There are foods you eat, and then there are foods that become a part of you. The Choco Taco was always the second kind. It didn’t just taste good – it tasted like summer itself. So when Klondike killed it back in 2022, something deeper than a dessert disappeared. And now, in 2026, I went looking for one. What I found surprised me in ways I didn’t expect.
The road to tracking down the Choco Taco’s spiritual successor is longer, stranger, and honestly more fascinating than you’d think. Let’s dive in.
A Philadelphia Genius and the Treat Nobody Planned
Here’s the thing about great inventions – most of them weren’t planned. The Choco Taco is no exception. Alan Drazen, a former ice cream truck driver, invented the Choco Taco in 1983 while working in management at Jack and Jill Ice Cream in Philadelphia. He wasn’t asked to do it. Nobody handed him a brief or ran a focus group.
Drazen was a manager at Jack and Jill in Moorestown and was simply inspired by the boom in Mexican food, thinking the taco shape could bring something new to the ice cream business. That’s it. That’s the whole origin story. A guy, an industry trend, and a spark.
The Choco Taco was invented in Philadelphia in 1983, and the product rolled out in the spring of 1984, quickly becoming popular among mobile vending trucks with a suggested retail price of 89 cents each. Less than a dollar. For something that would end up consuming a chunk of America’s collective childhood memory.
The Design Was Actually Brilliant, Not Just Tasty
Let’s be real – not all nostalgic food is actually good. Sometimes we just miss the time, not the thing. The Choco Taco, though? The design was genuinely clever. The key to the snack was the shell’s inner coating of chocolate, which held everything together and made sure the ice cream didn’t melt through. That detail alone separates it from a hundred imitators.
Its unique brilliance lies in how easy it is to eat. It is more chompable than a cone, since the waffle shell ensures your teeth won’t get cold shock on biting in. It is more complex than an ice cream sandwich or even a Chipwich, because you can easily get ice cream, chocolate, shell, and nuts in one single mouthful.
Ice cream in a taco shell was a game changer, according to inventor Alan Drazen. “When you eat a sugar cone, you generally eat the nuts, chocolate, and ice cream on the top,” Drazen told Eater. “With the Choco Taco you’re getting the ice cream, cone, nuts, and chocolate with just about every bite.” Equal distribution of joy with every single bite. That’s not a coincidence. That’s engineering.
From Ice Cream Trucks to a National Phenomenon
The Choco Taco was truly a regional phenomenon until 1989, when the Good Humor brand bought the production company that Jack and Jill was using. Now that Good Humor owned the production rights, they ramped up production, making Choco Tacos available in nearly 30,000 convenience store freezers around the country. That is a staggering jump – from neighborhood ice cream trucks to nearly every freezer aisle in the U.S.
Klondike, which was owned by the same company as Good Humor, became the primary brand producer of Choco Taco, resulting in the label saying “Klondike Choco Taco.” The treat had changed hands, changed scale, and somehow still stayed beloved. That is rare for any product.
When Taco Bell started carrying it, the Choco Taco became a mainstay in American food culture. At that point it wasn’t just a frozen snack anymore. It was a cultural fixture. The kind of thing that shows up in school memories, summer stories, and late-night nostalgia conversations.
The Day They Killed It – and the Internet Went Into Mourning
July 2022. That’s the month a lot of people will remember. When Klondike announced the iconic Choco Taco was being discontinued in the summer of 2022, the bad news triggered a veritable meltdown. The ice cream truck staple, a genius sideways twist on a waffle cone invented in 1983, was just shy of 40 years old.
Klondike said “over the past 2 years, we have experienced an unprecedented spike in demand across our portfolio and have had to make very tough decisions to ensure availability of our full portfolio nationwide.” “A necessary but unfortunate part of this process is that we sometimes must discontinue products, even a beloved item like Choco Taco.” The corporate language landed like ice water.
The news upset many who had a nostalgic love for the dessert, even though many admitted that they hadn’t actually consumed one recently. Honestly, that reaction itself says everything. People didn’t grieve the Choco Taco because they ate one every week. They grieved it because of what it meant.
Politicians, Reddit Founders, and Stephen King Weighed In
I know it sounds crazy, but the discontinuation of an ice cream treat managed to pull in some genuinely prominent voices. Many were not pleased with the discontinuation, including Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian. Murphy tweeted he would introduce legislation to invoke the Defense Production Act to mandate the continued manufacture of Choco Tacos, while Ohanian tried to appeal to Klondike’s parent company Unilever and attempted to buy away Choco Taco from them.
Senator Chris Murphy joked that he was planning to introduce “legislation to invoke the Defense Production Act to mandate the continued manufacture of Choco Tacos,” and that tweet got over 10,000 likes. For context, most political tweets about actual legislation don’t do numbers like that.
Author Stephen King also weighed in, comparing the end of the Choco Taco to the collapse of society itself. The whole thing was surreal. Only in America does a frozen dessert pull together a U.S. Senator, a tech billionaire, and a horror novelist into the same conversation.
