Tyra Banks is launching ‘hot ice cream’ and the internet is a bit cold about it

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Is it possible to be so hot that one is cool? Tyra Banks is about to test that out.

The former supermodel turned entrepreneur has announced she’s launching hot ice cream. If you are wondering what that is exactly, you are not alone.

Here’s what we do know: Banks has an ice cream company company called Smize & Dream that has a shop in Australia.

According to the site, she came up with the idea in honor of her mother, Carolyn London.

“During Mama’s hard working years, every Friday night after homework and dinner, we’d have girls night at the Häagen Dazs ice cream shop in Hollywood!,” Banks explained on the site. “While licking our chocolate (her fave) and coffee (my fave) ice creams in her white Honda Accord, in her cray-cray-in a-good-way style, she’d school me on her laser-focused one-more-bedroom goals and more. We’d laugh, cry and DREAM our biggest, most outrageous CREATIVE DREAMS… together.”

Fast forward decades later and Banks is a star best known for not only modeling, but also her reality show “America’s Next Top Model.”

Recently she announced what she calls “the world’s first HOT ice cream experience.”

“Not a latte. Not a hot chocolate,” Banks wrote on social media. “But your favorite scoops, transformed into liquid. hot. ice cream. Sippable, baby.”

It’s called “Hot Mama” and sounds much like…melted ice cream.

Color the internet confused and some even seemed to turn a cold shoulder towards the product which is reportedly set to launch in the US at some point.

“Tyra what the hell are you talking about?,” one person wrote in the comments. “We need more details.

Writing for Defector, Jaya Saxena notes that Banks has a unique way of doing business.

“Banks started her girlbossy ice cream company Smize & Dream in 2020, the kind of place that is dedicated to the concept of “mamas” and employs a “Director of Smize theatrics” to hire ice-cream scoopers who are camera-friendly,” Saxena writes in a piece titled “Tyra Banks Please Explain What the Hell You Mean By ‘Hot Ice Cream.’”

Saxena says she’s “completely riveted” even as she “can see the hot ice cream, but I have a suspicion I am being lied to.”

“The product is so new, it’s not listed on the company’s website yet, so there’s no clue there. And in the comments of her introductory video, her team shoots down every plausible guess. “So …custard?” posits one, to which the official account lobs “So … naw,’” she writes. “Another asks if it’s like a warm milkshake? “Not quite.” Melted ice cream as a drink? “It’s a drink. But it’s not melted.” Or perhaps just a warm cup of milk. “If only it were that simple,” they taunt.”

“I cannot even tell what we are left with here. At a certain point, it seems like a liability to refuse to tell customers what is in the cup.”

Parade has tried to fill in some of the blanks.

Their writer, Lauren Murphy, explains that the product “is designed to be a fun, interactive treat for audiences.”

“Unlike traditional ice cream or hot chocolate, it is intentionally churned and warmed to create a creamy, dreamy consistency that can be sipped from a cup,” Murphy writes. “The U.S. launch slated for this winter aims to introduce fans to this unique dessert experience, which has already gone viral in Australia.”

Bank on people probably having even more questions after it launches state side.

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