As soon as I spotted this little box of nostalgia in the realm of wonders that is my local Morrison's freezer aisle I knew that I had to have it. With the words "It's back!" emblazoned boldly on its front, Birds Eye have brought back the exotic dessert of my youth with a twist - chocolate flavoured.

I last ate an arctic roll in about 1976. For those of you too young to remember that was the Summer of the drought, in my memory it was a halcyon time of no school for weeks, and plenty of very hot days that meant more copious amounts of ice cream than normal. We hadn't heard of global warming back then. Arctic roll was a real treat, the original one was plain sponge with a swirl of jam and vanilla icecream and was a step up from the other dessert fare available - angel delight anyone?

So does the new version cut the mustard in today's more varied and more choice filled supermarket dessert freezer cabinet?

This arctic roll consists of chocolate cake with chocolate icecream in the middle and a smidgen of chocolate sauce in a swirl. It is actually quite nice.
The sponge is a little dry and quite obviously doesn't taste home made but if you let the icecream defrost a little the whole thing is just right - the icecream melts into the cake and it is really quite moreish. It could do with a tad more chocolate sauce for my personal taste, as you could see rather than taste the sauce so perhaps it was supposed to be decorative.

The whole thing is about swiss roll size and comes packaged in cardboard with the roll vacuum sealed in an inner see-through packet.

On eating it I didn't over concern myself with looking at the ingredients or worrying about calorific content, I figured that it was probably not great for me but in the interests of a trip down memory lane with a twist, not worth worrying about or in the spirit of the thing either. I don't think we worried about e-numbers or hydrogenated fat in the 70's either.

Whilst writing this review I did have a quick look at the box and got as far as "guar gum" and figured I would rather not delve further - it does have milk and gluten in it (durr), but I shall just say that the ingredients are as you would expect.

The arctic roll costs 99p, which is fair value for money. I would buy it again, nostalgia or not. For one thing my daughters loved it, and I thought it was actually alright and an improvement on the plain version, which apparently has also been re-released.

If you are an arctic roll virgin or a nostalgia seeker like me - give this a (chocolate sauce) whirl!