Pop It Like It's Frozen
It's official. The Posh Popsicle Wars are here.
In the last few months, two serious contenders have 'popped' up in the city, both of them offering premium lollies, promising lots of pure fruit and few unhealthy additions. This post will be a standalone overview of the second mover, with a follow up side by side flavour comparison coming towards the end of this post.
Ice Pop Co popped up on my Facebook feed (as these things tend to do). It's a takeaway only place, with delivery in 2 hours. As one does, we ordered one of each flavour they had available to try the offering. Naturally, having been to Lush Crush earlier, whether we liked it or not we were comparing the offering to that. As a result, you will see me benchmark to Lush Crush throughout this post.
Delivery came through as promised, in two hours. The first thing I noticed was the packaging, nice and colourful - the paper bags were really robust and overall gave a really 'professional' vibe to the offering. The delivery had been done in one of those ice boxes packed with ice, so everything was nice and chilly when we got it.
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| The packaging |
Ice Pop Co has, at time of writing, a stable of 5 popsicles and 4 creamsicles. Again, comparing to Lush Crush, I feel that its advantage Ice Pop Co when it comes to the popsicles, while the playing field is much more level on the creamsicle front. This is primarily due to two factors:
- Flavour intensity: The popsicle flavours at Lush Crush are a bit muted, while the ones at Ice Pop Co are a lot more intense. Lush Crush, for me, is meant to be eaten, not sucked upon, as a good pull leaves you with a mouthful of ice flavour, while for Ice Pop the flavour intensity continues to deliver throughout
- Texture: I have found Lush Crush popsicles to have quite a pronounced crystalline texture, whereas the Ice Pop ones are significantly smoother. This makes taking a bite out of the latter much more satisfying.
So, on both the taking a big pull and a big bite fronts, the Ice Pop popsicle delivers. On the creamsicle front, the textures and flavour intensity is pretty comparable (although again Lush Crush is more crystalline and Ice Pop Co is smoother, but not as pronounced here). However, Lush Crush keeps coming up with new flavours, which is a good way to get people to keep coming back.
At my home, and my office, we are big fans of Ice Pop Co, and have ordered more times in the past few weeks than I would care to admit. While it doesn't have a physical outlet (other than the odd stall here and there), I am a big fan of the intensity of flavours. On the other hand, Lush Crush has the physical location, meaning you can 'go there' with family or friends, and make it a bit of an outing. They are also experimenting with new flavours more, which is great. Overall, I have hung my colours to the Ice Pop Co mast. This comparison will be polarising, I know, but hey, what's a blog that doesn't evoke a few strong responses?
What follows is a table with a quick review of each of the flavours (both Ice Pop and Lush Crush) that I have tried, and a comparison where they both have the same offering. Please note that Lush Crush has introduced a couple of new flavours recently, which I haven't tried - so those aren't included in this table.
Some images of Ice Pop Co's offerings follow:
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| Watermelon |
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| Coconut |
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| Chocolate |
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