It's that time again. Weather is getting nicer, summer is around the corner, and it's time to see which convenience store ice cream will be you for the 2010. This year we hit up C-Store, as it's the closest to the office and has a fine selection.

So here's 10 or 11 or so ice creams taste-tested for your edification. Let's watch!

Please note: As our Chinese-language reading skills showed no improvement year-on-year, we are again relying on nicknames for these ice creams. Refer to the pictures. And as for prices, they range in the 6 jiao to 6 rmb range. We didn't really keep track. Ice cream was to be had.

Vanilla Chocolate Tiger

With an eye to the visual, Vanilla Chocolate Tiger is your basic vanilla, chocolate mix, albeit arranged according to stylistic appeal and flare. The chocolate is relegated to the exterior layer, and it's all vanilla when you get into it.

Tastes:

Not as good as it looks. I respect the emphasis on visual presentation but it didn't really carry through into the taste of the thing, which came across as perfunctory and a bit... I don't know... cardboard-like or something. Feels like the other ice creams on the list have better quality vanilla and / or chocolate, so if you don't care about the looks, Vanilla Chocolate Tiger just doesn't offer much.

Verdict:

We shan't meet again this summer, Vanilla Chocolate Tiger.

Frenchie Vienetta

The Frenchie Vienetta is a light, elegant, classy, breezy, little bit of wonderful. A classic vanilla is dusted with cocoa powder and layered with thin, sprayed chocolate. You can't really go wrong with Frenchie Vienetta be it delivered to your lips via stick or spoon.

Tastes:

Like important, conceptual sex between two intellectuals in a quaint, rustic apartment overlooking Champs-Élysées. Intimate, romantic, arty sex on an old, art deco French sofa, art books tumbling carelessly to the floor, a Fellini movie on mute in the background. A record player crackles. Playing old jazz from the '30s. Maybe some Billie Holiday. It's sunset, with the oranges and reds cascading in through the window like strands of wheat, and here we are, making sweet, fleeting love under the soft, flickering glow of candle sticks in empty wine bottles.

The world melts away. They say these moments in life are impermanent, and we two lovers are like two hands searching for one another in the darkness. I draw a spoonful of Frenchie Vienetta to your lips and we ponder the existence of God and Sartre.

After the love making we retire to the bathroom to bathe together, talk about our favorite actors and novelists, and write lines of poetry in the steam in the mirror.

Verdict:

These are good.

Milo Chocolate Cup

I gather Milo is British for cocoa. Which is like hot chocolate. This is just a big old cup of hot chocolate-tasting chocolate ice cream in a cup with a sprinkling of cocoa powder on top. Simplistic British whimsy. It's my understanding that they take their chocolate very seriously in Britain. You can really taste the Industrial Revolution in it, I find. British chocolate tastes like faded empire and national holidays themed around historical figures from the Middle Ages. There's also some soccer player on the cup. Soccer, I don't know too much about. This guy apparently plays for the "Milo" soccer team.

Tastes:

A six-year-old's birthday party. Ice cream touches your mouth and you can hear the squealing of happy kids in your head as they rip through wrapping paper, pass plates of cake around the room and fight over the Nintendo. It's not unpleasant. Just a very children's flavor of ice cream.

Verdict:

Quite good. And it's a large, children's portion. There’s enough here to fill you up and get all over your face as well. When I watch a Harry Potter movie again -- and it happens fairly often -- I might do some of this up.

Lame Pea Guy

Subbing in for Corn Guy in this year's list is Lame Pea Guy, which is basically another vegetable-based ice cream confection delivered at people looking for healthy frozen alternatives. It's basically exactly what you think it is. Puréed peas, frozen into the shape of an ice cream.

Tastes:

Horrid. Offends with its abhorrent, base, vegetable blandness, and then comes on strong on the back-end with -- WTF -- taste of peas. Serious. It tastes like cold mashed up peas or something. Sweetened slightly, yes, but you never forget that you're eating just a bunch of mashed-up peas. It offers an all-around annoying experience. And it lingers. It's like licking a fucking sock, man.

Verdict:

It's like licking a sock.

Magnum

Yes, the Magnum. Clearly the dominant ice cream brand on the market today in that they offer a Haagen Daaz-esque experience at a fraction of the cost. There are, of course, many varieties of Magnum -- light chocolate, dark chocolate, caramel, vanilla, with nuts, no nuts -- but we went with their "Belgian blend" this time.

Tastes:

Yeah, Magnums are good. I can't deny that. It's a thick and rich ice cream treat, satisfying and classy, they fill you up without bloating you and making you fill sick. There's no lingering aftertaste that you get with some of the others on this list, and it's basically a mature option for people who like an ice cream once in a while, to wrap up a good date or something. Or at the end of a good shopping day on Huaihai Lu. Very Shanghai.

Verdict:

I don't like Magnums because everyone else likes Magnums. I don't like them because they're popular. I'm one of those guys.

