Magnum Singapore Pop Up Store @ Vivo City

So what exactly makes this Magnum special or different from the ones you can buy at the grocery stores? Wait, before all else, you do know what Magnum is, right? It is a bar of vanilla ice cream on a stick, coated with real Belgian chocolate. When it was first launched in the Philippines last year, it got so ridiculously popular that it caused social media trends. Filipinos. We get ridiculously excited about these things.

Image from official website

Anyway, what makes the ice cream special in these pop up stores is that they come with bells and whistles (not literally, silly) made customized to your order. Here are the steps involved:

There’s a huge array of toppings so it can be quite daunting (especially if you’re the type of person who finds it hard to make choices, like yours truly), but in the end I decided to choose aesthetic value over taste because I was more concerned with how my customized Magnum would look on camera than how delicious the toppings would be. So sue me, I’m a blogger! (Patent pending) Because of that logic, I chose chocolate hearts, gold flakes and rose petals. Yep, my Magnum was gonna look like a freakin’ Valentine.

After I made my choice, the counter lady spooned all my choices into a silver container and shook it to mix them all together. Then she passed the container over to another lady at another station.

Okay so maybe it’s a bit confusing, but step 2 pertains to the counter lady, not me. She asked what kind of chocolate coating I wanted – milk, dark, or white? I always choose milk chocolate because it’s the most yummers in my opinion (I don’t care if you’re more healthy, dark choc, you’re bitter, and white choc, you have no right being called chocolate because you’re really just milk). Anyway, after I told her my choice, she took a naked vanilla ice cream bar on a stick and dipped it in my chocolate of choice.

Again, step 3 is for the counter lady and not me. She shook out all the toppings I chose out of the container and all over the freshly made Magnum. It’s okay if some toppings don’t stick to the ice cream bar, they land on the cardboard tray which will hold the Magnum so I can still eat them all later if I want (I didn’t). As a finishing touch she took a chocolate M button (the Magnum logo) and stuck it on the outside of the bar in plain view.

The lady asked me to choose a chocolate again, this time for the drizzle. I thought it was best to choose a different one so it will stand out, so I chose white. She drizzled it in zigzag pattern all over the top of my Magnum before handing the finished product to me.

And here it is in all its glory. TADAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! Isn’t it pretty???? Can’t you just imagine it singing “I feel pretty… I feel pretty… I feel pretty and witty and bright…. and I pity any Magnum who isn’t me tonight…” 

No? Okay, just me, then.

Deesigned… see what I did there? It was also deelicious! However, it was not as delicious as the normal Magnum, because you see, all those toppings I chose may look pretty but they don’t taste pretty. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not awful, it’s just that I just prefer the plain pure chocolate shell of the normal Magnum over this one with all the strange crunchy bits. Also, I noticed that the vanilla ice cream inside is a lot more runny than the average Magnum, maybe because it is not as frozen, as it had been naked and exposed to the air more. Or maybe it’s because we spent way too much time being food paparazzi with our Magnums before actually eating them. Yep. There’s possibly that.

Here is a picture of everybody’s Magnums. Can I just say what a genius touch the maroon-colored napkins made? They look more elegant, no?

I’m probably biased, but I have to say that my Magnum is the Miss Magnum winner in this contest. She is like the Miss Philippines (Megan Young) who won the Miss World 2013 that very same night that we did this! Right? RIGHT?

One last thing: there was a funny experience while our Magnums were being made. Betchie chose the chocolate on what turned out to be Maribeth’s Magnum, which should have been okay if she hadn’t chosen milk choco when Maribeth wanted dark. Oops. Then Betchie thought the next one was hers, but no, it was mine. The next one wasn’t hers either, so where did hers go? Weird, it had mysteriously disappeared! So she just chose her toppings all over again.

Then later on when we were finally eating, Yves realized that Betchie’s toppings had ended up on her Magnum – she had 6 toppings. The counter lady had apparently gotten confused and put both their toppings into one container! LOL.

The pop up store will be up till November, so grab one while you can! Each customized Magnum costs S$7. Lemme know if you try it and what toppings you got! Better yet, show me the instagram pic, and we shall have a debate as to whose Magnum is the prettiest one of all! 😀