Kotas Reviews the Arbys Chocolate Covered Cherry Milkshake

As one strolls through life, one very early on encounters the concept of "good in theory, terrible in execution". We've all seen the results of this combination unfold in some spectacular failures (Apple Newton, I'm looking at you) that were doomed by the lackluster technology available when the idea was conceived. Others (such as the fall of Nokia from dominance in the cell phone industry to also ran), are the result of mismanagement or incompetence. Today's subject is a milkshake which is definitely good in theory, but how does it shake out in execution? Let's take a gander at the Arbys Chocolate Covered Cherry Milkshake.

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To me, this sounded like a wonderful combination that would go perfect in a milkshake. Chocolate and Cherry are two of the world's greatest flavors and even combine into chocolate covered cherries like some sort of...combine-y flavorsplosion of deliciousness. This milkshake isn't particularly beautiful (few milkshakes truly are), but I honestly expected a more brownish red for my chocolate covered cherry milkshake. The picture isn't great, but it is really more of a pink color with flecks of chocolate in it, and is surprisingly bright. I would have gone with a chocolate base for my chocolate and cherry milkshake, but what do I know? I'm not a foodgineer, after all.

Upon tasting it, my very first thought was "This is much more vanilla than I was expecting in my chocolate cherry milkshake". The cherry flavor is noticeable, but shares too much space with the vanilla base, with only a few hints of chocolate. My second thought is "This doesn't taste very good at all". It had this odd pseudo-alcohol flavor that I couldn't quite place, and it was jarring. What a curious concoction I had! I was very puzzled as I drank, and drinking it would alternate between "fine" and "a total chore". I had to continually fiddle with the straw to maintain any flow of shake, which had me further puzzled until I drank the thing down far enough to figure out the problem.

Can you see what the problem is?

The picture isn't super clear, but what that is is a giant mass of chocolate-ish fragments that collected at the bottom of the cup and kept clogging the straw. En masse they also tasted like cheap pseudo-chocolate as well. That is when it hit me. This isn't a chocolate and cherry milkshake mix, like I thought it would be. They LITERALLY threw cheap chocolate covered cherries (probably cherry cordials) into a vanilla milkshake and blended the whole mess together into one big mix up of failure. How do you fuck up chocolate and cherry, in a MILKSHAKE NO LESS? By not adapting your flavor combination to the medium. I enjoy chocolate covered cherries, but just throwing them into the milkshake mixer leads to a poor milkshake experience. 

On the FACE Rating System, this disaster gets 2 frownies. It is a wonderful idea, but the result of that idea is a boring, gloppy mess that does not deliver on its promises. This product should never have gotten out of the testing phases, but it is such a lackluster effort I would be surprised if it even had a testing phase. Don't bother with this one folks, especially if you enjoy chocolate covered cherries. You will just make yourself sad.