Back in 2010, the world was treated to Despicable Me, an ingenious movie about a supervillain becoming the good guy via his decision to adopt three little girls. A sweet, wholesome movie for the family. I’ll be honest though, when it originally came out, I was less than impressed. Possibly because I found all the little girls incredibly annoying.
But what truly captured people’s attention were the mascots of the movie, the Minions. These bean-like creatures were prevalent throughout the entire movie. With their obsession with bananas and a nonsensical amalgam of several different languages, they suddenly started popping up everywhere after the second movie’s release. In fact, they were so popular, that they spun off into their own movie, Minions, which came out in 2015.
Recently, Illumination decided that just one movie wasn’t enough, and since Despicable Me seems to have run dry, they came out with Minions: The Rise of Gru. And with that, Illumination has collaborated yet again with IHOP to create a themed meal to promote the movie.
The smugness of a young Gru irritates me to no end. Possibly due to my distaste for children.
Minions Pancakes: Ba-Ba-Banana Overload
As expected from a Minions-themed pancake, the primary appeal of this breakfast item was the banana theme. Personally, I love bananas. But only when they are slightly green. I will fight anyone on this opinion.
Okay, slight tangent since we’re on the topic. Slightly green bananas are the absolute best time to eat bananas since they aren’t mushy and haven’t developed brown spots and yellow bananas always leave some weird aftertaste that makes your mouth develop some kind of film. Anything you eat after eating a yellow banana is just ruined since everything just has a hint of banana.
Oh yeah, we are talking about pancakes. Here they are.
Side tangent aside, I was actually pretty excited to have these pancakes. A banana pudding-themed pancake with Nilla Wafers? It’s been forever since I’ve indulged in those delicious vanilla-flavored cookies. A perfect complement to banana pudding if I’ve ever heard of one. Just reading the short menu description next to a smug photo of young Gru… I thought I was in for a treat.
Iced Cold “Gru” Coffee
But before I had any of the pancakes, I decided to order a coffee since it was 8 a.m. on a weekend, and I needed a slight caffeine boost if I was going to make it through the day. And what else was on the Minions menu than the “Iced Cold ‘Gru’ Coffee”.
What I imagine Gru drinks every morning before... Doing evil? Is that what he does?
Which is just another circuitous way of saying an iced cold brew coffee. Because of course, there had to be some kind of pun. Honestly, I don’t think they did anything different to their original cold brew coffee recipe. It was as good as any cold brew that I’ve had, but that probably isn’t saying much since my coffee drink of choice is an iced Americano. I’m not even sure if I could taste the difference between the two drinks side by side.
In any case, it was a decent cup of coffee. The only requirement for coffee is that it gives me at least a few hours of jitteriness. At least enough to get through the morning without feeling like I need to fall back asleep. And this coffee did that. Yay.
Minions Pancake: A Crunchy Mess
If there was one thing that I wasn’t expecting from the Ba-ba-banana Overload pancakes, it was how crunchy it was. The blue and yellow sprinkles that they used were so off-putting that it kind of set the whole experience off for more.
It was as if they had these sprinkles left over from a promotion from over a year ago and decided that they were fine to just use them again.
Even this was too much sprinkles.
But let me take a backseat and explain the visual of this pancake since it actually wasn’t horrible. The Ba-ba-banana Overload pancakes were two of their standard pancakes stacked together with a banana pudding-like sauce and bananas on top with an abundance of whipped cream. Finally, it was topped with the aforementioned sprinkles as well as Nilla Wafer bits. Honestly, not horrible for IHOP.
It’s not like the pancakes were inedible though. The flavors were all there to an extent. I wished they had added more actual bananas, but I’ll give them a pass on this department since at least it tasted like bananas. My main issue is that I don’t think it’s any different than something that I could make at home, which is kind of what I’m wanting from these experiences. If I can make them at home, then what’s the point?
I am dead behind the eyes.
Would I order these again? No. I hope never to order them again. But at least I can say that I had Minion pancakes and lived to tell the tale.
Final Rating:
Minion Pancakes: 5/10
Iced Cold “Gru” Coffee: 5/10
Conclusion: Everything is mid at IHOP.