I mostly think of icy poles like medicine. The only time I buy one is as a remedy. Without a minor level of heat stress, dehydration or nostalgia-related malaise, I would never even think of them. Unless there’s a problem, they don’t exist. I say “mostly” because in some very rare circumstances, a particularly great icy pole will go into a different category in my head: the appropriate-for-all-times category of pleasurable experiences which also includes hot chips and the chance to catch things that unexpectedly fall off nearby surfaces. The only time I wouldn’t want any of that is if I’ve already just had a lot of it. I have had few of those icy poles in my life – most of them, weirdly, in New Zealand – but I’d very much like to find more.
What I want is an icy pole that’s easy to eat. I don’t want to bite into a block of ice that feels as though it’s been chiselled from a quarry, nor do I want one that breaks like the top of a creme brulee. I also want it to have some semblance of acidity and not be overly sweet, like a well-balanced lemonade, but frozen.
Four friends joined me for a taste test based on the brief that all icy poles had to be on sticks and dairy-free (dairy is a slippery slope to ice-cream). I tried as much as possible to pick citrus or “original” branded flavours, for consistency.
We blind-tasted 11 icy poles, scoring each product on taste and texture. Despite not being on a pole, as a point of comparison, we also included Calippo Original Lemon (a childhood favourite of mine) and Juicies Lemonade (frozen blocks of pure fruit juice that, with some fiddly knife work, can turn into a Zooper Dooper experience) – both scored highly. Bulla Icy Pops was excluded from the final article for brevity and because they tasted similar to Joey Pops but cost more and scored lower.
It was an hour and a half of surprises. Almost all the brands lacked sourness. Huge disappointment. I had assumed, incorrectly, the higher the fruit juice content, the better the product would be. I’d also assumed many brands would be far too sweet, wrong again.
In the end I found an icy pole to spend the rest of my life with. I just don’t really know if it’s an icy pole.
If it’s just a remedy you’re needing, any of these will do. Even the worst. On a hot summer’s day, every icy pole is good.
The best for adults and the best overall
Coles Mango Sorbet Mini Sticks, 6 x 60g, $6 ($1.66 per 100g), available from Coles
9/10
Forget the Hadron Collider and The Venice Tide Barrier: the world’s greatest engineering marvel is Coles’ mango sorbet on a stick. The ingredients list is mango puree plus a paragraph of ingredients that require research to identify, yet it has the pulpy, soft chew of a fresh mango. It smells and tastes like many mango sorbets I’ve had at well-known gelaterias, but these are $1 a pop. Despite that, there’s nothing hand-crafted about sorbet mini-sticks.
How would a mum and pop shop get the sorbet to stay on the stick with such immaculate stability? That’s a job for industry, not artisans. Is it an icy pole? I don’t know, but I love it.
The best value
Joey Pops, 10 x 40g, $2.99 ($0.75 per 100g), available from Aldi
8/10
Trying all three Joey Pops flavours was a whirlwind. I would recommend the raspberry to children and the most zealous fans of raspberry lollies. The cola I would recommend to anyone vaguely interested in cola. And the lemon was the best non-Calippo lemon product of the day – though still nowhere near sour enough for a product representing one of the most acidic naturally occurring foods on the planet.
All three taste like they’ve been sweetened with something otherworldly, but only “liquid sugar” is listed in the ingredients. Texturally, they’re the best version of a cheap icy pole, soft and velvety where others feel like crunching into toffee.
The best for kids
Paddle Pop Twister Mini, 6 x 50g, $8 ($2.66 per 100g) available from major supermarkets
7.5/10
You may know these as Cyclones; these are the mini versions. I know them as a product I’ll never buy again. Unless I’m with a kid. While many adults may think they smell paranormal, taste like depressed Starburst, and ponder how something with layers of cream can contain no dairy, kids will see a whirl of colour, cream and sugar wound up like an edible carnival ride.