Cornetto

The other big brand in the convenience store ice cream market, Cornettos have the system down pat. They come to us on the end of a lot of ice cream research and clearly they're boasting a system that works for them. There's a lot of variations on the central theme -- ice cream in a waffle cone, with that little delicious bit of chocolate at the end of the cone. Strawberry, blueberry, chocolate, nuts, vanilla -- you know what these are all about.

Tastes:

These were our favorites last year, and we went with the strawberry for the first Cornetto of 2010. And you know what? Disappointing. Disappointing. All the elements were there, it was firing on all cylinders, but it felt on the whole overly processed and with no real heart. It could be that we just tried one that had been hanging out in the store freezer for a year or so, but it was mushy, bland, and offered no real zest. Shocker, really.

Verdict:

I think Cornetto needs to change it up a bit. Show some pizazz. Take a chance. It's the year 2010 -- let's shake things up. Let's move some units. Maybe a bunch of nuts at the bottom, or something. Something different or untested would be welcome. Win me back, Cornetto. You obviously know what you're doing but its just same old, same old right now.

Peach Yogurt Dude (Stomped?)

Peach Yogurt Dude did not travel well. But it's basically a milk / frozen yogurt-based ice cream treat with chunks of peach in it. Pretty simple, really. And yet... And yet.

Tastes:

This little fucker did not age well, I can tell you that. Time had not been kind to Peach Yogurt Dude, sitting as it probably did at the bottom of the C Store freezer for a few years. Basically it tasted like slightly-off milk with hard chunks of tasteless peach. It was not pleasurable. It tasted like licking an old person's face.

Verdict:

Nope. Tastes like old persons.

Little Puddin' Guy

I think this ice cream is for babies. It's basically convenience store milk with about a pound of sugar dumped into it and frozen into a tiny, little ice cream bar. Literally, I think it's for babies. Weird.

Tastes:

I quite liked this one actually. It was simple and unassuming. Small and compact. Nice-tasting milky vanilla. It's a sweet little guy, that's for sure.

Verdict:

I don't know. I liked it, but can this really be me for 2010? I think it's for babies. And that stirs up connotations of breast milk. And wadded-up Kleenex, and gross stains on shirts, and mindless, shrieking tedium at 3am. Irksome. Even the cow on the package looks slightly matronly to me. It might all just be too weird for me. I'm like 24. I'm not at the right point in my life for this.

Also, I find babies utterly revolting.

Vanilla Black Rice Brick

Milk-based with some kind of black rice interior thing. Kind of like a "gross moon cake" rendered into an ice cream treat. There was some other stuff going down at the bottom but I didn't even make it that far to figure out what it was. It would have been something that I would have found confusing. Like some kind of fruit that we don't even have a name for in English. Probably blog-worthy though.

Tastes:

One part Thai dessert, one part healthy astronaut treat, but entirely bogus. I don't know. It kind of tasted like it was challenging me to barf. Black rice... come on now. What's wrong with "some fucking caramel"? What’s wrong with nougat or fudge?

Verdict:

No, man.

Grape Sex Object

Grape Sex Object is yet another milk-based yogurtey thing, but this time the fruit is grape, and it's been moulded into the shape of a sex object. I think milk-based ice creams are what's "in" these days. There's a lot of them out there. Who gets these? Fashionistas? Fauxhemians? Chicks from Hong Kong? Dudes who date chicks from Hong Kong? I don't know. But yeah, look at this smutty little thing. It's turning me on a bit.

Tastes:

Yeah, I liked suckin' it. It was pretty good actually. Feels like this is a higher quality product than some of the other milk-based ice creams out there. It sort of tasted sweet, but not too, too sweet, and the grapes in the thing actually tasted a bit like grapes. I can support someone going with this for their 2010 ice cream. It's a) a little sexy looking and b) not totally horrendous.

Verdict:

Good for exhibitionists maybe.

Luscious Walnut Benz

This is a MAN's ice cream, and there's no two ways about it. Dark chocolate covering, serious, rich vanilla interiors, walnut and nougat at the top inside and creamy chocolate on the bottom.

Tastes:

Rich, important, amoral, and coldly exploitative of loopholes in international tariff and trading laws. This is the confection of a corporate baron, hobbies include clear-cutting in the Amazon, strip mining in the Congo, and fine whiskey that only people with money seriously care about. It looks expensive and it tastes expensive. Biting into this ball breaker, I felt transported to some shadowy corner office on the top floor of a sky-scraper, chomping savagely on the nougat -- thinking evil deeds and huge cash windfalls.

Verdict:

It's just too much. Too, too much. Very delicious indeed but it feels like ill-gotten gains. It tastes exploitative of someone, somewhere, somehow. And I've been over-educated into a standard, effusive, shallow liberalism that gets offended at cold excesses like this.

****

WINNER:

Frenchie Vienetta baby. J'adore. That's me for 2010. Look for me in the park, readin' my Foucault and blasting up one of these bad boys on the regular.

****

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