Mizzou Tiger Stripe ice cream roars into another season

This is one cool way to cheer on your team. The University of Missouri’s (Mizzou) food science students make Buck’s Ice Cream, The Official Ice Cream of the Missouri Tigers.

Buck’s has an ice cream shop location on campus at Eckles Hall and a truck, where new ice cream flavors are always coming out. Perennial favorites—black walnut, butter pecan, chocolate, cookies ‘n cream, mocha fudge, peach, rocky road and vanilla—are a constant. But since 1992, there’s been a clear favorite: the iconic Tiger Stripe.

Its gold color comes from a very yellow version of French vanilla, and the stripes are dark Dutch chocolate.

This special flavor was developed through research efforts led by Robert Marshall, now the Arbuckle Professor Emeritus (Mizzou alumni Wendell and Ruth Arbuckle established an endowed professorship in ice cream research in 1987), who wanted an ice cream flavor that was unique to Mizzou, according to Kevin Reape, marketing coordinator of student affairs.

The school colors were just a jumping off point for the new flavor…another, more animalistic quality was necessary to make this ice cream roar.

“Marshall and Professor Dean Shelley envisioned not just an ice cream in the school colors, but a gold ice cream with the stripes of a tiger,” Reape says.

When school spirit is needed for big games, Tiger Stripe appears at Truffles, the sweet-treat spot inside Mizzou’s Restaurants at Southwest.

According to Mizzou’s campus newspaper, the first flavors tested for Tiger Stripe back in 1992 were orange sherbet and black licorice (we’re glad they went with the vanilla and fudge!).