Review summary: Sort of fun but not worth the money and extremely hard to use. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that these are the worst ice pop molds I’ve ever seen or used.
This season Tovolo released two brand new ice pop molds, some adorable bug molds and some killer looking twin pop molds
Cost: I paid $9.99 at a local store here in PDX but this mold set is $9.02 on Amazon.
Benefits
These molds are reusable and BPA-free. The ice pops, when they do break correctly are fun and the price point on the twin molds was good in my opinion.
Now, normally I’m super happy with Tovolo and their ice pop molds. Sadly, these twin pop molds don’t compare to my other molds.
It took FOREVER to get these upright!
Problems galore
If you’re a regular reader here at Growing a Green Family you’ll know that my ice pop experience is substantial. It’s not as if I just got off the ice pop boat. Still, I’ve NEVER had so much trouble with ice pop molds before. EVER. These ice pop molds had way more cons than pros so I’ll just start listing them.
The molds don’t stay upright in the holder without some serious work. They only attach on one side, which is weird. I kept setting them in, they kept falling over. I finally got them standing, but worried the entire time I was pouring my ice pop mix in.
The ice pops, once frozen are near impossible to remove from the molds. This is due to the double sided handles, which yes, results in twin pops, but also gives you nothing good to grab onto when pulling a mold out. The only way we managed to get our ice pops out was by holding the molds under running water for so long that our ice pops got mushy. Above is a picture from a batch of root beer float pops I made, and it took me four minutes to get them out. In fact, last week, I had to pull so hard on one of the molds, that the tab on the handle broke clean off.
The handles are very weak when compared to other Tovolo popsicle mold models.
No way can kids use these alone. My son gets his own ice pops out all the time (from our other Tovolo molds) yet he got so frustrated with these he gave up.
The whole point of these molds is to have the fun of twin pops, as shown in the Tovolo photo above. However, they don’t always work. Sometimes we did get twin pops but other times, here’s what happened…
Yup, sometimes you just get broken pops. No fun.
Don’t believe me? The reviews on Amazon all say much the same – wish I’d read them before I got these.
Tovolo is normally an excellent brand for ice pop molds. I’ve had three sets of Tovolo popsicle molds for about 5 or 6 years and they work great plus they’re in amazing shape. They’re not stained, cracked or otherwise compromised. The bases are in perfect shape too.
We LOVE our other Tovolo molds, so what happened with the design team here, well, I have no clue. If this mold set is someone’s first dive into homemade ice pops, I have a feeling they’d give up and go back to store-bought, which sucks.
Overall score:
0.5 little trees out of 5. I gave these molds 1/2 of a point for being reusable and BPA-free. BUT I almost gave them zero points just on principal. They’re almost 100% unusable and a total waste of $10. I wouldn’t recommend these to someone I hate. In fact, this may be the lowest score I’ve ever given a product. That’s pretty sad.
If you’re looking for other molds, I still do highly suggest any of the other Tovolo molds or you could choose one of many other options from my ultimate guide to ice pop mold post.
See my green product rating system and green product rating criteria or read more green product reviews.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful product review. Product development is a bit of an art and to be honest with you I agree with all of your points. These molds are frustrating to use and are not a perfect execution. We are always striving to improve our product offerings and I can promise you that these will improve.
thanks again.
@Matthew – that’s great to hear. We love Tovolo normally, plus really wanted to be able to make fun twin pops. It’ll be cool to see what improves with this design in the future.