The rest
Frosty Fruits Tropical, 8 x 65g, $9 ($1.73 per 100g), available from major supermarkets
7/10*
I’d never realised Frosty Fruits come in two layers. An outside layer that’s softer, fruity and more acidic, and a low-flavour inner layer that’s so dense it squeaks against your teeth. Together, it’s a much fruitier experience than most other icy poles we tried, but the problem is they’re more Just Juice than fresh juice. Props to them for being one of the few brands with the courage to add real acidity though.
*Note the score is based on Frosty Fruits 50% less sugar version, which I bought by accident. I later did a separate blind taste test with Frosty Fruits 50% less sugar and the regular Tropical flavour and was unable to reliably tell the difference – they’re similarly sweet, one just uses a sorbitol-sugar mix instead of all sugar.
Peters Original Twin Pole Lemon Lime, 8 x 68g, $8 ($1.48 per 100g), available from major supermarkets
5.5/10
When we tried to split them, every Twinpole broke apart like an iceberg in a climate change documentary – huge chunks falling off without regard for my emotions or shorts. Frustrating for me, but potentially devastating for a young child. The chunk that remains loyal to the stick has the density and texture of a standard-edition ice cube.
There’s a reason I never fish an ice block out of a cocktail to crunch on – it’s scary. “So hard, actually kind of hurt my mouth,” one reviewer wrote. This is for licking and sucking only, which is a pity because those methods chill your tongue and limit your ability to taste, and you’ll need all your taste buds engaged if you want to pick up anything other than a very basic lime cordial flavour.
Pure Pops All Natural Pine Lime Coconut, 4 x 80g, $13 ($4.06 per 100g), available from Woolworths
5.5/10
Another extremely dense, hard icy pole, but with a far more interesting flavour profile. Due to the layered design, you end up eating them like a two-scoop ice-cream – there’s only one or two bites where the flavours combine. The top flavour is like licking a frozen pineapple popper while the coconut underneath is rich, aromatic, toasty and slightly grainy, as if there are bits of toasted coconut partially blended in.
Neither are particularly sweet nor sour. As one reviewer wrote, it’s like the top is designed for kids but the bottom for adults. “Together, perfect for a 20-year-old,” they wrote. Maybe if the flavours split vertically like a Weiss bar, rather than horizontally like an exquisite corpse, then Pure Pops would appeal to all ages.
Stackers Tropical, 8 x 66.25g, $4.99 ($0.94 per 100g), available from Aldi
5/10
A Zack Snyder studio icy pole – I love looking at it, but the more time passes the less I care. One reviewer described the top layer as like licking a vitamin C tablet, another wrote the bottom layer tasted like lipstick. I was too confronted by the fact all the layers tasted like water that’s been sitting in a garden hose for four hours. They’re also so dense, particularly the centre, I had to use my molars to break it apart.
Twisted Healthy Treats Licks Splash Tropical, 6 x 63g, $7.5 ($1.98 per 100g), available from Coles
5/10
It smells like apricots and tastes like a mash of stone fruit and mango. One of the reviewers described this as the adult Frosty Fruit but instead of being more interesting, it’s just less enjoyable. My scorecard had “low sweet, low sour, low fun”. Others wrote “unfiltered water vibes” and “seems slightly fermenty, but in a bad way”. Only Pure Pops (71%) had a higher juice percentage than Licks (53%) but when you have so much of one ingredient, you’re relying on that ingredient to be good.
Peters Icy Pole Lemonade, 8 x 75g, $5 ($0.83 per 100g), available from major supermarkets
4.5/10
Outside the Coles Mango Sorbet round, few of us ever finished an icy pole. For that reason, I’d placed a big discard bowl in the middle of the table. During the Peters Icy Pole round, one reviewer hurled their half-eaten, leftover icy pole into the bowl where it hit another icy pole (a Pure Pop, from memory), causing it to shatter.
The Peters ice block was unscathed in the encounter. Trying to bite into one of these feels like expressing hatred towards your teeth. After several rounds of uninspiring lemon-flavoured icy poles, then a few licks of these, one reviewer wrote: “Is there any real lemon in these lemonade icy poles?” The ingredients list confirmed what we knew in our hearts: the answer was no.
