A friend of mine sent me a link recently with the message “as someone who loves ice cream, this feels like an attack.” What she’d sent me was a news article about Oscar Mayer’s recently announced “hotdog-flavored ice cream sandwich.”

I’ll pause here for a moment to wait for everyone’s nausea to die down.

Yes, that’s right, a hotdog company thought it would be a good idea to turn their specialty into a sweet treat for the summertime. My friend was right. This does feel like an attack. An attack on both my stomach and common decency.

According to Oscar Mayer, the monstrosity… I mean, uh, delightful snack… is made up hotdog-flavored ice cream with candied hotdog pieces, spicy Dijon mustard-flavored gelato, and a cookie bun. Out of all of that, the cookie bun part is the only appealing thing I see. The idea of candied hotdog pieces floating around in rapidly melting ice cream just sounds nightmarish. Sugary meat seems like the antithesis of what meat is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be a dessert!

I’m not even going to talk about the mustard gelato. Rule of thumb for the future: if it’s meant to be used as a condiment on food, it probably shouldn’t also be an ice cream flavor.

Oscar Mayer held a Twitter poll asking if people would like to try their new creation and 72 percent of voters said no. Those results probably come as no surprise to anyone except for the people who came up with this concept originally.

Thankfully, this hotdog/ice cream combo (which sounds like a frankensteined monster from a horror movie but isn’t!) was apparently only a limited time thing meant to haunt unlucky New Yorkers. And honestly, it was probably more of a publicity stunt than anything else. (It worked because here I am writing a whole column about it.)

But it also made me morbidly curious to see what other kinds of ungodly ice cream flavors are lurking out there.

I found a list from 2014 which included several weird ice cream concepts. There was garlic ice cream which I guess can be helpful if you ever need to scare away a vampire. Pizza-flavored and lobster-flavored were also options available to brave people, but like my concerns about the hotdog ice cream, why would you want to turn a meal into a dessert?? That ruins the fun of having a dessert!

The most ridiculous entry on the list, however, was the “cold sweat” ice cream. Before you run away in disgust, I’ll point out that it’s not actually what you’re thinking. The ice cream is made with some really spicy peppers which usually induce sweating when you eat them. I don’t know if the place which offered this ice cream is still in business, but apparently you needed to sign a waiver before you could eat it. Sorry, that’s a clear sign you shouldn’t eat that.

A different list I found included other such “interesting” flavors such as sauerkraut, popcorn, and basil. But perhaps the most concerning flavor listed was “bone marrow with smoked cherries ice cream.” Let me tell you, I never anticipated typing those specific words together in that exact order, and yet here we are. I don’t know where the bone marrow comes from and, frankly, I’m too afraid to ask.

That list, however, is also a couple years outdated, so hopefully the bone marrow ice cream has been banished from existence forever. As it should be.

What I’ve learned today is that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you actually should. So take these flavors with a grain of salt. Or don’t. Because plain salt-flavored ice cream also sounds like a no-good, really bad idea.

I think I’ll just stick with vanilla and chocolate.

Holly Taylor is a Staff Writer at Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact her at holly.taylor@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7206.