Brian Nagele
Take a delicious trip through the coolest delights to beat the heat. Popsicles are the king of frozen treats, and I’m here to show you how to enjoy the ultimate in cold bliss. Explore the best-in-class Popsicle brands that turn everyday events into icy festivities. This piece is your pass to a world where every lick is a joyful getaway, from the timeless flavors that bring back fond memories of childhood to the cutting-edge sensations that push the limits of frozen ecstasy. Discover the frozen paradise that has been specially selected for you, whether your craving is for creamy bliss or fruity bursts. Prepare to redefine refreshment and satisfy your summertime needs like never before with the top Popsicle brands available.
Outshine Fruit Bars
Outshine Fruit Bars is a company dedicated to all-natural products for refreshing snacks that are good for your body and the environment. They use real fruit from non-GMO farms, letting the fruit act as the sweetener and coloring agent for each delicious product. Outshine Fruit Bars have a varied line of popsicles with both fruit and milk bases. I’m a fan of their Mexican-inspired tajin and mango bar, made with real mango with a ribbon of spicy chili powder to make each bite a vibrant balance of sweet and spicy. For a more indulgent dessert, I recommend the creamy coconut bar that’s dipped in dark chocolate!
Good Pop Watermelon Agave
Founded by a former University of Texas student Daniel Goetz during a hot Austin summer, Good Pop is a healthier take on popsicles. Inspired by Mexican-style natural fruit popsicles called paletas, Goetz began designing a line of organic whole fruit pops, sourcing ingredients responsibly through fair trade practices. You won’t see any chemical or synthetic ingredients in Good Pop popsicles. They have a long line of flavors that are certified organic, Non-GMO, and made with a small list of ingredients. The watermelon Agave pops is simply watermelon with a light drizzle of agave. In my opinion, it is perfect in its simplicity.
Van Holten’s Pickle Ice
Van Holten’s is a longstanding pickle company, founded by Dutch immigrant Jerry Van Holten in Milwaukee in 1898. Van Holten’s single-handedly invented the pickle-in-a-pouch concept of selling individually wrapped sour pickles in their brine. They’ve channeled their innovative spirit to bring us Pickle Ice, which is frozen pickle brine in a push-pop format. While this might make some of you cringe, pickle juice has long been lauded for its electrolyte properties. Many athletes drink pickle juice before a race to load up on sodium, thus preventing muscle cramps. Van Holten’s Pickle ice takes pickle juice a step further by adding a full electrolyte profile to keep you hydrated and cramp-free.
Popsicle Variety Pack
Popsicle isn’t just the name of fruity frozen snacks, but the original company that founded them. The popsicle variety pack is the ultimate taste of nostalgia. If you came of age anytime during the past century, you’ve surely had a long cylindrical popsicle, or fought over which flavor you wanted. The best part about Popsicle variety packs is the variety, of course. Each pack comes with three to four different flavors. I always went for the yellow lemonade flavor or the green lime, but now, there are more inventive flavors like blue raspberry and watermelon wonder. You can get a different variety pack each week.
Otter Pops
Otter Pops has been a cheerful and colorful natural fruit pop brand since 1970, distinguishing itself by assigning a cartoon character to represent each flavor. I was highly entertained reading each character’s backstory while I delighted in the flavor they represented. Otter Pops have a pop for the whole family, whether you want a brightly colored or all-natural popsicle. They have the classic colored popsicle variety pack with seven different flavors, including Poncho Punch, and Orphan Orange. They also have an all-natural, colorless variety pack using whole fruit and water. Apart from the delicious taste of the popsicles, I was most impressed by the description of each flavor’s character which is a lesson in anthropology or sociology.
Original Bomb Pops
Bomb Pops are a staple of American summer cookouts and July Fourth celebrations. These pops are the bomb, both figuratively and literally. They come in the shape of missiles, with a long shaft and flared bottom edges. The original bomb pops are stripped red, white, and blue, each color delivering a different flavor. The red is cherry, the white is lime, and the blue is raspberry. These are both delicious and have a fun texture that manages to melt down efficiently and drip-free. These are my go-to popsicles, whether it’s July Fourth, Veterans Day, or Memorial Day. It’s hard to beat three flavors in one!
Fla-Vor-Ice Freezer Pops
Fla-Vor-Ice freezer pops are as ingenious as they are delicious. They founded the concept of the melt-less freezer pops, consisting of frozen fruit popsicles inside long plastic pouches that you eat by pushing the pop up through the open top of the plastic bag. This way, the melted popsicle transforms into a deliciously cold juice that you slurp out of a self-contained bag. Fla-Vor-Ice freezer pops are the perfect drip-proof snack, so you can hand them to your kids before a long car ride without worrying about cleaning sticky fruit juice off the back seats. They come in six different flavors. I’m partial to the tropical punch flavor.
