
When Dairy Queen introduced the Blizzard in 1985, it was a big step forward in ice cream shop innovation. Before, you had hand-dipped cones and soft serve, sundaes and splits. If your shop knew what it was doing, you might be able to swing a chocolate- or sprinkle-covered cone, and there was always the milkshake. Blizzards changed all that, blending popular sundae toppings—toppings with name brands, even—with Dairy Queen’s signature soft serve. You didn’t just have to have a spoonful of Oreos on your vanilla ice cream anymore. Now, thanks to the magic of the DQ Blizzard machine, you could have a spoonful of Oreos in your ice cream.
Thirty-five years later, the DQ Blizzard has been ripped off and blown up, with the Warren Buffett–owned chain now offering no fewer than 15 Blizzard options at all times, plus seasonal options and off-menu selections. And while Blizzards are inherently customizable—you can add mint flavoring to just about any of the options, for instance, or make any of the Blizzards with either chocolate or twist ice cream—the classics remain classics for a reason. Right?
Spurred by the knowledge that we could ostensibly be paid to consume an insane amount of ice cream in an ill-advisedly short amount of time, The Takeout set out to taste and rank all of Dairy Queen’s available Blizzards. Using an extremely scientific metric, we calculated each item’s tastiness and/or grossness on a 20-point scale, and our resulting list is in this slideshow, in ascending order of greatness. Please feel free to tell us we’re wrong in the comments and on Twitter.