The Guilty Pleasure: S'mores Frappuccino Where to Get It: Starbucks Price: $4.45 for a tall (Do you really need to go bigger than that?) What it Really Costs: Those childhood memories of sitting around a campfire.
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Summer is here, and we all know what that means: Corporations changing their marketing tactics to suck extra money out of consumers by appealing to their desire to celebrate warmer weather.
Cue Starbucks' new S'mores Frappuccino, an iced take on everyone's favorite summertime campfire dessert.
To be fair, s'mores-flavored food and drink would be more appropriate in the Valley during the spring or fall months (because you really don't want to sit by a fire in Phoenix in May). But at least the Bucks didn't launch the drink during monsoon season, when campfires, bonfires, and fire pits inevitably get ruined by humidity, haboobs, giant attacking grasshoppers, and evening thunderstorms.
Like most S'bux drinks, the S'mores Frappuccino can be considered a coffee drink on roughly the same level that eggdrop soup can be considered an omelet. In short, not at all. It's more like a s'mores-themed ice cream sundae made with a scoop of coffee-flavored ice cream. Of course, if you're ordering a flavored Frappuccino, you're probably looking for a drinkable frozen dessert served in a plastic cup and not a real coffee drink. That's totally understandable, and the s'mores Frappuccino is a perfectly good version of just that.
There's a giant glob of chocolate/marshmallow/liquified graham cracker goodness at the bottom of the drink, which means you'll pretty much never have to taste actual coffee. Instead, every sip (at least until you finish all the syrup) is like sucking up a childhood treat straight through a straw. There's really no way to describe it other than as a gooey liquified s'more, so Starbucks clearly captured the flavor it was looking for.
The worst part of the drink is the coarsely blended iced coffee. Although it supposedly is infused with s'mores-like flavors, the flavors are so weak compared to the syrup at the bottom that it really just tastes like the burnt coffee flavor with which S'bux has become synonymous.
In all reality, if you've had a blended Starbucks drink before, you know exactly what the S'mores Frappuccino is going to taste like. We're more curious as to what this drink would taste like hot -- seeing as s'mores are rarely served frozen.