11 Dairy Queen Menu Items From The 1990s You Probably Forgot About

The first Dairy Queen opened its doors in Joliet, Illinois, in 1940. Fifty years later, after riding the success of the Blizzard in the previous decade, Dairy Queen hoped to introduce its next great menu item in the 1990s. With the slogan, "Hot Eats, Cool Treats," DQ expanded its lunch, dinner, and dessert menu with new tastes, flavors, and even textures. Sadly, however, several of these items have been discontinued and forgotten to time. 

We shouldn't let these DQ food memories disappear forever, so, let's rev up the time machine and return to that more innocent final decade of the 20th century. What a time it was, when "Titanic" set sail on the big screen, Mariah Carey ruled the airwaves, "Seinfeld" provided many yuks, and Dairy Queen served up delicious new eats and treats. Pull up a seat, grab a red spoon, and let's relive the glories of DQ's frozen yogurt, savory sandwiches, Fudge Bars, Treatzza Pizza, and a whole lot more.

Dairy Queen's iconic Blizzard was launched in 1985 with various changes over the ensuing years. However, some things with the super thick treat have always been the same: signature flavors. When the dessert launched, common toppings Dairy Queen already had on hand for its soft serve-based treats, like fruits and nuts, were there for the mixing. However, new topping additions with familiar names like OREO cookies, Butterfingers, and M&Ms became the real draw.

While customers have been offered up over 170 flavors of Blizzards, there are plenty of bygone ones from the 1990s that sound as delicious today as they did back then. Egg Nog brought a taste of the holidays early in the decade, and was followed by a line of "Chocolate Lovers" flavors like Mud Pie and Rocky Road. New flavor drops always seem to come in trios, and in 1995, that included the options of Chocolate Almond, Pecan Crunch, and Walnut Fudge. The following year, familiar names were given new twisted tastes, when the likes of Chunky Fudge OREO, Cappuccino Heath, and Mint M&Ms were there for the taking. Since new and old Blizzard flavors are always coming and going, let's hope some of these gems from the '90s return sometime soon.

Five years removed from introducing the warmly received Blizzard, Dairy Queen hoped it would find similar success when it finally branched out into frozen yogurt. In 1990, it introduced Breeze, where nonfat, cholesterol-free vanilla frozen yogurt was the base that served as a canvas to mix in any and all the same great topping options available to the Blizzard.

While most customers opted for toppings, the yogurt itself was a tasty, low-fat dessert or snack option. While it only lasted on menus for about a decade, it still had its fans, including college golfers, and authors George W. Barclay and Maury Dean, who name-checked the dessert in their books.

While the Breeze has been mostly forgotten to time, there are still fans who yearn for its return. Derek Herman started a Change.org petition for the Breeze in 2021, noting that, "No fast food joint has ever been in the frozen yogurt game before and the product was one of a kind."

Dairy Queen had been offering chicken sandwiches at select locations since at least 1980.  A decade later, the chain stepped it up a notch when it introduced the Chicken Club Sandwich. In clever ads, the new handheld sandwich was dubbed in a pun, the "Newest club in town." This wasn't a typical classic club sandwich, with endless triangles of bread separating its key ingredients. This new menu item was essentially a chicken sandwich topped with cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato on a sesame seed bun.

The limited-time offering returned in the mid-'90s and was promoted in ads as "so good — it's mind-blowing." The Chicken Club Sandwich had a price tag that ranged from $2.79 to the oddly priced $3.03. This item seemed to be Dairy Queen's last take on the chicken club, outside of a 2003 commercial that featured actual chickens at a dance club. 

In the summer of 1996, the action film "The Rock" became a box office hit. Two years later, Dairy Queen introduced its own hit "rock" for a limited time only — The Chocolate Rock. It proved to be such a winner that it was brought back in 1999 on a more permanent basis.

This treat balanced hot and cold, creamy and crunchy, and included a lot of chocolate. Hot fudge lined the bottom of the Chocolate Rock, then DQ soft serve filled a majority of the plastic cup. It was then decked out with almonds, more fudge, and encased with a magic hardened shell topping. In 1999, Ken Hoffman, the Drive-Thru Gourmet, noted in his syndicated column in The Atlanta Journal that the Chocolate Rock "may be the deepest darkest chocolatiest treat ever concocted by DQ.

The suggested retail price of the Chocolate Rock was $2.29 and it was a solid option at DQs through at least 2003. However, if you're lucky, you can still find it on just a few locations' Royal Treats submenu.

In 1993, three years after adding the Breeze to its menu, Dairy Queen introduced another low fat item – the DQ Fudge Bar. The chains' fudge bars looked like most others found in the grocery store freezer aisle, but they had a special malty taste to them. The thick, brown ice cream bar was made up of ingredients such as skim milk powder, milk protein concentrate, and cocoa process with alkali. The DQ Fudge Bars stood on a popsicle stick and came individually wrapped; the initially sold for $.89. The pre-made treats were found in the take-away freezer section, and could be purchased a la carte or in a box that contained six bars.

A year after the launch, a Vanilla-Orange Bar also joined the Novelties line-up. While the Fudge Bar proved to be longtime favorite of DQ customers, in 2022, it was discontinued at the same time as Mint Dilly Bars.

