Vermont-based ice-creamery Ben & Jerry's is launching a new flavor of ice cream named after a classic Saturday Night Live sketch. The company announced that Schweddy Balls ice cream will be hitting shelves soon. That’s right; Schweddy Balls.
The name comes from the famous SNL skit featuring Alec Baldwin as Pete Schweddy, a guest on the Delicious Dish NPR show, who tempts the hosts with a selection of "holiday balls," including cheese balls, popcorn balls, rum balls, and, of course, Schweddy Balls.
The sketch has gone down in infamy as a mockery of NPR’s wide-eyed earnestness, as noted by NPR’s new Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish.
But Ben & Jerry's spokesman Sean Greenwood says the name, though cheeky, isn’t meant to cause offense. “The name is irreverent," he told Time magazine. "But we've always been about having some irreverence and having some fun. . . . We're not trying to offend people. Our fans get the humor."
The new limited-edition flavor consists of "vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and is loaded with fudge covered rum balls and milk chocolate malt balls."
Baldwin has added his own Schweddy seal of approval. "For a long time, I thought that 'Here Lies Pete Schweddy' would end up on my tombstone," he said in a Ben & Jerry's press release.
"Now, thanks to Ben & Jerry's, the goodness of the Schweddy family recipe won't go with me to the great beyond. It is immortalized here, right now, and it's an ice cream. Ben & Jerry's and Schweddy. Two great names in American dessert, together at last."
