill) had discontinued its traditional ice cream sandwich offering altogether.

We ended up with nine standard ice cream sandwiches and three dairy-free options. Testers included Rachel Cericola, Wirecutter senior staff writer and avid ice cream sandwich fan; supervising editor Marilyn Ong and senior editor Marguerite Preston, both from Wirecutter’s kitchen team; and Tracy Vence, a Wirecutter supervising editor and vegan. Each of us also recruited friends and family to participate in testing, when possible. Two staffers are based in New York City, one lives in Massachusetts, and one is located in Atlanta, which did influence availability. A few of us tested with brands obscured (this wasn’t always possible, particularly when testers were tasting alone and had to unwrap their own sandwiches). And everyone took notes on the shape, taste, and texture of both the ice cream and the cookies. We also considered prices and ingredients.