When Dairy Queen's Royal Fudge 'n' Cake was last seen on menus in 1996, a new fudge treat seemed to take its place that very same year — the Fudge Cake Supreme. The two fudgy, soft serve based treats weren't all that dissimilar. However, the Fudge Cake Supreme eschewed fruit toppings outside of a cherry topper, doubled down on the layers of cake, and came in a wider plastic cup.

This whopper of a treat could be had for $1.99, and its 11.2 ounces filled the belly to the tune of 890 calories, 38 grams of fat, 124 grams of carbohydrates, 65 milligrams of cholesterol, and 960 milligrams of sodium. While the promise of free phone cards helped initially lure customers to try it, the Fudge Cake Supreme soon found many fans, including managers of Dairy Queen. This treat reigned supreme on menus through at least 2003.

In 1998, Dairy Queen test-marketed a new cheesesteak sandwich in St. Louis. A year later, the chain believed in the product so much it included a quality adjective in its name and launched The Great Steakmelt. This hoagie-bunned sandwich was filled with cuts of steak that were seasoned with pepper and a grilled steak seasoning, then topped with a three cheese blend, onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. The key ingredient that made this sandwich truly "great" was the complex savoriness of A.1. Steak Sauce. Some locations grilled the meat over an open flame, while others simply fried it. It was sold as a basket, which included french fries, and retailed for $3.99.

Syndicated columnist Ken Hoffman, aka the Drive-Through Gourmet, agreed with its "great" labeling and awarded the Steakmelt a perfect score of 10. He noted that the meat wasn't just a common blend of beef, but specifically culled from the cow's pectoral muscle. The Great Steakmelt last sizzled out sometime around or after 2001, and its trademarked name was canceled five years later. 

The Peanut Buster Parfait has been a tall Dairy Queen order since 1971, where soft serve is decked out with hot fudge and peanuts. Twenty-eight years later, DQ introduced what seemed like the next evolution of the Peanut Buster Parfait — the Pecan Mudslide. In lieu of peanuts, chunks of pecans and hot fudge were joined by caramel. That trio filled the bottom of the plastic cup, then the soft serve filled the rest. More of the trio was added to decorate the top of the treat, and as the pecans slid downwards in the shades of brown sauces, it resembled a mudslide of sorts.

While a mudslide is a natural disaster no one wants any part of, its danger was played up in punny ways for advertising. Announcements like "Watch for the Mudslide!" and "avalanche of flavor," helped lure in customers to turn this limited time item into a longstanding one. 

The Pecan Mudslide inspired subsequent years like the Georgia Mud Fudge Blizzard and the Brownie Earthquake. While no longer an officially sanctioned item, the Pecan Mudslide can still be found at some Canadian locations, and can be ordered as a "secret menu" item at select US DQs.

Towards the end of 1992, Dairy Queen was so keen on the treat name Royal Fudge 'N' Cake that it filed a trademark application for it. By February of the following year, the regally sounding treat became a reality in the realm of its stores.

In a plastic cup, layers of Dairy Queen's soft serve were padded with a circular serving of chocolate cake and then topped with hot fudge. What really made this a "Royal" treat was the choice of an additional topping to pair with the hot fudge. The standard options included cherry, strawberry, caramel, and butterscotch. It was advertised "where hot and cool connect," and initially retailed for $1.59

The Royal Fudge 'n' Cake was a limited time offering that ended up hanging around through at least 1996. The company renewed the trademark for the name in 2004, but had it canceled 11 years later.

When Dairy Queen's slushy Mister Misty drink gets mixed with its soft serve, it's called a Misty Freeze. That combo has been cooling customers off since the early '60s. In 1998, that idea was given a new spin, with new ingredients added to the Smoothy. The treat was also known as a Glacier Smoothy and it was initially launched with three flavors. 

In early ads, those flavors were spelled in fun, exclamatory sayings: "Get merry with Berry Cherry!", "Make mine Mocha!", and "Go ape with Berry Banana!" The Berry Banana Smoothy included chunked bits of strawberries, bananas, and a kiwi-strawberry Misty Freeze flavoring. In 1999, Frozen Hot Chocolate joined the lineup, which was mixed with cocoa fudge and topped with whipped cream. 

While the Smoothy name remained on menus into the 2010s, you can pretty much have the same thing these days with the Misty Freeze. Today, Dairy Queen also offers more traditional fruit smoothiesat select locations.

Believe it or not, in the 1960s, some Dairy Queens actually sold hot pizza. Three decades later, the beloved circular Italian dish was used as the inspiration for a cool new kind of cake — the Treatzza Pizza. This dessert pizza first hit the scene in 1994, and was described perfectly in its trademark application as, "semi-frozen ice milk soft serve in a crust consisting of cold fudge and cookie crunch, topped with various flavored toppings, together with dry toppings, such as cookies and candy, served in a frozen state."

The Treatzza Pizza was a 8-inch sliced pie that served eight and was made in-house at Dairy Queen locations. They originally retailed for $4.99 and were offered up with four toppings: M&M's, Peanut Butter Fudge, Heath Bar, and Strawberry Banana. While vanilla was the standard soft serve filling of the pizza, chocolate or a mix of the two flavors were additional options if ordered in advance. It was advertised as "the only pizza that tastes better cold," and promoted as the perfect treat for any occasion.

The dessert was discontinued by DQ HQ in 2022. However, it can still be found at some United States and Canadian locations.