Coffee Mate Mean Girls Pink Frosting Flavored Creamer Review: It's Not All Cake Filled With Rainbows And Smiles

Pink is having a moment, but before the "Barbie" movie revitalized the color in the public persona, "Mean Girls" was there. In all their beautiful and terrifying glory, the Plastics cemented the color as part of their cultural iconology. Now, in honor of the landmark film's 20th anniversary, Coffee Mate is bringing a "Mean Girls" pink frosting flavor coffee creamer to add a hit of color and nostalgia to your morning brew.

The creamer is pitched as rich and creamy, just like the Plastics themselves. You may be wondering, "Why coffee creamer?" There doesn't seem to be a direct reference, other than the coffee Tina Fey spills on herself early on in the movie. However, the wonderful world of branded marketing has given us more out-of-character treats in the past, so we just go with the flow. So, will this coffee creamer be "so fetch," or will it wind up in the Burn Book? We are ready to find out.

You may be wondering what flavor is "Mean Girls?" It turns out pink frosting, and we can see it. Perhaps as a reference to the Plastics, here is a deliciously sweet pink topping concealing a bitter taste beneath. Based on the ingredients, we assume by "pink frosting" they mean sugar flavor, which frankly is the main flavor of a standard store-bought frosting anyway.

Aside from sugar being literally the second ingredient, the creamer contains water, soybean oil, micellar casein (which is a milk derivative), as well as some less pronounceable ingredients such as diglycerides, dipotassium phosphate, cellulose gum, and colors and flavors. This is not unheard of for Coffee Mate, as they predominantly market the products as non-dairy, which means the creaminess has to come from somewhere. There is no nutritional information aside from ingredients available at the time of this article. Overall, it is important to remember that coffee creamer is used as an additional flavor to the drink you are adding it to. So, while the flavor and ingredients are important, they are not the be-all, end-all of the beverage, and will just be one whimsical aspect.

Get in, loser; we are going grocery shopping. You may be wondering how you can get your hands on a bottle of this creamer. The good news is that it is less exclusive than finding a lunch table at North Shore High School.

If you are going to drink coffee, Coffee Mate would really rather you do it in the house. The creamer will be released in January 2024 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of "Mean Girls," which was released in 2004. Grocery stores and large grocery retailers around the United States will carry the creamer. If the place you shop already has a large selection of Coffee Mate creamers, you have a good shot at bagging some of this one. We promise you don't have to wait until Wednesday for your coffee to wear pink. Each bottle is expected to retail for $4.69 and will be 32 ounces. This price is not fixed, though, and there will be some variation between retailers.

This isn't a regular coffee creamer; this is a cool coffee creamer. As flavors go, Nestlé's Coffee Mate already has a truly staggering amount of choices, starting with 44 flavors, which include "all-natural" and "seasonal" ones. These flavors range from multiple kinds of vanilla and candy bar flavors to seasonal flavors like pumpkin spice. They are clearly trying to fit in with everyone and be a part of everyone's morning routine. While there are cookie-inspired flavors, this will be the only frosting flavor when it's available.

As many people can see, the big difference here is the bright pink color. This is being marketed as the "first-ever pink coffee creamer." The optics are nice, but the hue almost entirely disappears once it is poured directly into the coffee. More on that later. But we acknowledge that sometimes looks can be enticing, and we are not above trying a product for the novelty of it. And we agree, we think it's pretty.

As soon as you open the package, you are hit with the smell that is somewhere between a Dunkin strawberry donut and strawberry Nesquik — specifically the kind from a syrup, not a powder. There is a distinct aroma of sugar and strawberry flavoring, with a hint of buttery vanilla. Remember, though, the flavor is simply "pink frosting," not strawberry, despite the color. The first sip was like getting punched in the face with sweetness. It was awesome. It really does taste like a thicker and substantially sweeter version of strawberry Nesquik. We aren't exactly mad about this, but we are not sure why we are still getting notes of strawberry flavor.

Overall, the color was less vibrant than we anticipated, more baby doll pink than burn book pink, but still pink, nonetheless. The thing to remember here, though, is it really is not supposed to be consumed on its own as a beverage. Of course, it is overpoweringly sweet because it should be paired with a bitter drink.

How many of you felt personally victimized by coffee creamer? We have now. When this creamer is poured into a cup of coffee, it pretty much visually disappears, and any semblance of its flavor goes with it. For our taste test, we put about 3 to 4 tablespoons of coffee creamer into 12 ounces of liquid. What we ended up with was slightly creamy coffee that had a bit of the bitter coffee edge taken off by sugar.

As we thought, the overpowering sweetness mellowed out once it was mixed with coffee. The problem is it became too mellow. When we tried other products by the same brand, there was still a hint of the flavor there. Not as much as you get with a straight-up syrup, but you still get the idea of whatever flavor has been poured in. The issue here is that "pink cake" is not a discerning flavor to begin with. Unlike, say, peppermint or pumpkin spice, pink cake does not have a potency behind it. It is simply sweet and vaguely fruity for some reason. But even the fruitiness goes away when poured in coffee.

Finally, we took this chance to froth the creamer. The nice thing about this method is the drink retains more of the pink color as a layer of foam sits on top of the coffee. It gives more of a latte feel or an iced coffee topped with a foam vibe. The foam is a little unstable and deflated easily. But while it was there, it added a punch of light pink color to the drink.

Additionally, the frothed creamer itself is tasty. It's unnaturally sweet, but this actually works as you take sips of the drink. You get a little foam and a little coffee. This method also helps impart more of the flavor onto the drink. We frothed a similar amount of creamer into the same amount of coffee and found that while the foam lasted, we got more of those fruity, sweet notes. This is likely because the froth is more aromatic than when the creamer is fully dispersed into the coffee. The frothed creamer definitely tasted "grool," much better than the other two ways. As a bonus, you end up with a more aesthetically pleasing drink, which plays right into the "Mean Girls" vibe. We bet this is how Regina George would drink her coffee.