Baskin Robbins' Dragon Quest ice cream needs a Western release

Between April and May of 2022, Baskin Robbins Japan ran a promotional crossover with Square Enix's mobile puzzle game Dragon Quest Keshi Keshi! that introduced slime-themed ice cream flavors to its stores.

What gods do I need to make a sacrifice to to have this released here? I need to know how a critical hit tastes. The promotion was strictly limited to Japanese storefronts. Western fans were left with standard mint chocolate chip while overseas players were eating literal slimes.

Apple sorbet and soda gummies

The headline flavor was called "Punittto Slime Hoimi Aji," which roughly translates to Squishy Slime Heal Taste. It combined an apple sorbet base with creamy vanilla ice cream. The main draw was the inclusion of small, blue, soda-flavored gummies shaped like the series' famous mascot.

Customers could also purchase an eight-scoop variety box that came in a special Dragon Quest Keshi Keshi! takeout container. Buying the box netted you eight original coasters printed with the game's eraser-themed character designs. The collaboration went both ways, with Baskin Robbins items and store coupons appearing inside the mobile game itself.

The marketing push included a social media campaign where buyers could post photos of their ice cream with a specific hashtag to "level up" their rewards. It is a standard promotional tactic, but the sheer novelty of eating a physical representation of a Heal spell makes the whole thing work.

The eraser puzzle spin-off

Dragon Quest Keshi Keshi! launched in late 2021 as a free-to-play match-three puzzle game for iOS and Android. Square Enix co-developed the title with NHN PlayArt, the same studio behind the massively successful LINE: Disney Tsum Tsum. The developers took that exact same formula (turning established characters into squishy, stackable shapes) and applied it to the Dragon Quest universe.

The game takes the familiar monsters and characters originally designed by the late Akira Toriyama and turns them into little erasers. Players match these erasers, known in-game as "Dorakeshi," on a grid to clear graffiti from magical adventure books. The erasers have different skills and abilities based on their RPG counterparts.

40 years of slimes

Today, May 27, 2026, is exactly 40 years since the original Dragon Quest launched on the Nintendo Famicom. Yuji Horii's creation essentially birthed the Japanese role-playing game genre. The franchise has maintained an iron grip on Japanese pop culture for four decades, to the point where urban legends still circulate about the government asking Enix to only release new games on weekends to prevent mass truancy.

The mainline games have massive worlds and deep turn-based combat set to Koichi Sugiyama's orchestral scores. Square Enix has also spent decades spinning the franchise out into everything from rhythm games to block-builders. A match-three mobile game was inevitable, and partnering with the world's largest ice cream chain made sense for a casual mobile audience.

Baskin Robbins operates over 8,000 stores globally, but these gaming crossovers rarely make it out of Japan. Until the company decides to bring the slime gummies to North American freezers, we are stuck matching erasers on our phones without the matching snacks.