Nestle Push-Up Pops
You may know Nestle for their chocolate dairy products, but their dessert know-how has transcended into the fruity realm. The Nestle Push-Up Pops are drip-free, employing a clever method by which you use the popsicle stick to push the frozen fruity cylinder up through a hard, carton surrounding. The whimsical, psychedelic pattern of these push-up pop’s cylindrical containers is a big hit with kids. These pops come in orange, grape, and cherry variety packs. My favorite part about these pops is their creamy texture as Nestle makes them using fruit sherbet. I’m a huge fan of orange sherbet, so their orange flavor is my favorite.
Popsicle Scribblers
Popsicle partnered with Crayola to bring you a double dose of childhood nostalgia with these cute, crayon-shaped popsicles. Popsicle scribblers use natural coloring to create a multi-colored popsicle shaped like a colored pencil. Despite its multicolored façade, each popsicle has one flavor, and they come in a variety pack of four different flavors. You know you’re getting a classic and iconic product with popsicles as the original founders of their namesake treat. These scribblers are around the same size as the classic popsicles, apart from the pointed cone-shaped top. I enjoyed the razzmatazz raspberry flavor. It had the perfect balance of tang and sweetness.
Popsicle Firecrackers Ice Pops
Popsicle may be the original fruit pop company, but they may have pulled a fast one on their competitors with these veritable copies of the Bomb Pops I mentioned above. They come in the same patriotic red-white-and-blue stripes with the same lime, cherry, and blue raspberry flavors. Firecracker Ice Pops are a bit thicker than the original Bomb pops. They claim to use natural coloring, and each pop only has 35 calories. They may have one-upped the competition with a little more bang for your buck but co-opting another brand’s signature popsicle is a low blow in my opinion. If you don’t feel loyal to a particular popsicle brand, the firecrackers and bomb pops are interchangeable.
Annie’s Organic Fruit Juice Pops
Annie’s is one of my favorite packaged food producers, offering everything from refried beans to frozen pizzas. Founded by Annie Withey in 1989, Annie’s Organic is a pioneer for healthy, organic, clean eating made easy. Annie’s partners with organic, eco-friendly farms and ensures that everything from packaging to shipment incurs the smallest possible carbon footprint. Annie’s Organic Cheerful Cherry fruit juice pops use organic, non-GMO cherry juice for a wholesome treat that is as good for your body as it is for the planet. They may be a little pricier than the other brands, but the quality and mission are well worth the expense.
365 Everyday Value — Strawberry Fruit Bars
365 is Whole Foods’ signature brand. Whole Foods is a specialty and organic grocer that’s always championed, well, whole foods! While Amazon recently purchased Whole Foods, changing the format of their grocery stores, the 365 Everyday Value brand upholds the standards of quality instilled from the beginning. True to their name, these fruit bars are like biting into a frozen piece of fruit. They are whole, USDA-certified organic strawberries ground with a bit of water and sweetener. I love that you get whole pieces of strawberries with each bite. It’s a texture profile that is sophisticated and fun to eat.
Turkey Hill Fruit & Cream Bars
Turkey Hill is a historic dairy farm in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country that started serving glass bottles of milk to neighboring farms and counties over 85 years ago. The dairy began producing various food products using old Dutch family recipes. Now you can get anything from ice cream to frozen dinners from Turkey Hill. Turkey Hill offers a decadent line of fruit and cream bars, using their signature dairy cream and whole, natural fruit. They offer four fruit-cream flavors including, coconut, orange, strawberry, and strawberry lemonade. Coconut is creamy and buttery on its own, so adding dairy cream to the mix makes it especially luxurious and my favorite flavor.
Deebee’s Organics SuperFruit Freezie Freezer Pops
Founded by a female health researcher, Dr. Dionne Laslo-Baker, Deebee’s is a company committed to ensuring a chemical-free, clean, and all-natural product. Dr. Laslo-Baker specialized in maternal toxicology and was astounded by the toxic chemicals in the food we eat, thus inspiring her to launch a line of desserts that are vegan, chemical-free, organic, and non-GMO. Deebee’s offers two different variety packs, using superfruit combinations that are full of nutrients as well as flavor. You can pick between a tropical superfruit variety pack with flavors like peach passionfruit and coconut pineapple. They also have a classic superfruit freezie with antioxidant-rich berry flavors. My favorite is the pomegranate and blueberry freezer pops.
Big Stick
Yet another product from the Popsicle company, Big Sticks offers a heartier portion of popsicle per stick. They come in various flavors, shaped in large uniform cylinders that are about one and a half the size of the original popsicle. The original popsicles always leave you wanting more, so Popsicle decided to give it to you with this delicious product. Big Stick comes in variety packs with berry flavors. They also recently came out with a cherry pineapple swirl Big Stick that has won my vote. It reminds me of those old-school pineapple upside-down cakes with maraschino cherries filling each pineapple ring.
Halo Top Pineapple Fruit Pops
Halo Top is famous for its line of guilt-free ice cream, engineering a low-calorie, low-sugar, and high-protein take on ice cream that tastes just as good. Along with dozens of ice cream and sorbet flavors, Halo Top created a line of guilt-free fruit pops that are low in calories and added sugar. The Pineapple fruit pops have 65% less sugar than the competitors and only 40 calories per popsicle. They are a bright and cheerful yellow color with a concentrated pineapple flavor.
