Being the completely rational person I am, and having a day coming where I am not impeded by work or school, my eyes drew immediately towards my buy-one-get-one frappé coupon, and what better at 10:30pm than not one, but two coffee based sugar holocausts that McDonald’s calls a beverage? Actually that’s not fair. The Frappé has 70 grams of sugar, which is technically less than the equivalent in most sodas. If you want to get into an argument about the healthiness of the frappé, it does have 1/4th the daily requirement of calcium, 4% of your requirement of iron, and 76% of your daily requirement for carbohydrates, so at least my bones will be strong enough to withstand the brute force of a coffee induced coma.
The first of the two I’ll talk about is the choco…mocha, because the manager making my drinks served it to me first, and I feel I have a commitment to his orderly manner. The mocha frappé is described on McDonald’s website as “one frosty cup of love: the coffee-chocolate goodness of mocha blended with ice, topped with whipped cream,” to which I can’t disagree. I had to eat my drink with a spoon for the most part, because while I was having my daily inner discussion about whether or not Scarlett Johansson should stay a red head or a blond, I forgot to pick up a straw from the counter. The mocha reminded me of the coffee ice cream from Starbucks, creamy and sweet, with a present but not overpowering flavor. The chocolate was present, and this may just been me, but the chocolate didn’t stand out much. You could’ve probably told me that this was a blended coffee drink that was made in a dirty blender that was recently used to make chocolate, and then drizzled with chocolate to cover the fact, and I would have gone ahead and kept drinking.
The caramel frappé is described on the McDonald’s website as “Who isn’t worthy of coffee, caramel and whipped cream? “You deserve a break today.” You’re right, McDonald’s, who doesn’t deserve a break today? Given Godwin’s law and a severe lack of maturity, my mind whisked me off to a vision of Hitler sitting back and enjoying a delicious caramel frappé from McDonald’s (or whatever the chain would have been called in Germany during the 40’s) on a war torn battlefield, which is entirely inappropriate as we all know Hitler would have chosen the Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks. The caramel flavor is definitely more present than the chocolate was in the mocha, although that may be design by flavor. My only issue with the caramel is that once I got down to the bottom of the cup, the mixture was more of a sickly amount of caramel rather than what you’d normally think would be mixed into a drink, to which I love caramel and I like it in drinks, but I just can’t stand strong caramel in a cold drink for some reason. Some of you will see that as a plus, but it wasn’t my cup of…caramel.
Overall the two are on par with Starbucks’ products, if even slightly better for half the price (a medium frappé will cost you $2.79 as opposed to somewhere in the ballpark of over $4 at Starbucks for the equivalent). I do love watching the special McDonald’s machine make my drink, where the McD’s Barista hits a few buttons and the thing makes itself, similar to the smoothies. It even cleans the blender itself too, I need one of those in my home.
Pros: Flavor, price, not having to go to Starbucks, not having to spend a fortune at Starbucks, not having to sell my nonexistent children to Starbucks, the manager made my drinks for me, and not having to sit in the drive thru.
Cons: Caramel had too much caramel at the end, the people at my local McDonald’s are starting to recognize me, I need to stop eating at McDonald’s so much, having to insert the accented é every time I want to say frappé.
Final notes: If you’re looking for energy, look elsewhere. Considering I drank both a medium Mocha and Caramel frappe in the course of an hour at 10pm for this review, I’m already ready to go to bed and it’s only midnight. Otherwise this is just another nail in Starbucks’ coffin as McDonald’s rises up in the cafe area.
The Shameless Consumer 
You sir are a sick son of a bitch.