PAULS – BLUEY BANANA
In a rare moment of helpfulness as a kid, I set the dinner table for my family. I got out the knives, forks and plates then to really earn my tuckshop coin, I poured everyone a nice big 250ml glass of full-cream milk. One for my two siblings and I, plus Mum and Dad. Perfect! Mum was horrified. That’s when I realised adults and children have different milk consumption habits. This Bluey milk is obviously aimed at kids but perhaps concerningly, I love Bluey more than my child does. He’s not getting a drop of this pop-top calcium dose! It doesn’t have the intensity of a banana Big M or the elite Korean banana milk made by Binggrae – probably because it has 30 per cent less sugar. Which is helpful if you don’t want your kids (or yourself) to see through space-time then crash like a meteor. ENOAK – VIOLET CRUMBLE
Given Oak’s famously aggressive packaging copy, maybe Violent Crumble would be more appropriate. If you go to open the wrong side of the carton, for example, it says “Turn. The Pack. Around.” (Note the very ominous full stops.) Colour-wise, this stuff looks like chocolate milk, but the sweetness factor has clearly been cranked till the nob broke off. You can definitely taste the honeycomb, but – and maybe this is something that happens after you turn 35 – all I could see while drinking was the disappointment and betrayal on the face of my dentist, Tiago. If you blended an actual Violet Crumble with milk, then sieved out the chunks, you’d get pretty close to this. JSNEDD’S – CHOCCY MILK
Nedd’s markets itself as “not your average chocolate milk”, but I kind of liked its old-school, middle-of-the-road flavour. Less sweet than Big M, less belligerent-Saturday-night-drunk than Oak, it’s the chocolate milk you used to get with your nan. Maybe from one of those old-people cafés that had real lace doilies on the tables and served six-point chicken sandwiches. It tastes like actual milk milk, too, not something cooked up in a lab. And it has 26 grams of protein, which basically makes it a salad. Of the four milks I sampled for this article, this is the only one I would willingly drink again for pleasure, or recommend to other humans. Two enthusiastic thumbs up. JSBREAKA CHUPA CHUPS – RASPBERRY AND VANILLA
There’s one thing that unites everyone’s childhood: no one’s fine motor skills were developed enough to unwrap a goddamn Chupa Chup. I picked at that wrapper in frustration for hours. May god have mercy on your soul if you asked your parent to help while they were JUST TRYING TO PACK THE SHOPPING IN THE CAR, GIVE ME A MINUTE! Something divides us along lollipop lines, too: whether you’re team fruity or creamy. Fellow cream-heads will appreciate this pure insanity of a milk flavour. It’s sickeningly sweet, but if you’re buying lollipop collab milk it’s absolutely what you’d expect. The side of the pack boasts it’s a “mouthful of fun”. If your idea of a “mouthful of fun” is jamming your gob with a minimum of seven lollipops while guzzling your daily calcium intake, this is the milk for you. EN

This is an edited extract from frankie issue 123. To read more milk reviews, swing past the frankie shop or visit one of our lovely stockists. To nab future issues, subscribe here.