Klondike’s Real Reason – and the Corporate Truth Behind It
Let’s cut past the PR statements for a second. The beloved Choco Taco ice cream treat was discontinued in July 2022 by Klondike due to parent company Unilever’s need to make room for more profitable products. That’s the bottom line, stripped of euphemism.
Good Humor, Breyer’s, Klondike, Popsicle, and Ben and Jerry’s are all owned by Unilever, a massive consumer goods operation that also owns Hellman’s, Q-Tips, Vaseline, Axe Body Spray, Lipton, Noxzema, and dozens of other brands. When a single company controls that many products across that many categories, individual items become expendable budget lines. Not icons. Just SKUs.
Klondike stated “the discontinuation was a result of complex production challenges and not a stunt.” Still, many people weren’t buying that explanation. Some people didn’t buy the explanation. They thought the whole thing was a stunt, and that Klondike was never planning to kill the Choco Taco – just create enough buzz to make sure it was well-received when it inevitably came back.
The Comeback Attempt That Half-Worked
Here’s where the story gets complicated. In February 2024, the internet was abuzz with news that the Choco Taco was making a comeback and that Taco Bell was involved. The excitement was real. The execution, however, was more nuanced.
Taco Bell and ice cream maker Salt and Straw teamed up to bring back a version of the discontinued dessert taco. The new treat featured a waffle cone filled with cinnamon ancho chile ice cream dipped in chocolate and topped with toasted brown rice. Interesting, yes. The original Choco Taco? Not exactly.
According to Salt and Straw’s Instagram announcement in February, the taco would be available at scoop shops and for online shipping “this summer.” As of mid-August 2024, there was no evidence of these Choco Tacos on their website, and it seemed their promises of a summer release had been misjudged. A near-miss that left fans frustrated all over again.
The Tacolate Finally Arrives – and It Sells Out Instantly
Fast-forward to October 2025. Portland-based ice cream maker Salt and Straw joined forces with Taco Bell to launch The Tacolate, a new dessert hitting stores nationwide on October 3. This wasn’t a teaser this time. It was real, it was available, and the public responded accordingly.
A 2022 limited return of “Chocolate Tacolates” sold out within minutes, drawing interest from Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant and paving the way for a broader launch. Selling out in minutes is not a fluke. That is demand proving itself in real time.
After selling out in minutes during its debut, The Tacolate became a permanent item at all Salt and Straw locations and available for nationwide shipping through saltandstraw.com. So as of late 2025 and into 2026, you can actually find and order this thing. It went from teaser to sold-out debut to permanent menu item in a matter of weeks. That trajectory says everything.
What’s Actually IN the New Version – And How It Differs
The Tacolate is described as a hand-pressed waffle cone shell filled with cinnamon ancho chili ice cream, dipped in single-origin chocolate, and topped with toasted brown rice. Each order comes with two Taco Bell-inspired sauces: Mango Jalapeno and Wildberry Cinnamon. It’s elevated. It’s artisan. It’s not cheap convenience-store frozen food – and that’s the point.
The old version was made with waffle cones, but it had vanilla ice cream with chocolate swirls and was dipped in chocolate and topped with peanut pieces. Simpler. More direct. Honestly more democratic too – it was for everyone, not just people near a specialty ice cream shop.
Taco Bell worked with Salt and Straw to develop an ice cream taco shell that does not get soggy. That right there is a real technical achievement. Anyone who has tried to DIY an ice cream taco at home knows exactly how fast the structural integrity collapses. The soggy-shell problem is what kept most imitators from getting it right.
Why Finding One in 2026 Still Feels Like a Small Victory
Standing in front of a Salt and Straw shop in 2026 holding something that looks, feels, and roughly tastes like the lost icon of American summers – it hits differently than expected. It’s hard to say for sure whether The Tacolate fully replaces the original, because honestly, it doesn’t try to. It’s something new wearing a familiar shape.
The origins of this partnership date back almost a decade, to 2016, when Salt and Straw launched the first version of the ice cream taco at its soft-serve concept, Wiz Bang Bar. Only six years later, the original treat that inspired the recipe – Klondike’s Choco Taco – was tragically discontinued. Full circle, then, in the best possible way.
The Choco Taco’s story isn’t really about ice cream. It’s about what happens when a $1 frozen treat becomes a container for memory, identity, and joy – and what happens when a corporation decides that’s not worth protecting. The Tacolate exists because the grief was real and the demand refused to die. The collaboration marks a full-circle moment for Salt and Straw co-founder Tyler Malek, who first experimented with ice cream tacos nearly a decade ago at his Portland soft-serve concept. Those early versions would sell out daily, paving the way for this high-profile partnership with Taco Bell.
Some things deserve to exist. The Choco Taco was one of them – and the fact that the world kept pushing until something came back proves it. Does the Tacolate fill the void completely? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But would you have ever thought a discontinued 89-cent ice cream treat from 1984 could outlast the company that made it?
What would you have guessed?
