How do the soft serves and McShakes stack up to the real Milky ice cream and milkshakes?

Just last week, news of a brand new McDonald’s collaboration caught our eye, with the star of the lineup being Japanese company Fujiya’s beloved Milky candies. The new menu items play on the Milky slogan, “Milky wa mama no aji” (“Milky is the taste of Mommy“), which is designed to conjure up the same feelings of comfort that a child would have when receiving milk from their mother.

▼ Milky is a household name in Japan, where the brand’s main mascot, a lip-licking twin-tailed girl called Peko, is instantly recognisable.

While Fujiya is famous for their Milky candies, the company also operates approximately 1,000 stores nationwide where you can buy creamy cakes and Fujiya-branded sweets, as well as Milky-flavoured ice creams and milkshakes. We were keen to know how the new Milky products at McDonald’s compared to the Fujiya originals, so we bought one of each for a taste-test showdown.

▼ The two Fujiya Milky products on the left, and the two McDonald’s Milky products on the right.

To kick things off, we started with Fujiya’s Milky Soft Serve, which retails for 190 yen (US$1.76) for a small size (pictured at the left in the photo above).

We chose to add some strawberry to this ice cream, to keep it in line with the flavour of the McDonald’s soft serve. One spoonful of this sent us straight to Milky heaven, with the sweet, comforting flavour of rich milk shining right through the tart berry sauce.

The McDonald’s “Waffle Cone Ichigo no Milky no mama no aji” (“Strawberry Milky’s Taste of Mummy Waffle Cone“) soft serve, which retails for 250 yen, looked very different, with a gorgeous topping of strawberry-flavoured waffle cone pieces.

So how does it stack up to Fujiya’s original soft serve? Well, in both cases, the strawberry flavour was limited to the topping, leaving the milk portion of the dessert beneath unadulterated for ultimate Milky enjoyment.

The Milky flavour was spot-on, and as we made our way through the ice cream, the taste suddenly changed in the middle. Taking a closer look, the reason for the change in flavour became clear.

▼ There was a mound of condensed milk in the middle!

While Milky candies contain sweetened condensed milk, it’s never this concentrated, so this was a surprise. In fact, as we got closer to the bottom of the ice cream, the condensed milk flavour became even more intense.

▼ Regular soft serve at the beginning (left) and a thicker, gooier soft serve in the condensed milk section in the middle (right)

While it’s unclear whether the strong condensed milk flavour was an intentional choice by McDonald’s or if it was due to the fact that it had settled that way due to the soft serve being pushed into the cone, it ended up creating a much richer and sweeter version of Fujiya’s Milky ice cream.

▼ Next up to the tasting plate, we have Fujiya’s Milky Shake (380 yen).

This is Fujiya’s official Milky-flavoured shake, which comes with coffee jelly by default. We were a bit worried about the coffee hindering our ability to compare it with the McDonald’s “McShake Milky no mama no aji” (“Milky’s Taste of Mummy McShake“) which, by contrast, is incredibly plain.

▼ Nothing but milk in this Taste of Mummy McShake.

However, we needn’t have worried, as the Milky flavour of the Fujiya original was easily recognisable through the bursts of coffee jelly, and when we compared it to the McShake, we found they tasted incredibly similar.

There was one thing that set the McShake apart from the Fujiya milkshake, however, and that was the fact that when we came to the bottom of the drink, our taste buds were hit with the overwhelming taste of condensed milk again.

Though Milky is made with condensed milk, it also contains starch syrup, which balances out the flavour of the condensed milk to give it its distinct candy-like flavour. McDonald’s appears to have gone overboard with the condensed milk, however, which makes it taste less like Milky in parts and more like…well, condensed milk.

So if you’re looking for a more authentic Milky shake and soft serve, Fujiya is definitely the place to visit. If you love condensed milk, though, you’ll love the McDonald’s offerings, which will be on the menu until early June, alongside this brand new Oreo cheesecake.

Photos © SoraNews24
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