12 frozen treats from the ice cream trucks of your youth

Some things from childhood will always be cool. Frozen, actually.

Image: Randy Laybourne via Unsplash

The chime of the ice cream truck triggers something in all of us. For children, that circus music blasting from the top of a white van triggers a Pavlovian response. Kids jump up and down and ask for small bills to buy a popsicle. When adults hear an ice cream truck, the most likely response is deep pangs of nostalgia.

But you're never too old to indulge in some frozen treats.

That being said, there are some ice cream bars that have gone bye-bye over the years. Others are just hard to find these days. Here are some of our favorites from decades past.

1. Bubble Play Bar

The bubblegum baseball in the middle of the cherry mitt was a tricky one to maneuver around. If you ate the fingers and thumbs surrounding the ball, the remains tended to fall off the stick. That's an error. But if you chomped the ball as you simply worked your way from top to bottom, you ended up chewing gum and eating ice cream at the same time. Which, we suppose, isn't the worst thing.

Image: eBay

2. WWF Superstars

Even Jimmy "Mouth-of-the-South" Hart preferred a Hulkster bar in 1987.

Image: Gold Bond Ice Cream via Reddit

3. Snoopy

Everyone loves the Peanuts pooch. Which made eating his face somewhat tragic.

Image: eBay / les_trois_j

4. Fat Frog

Again, gumballs mixed with ice cream gave you two treats in one. In this case, you had to address the gumballs immediately, unlike, say, the Dinosaur Bar, which had the gumball smack in the middle of the body.

Image: Jason Liebig via Flickr / Courtesy of CollectingCandy.com

5. Froze Toes

Who wants to eat a foot? Especially one that appears to have a toenail infection. Well, kids, that's who. These treats gained popularity in recent years thanks to the Netflix series Haters Back Off, in which the main character, Miranda Sings, eats one every day. Still, good luck finding one. You'll have to make your own.

Image: Good Humor via Pinterest

6. Vampire's Secret

We hate to break it to you, vampires, but your bloodthirst is hardly a "secret." It's, like, the one thing everyone knows about you. Unless the secret is that you're faking it and just sucking down "Cherry Sauce."

Image: Good Humor via Dinosaur Dracula

7. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Continuing on the horror theme, these wicked little totems haunted trucks in the early '80s.

Image: Good Humor via Worthpoint

8. Banana Choc

Frozen bananas and frozen candy bars are both yummy. Put them together and…

Image: Good Humor via Worthpoint

9. Cherry Parfait

See, not everything needs a kooky concept or commercial tie-in. Just a simple sundae in a cup will do.

Image: Good Humor via Worthpoint

10. Pecan Roll

Now we're going back to the golden oldies. Anyone remember how big these things were?

Image: Etsy

11. Col. Crunch

Sure, you're more familiar with the cereal mascot, but we'd like to point out a colonel outranks a captain. So what happened to Col. Crunch? Was this Cap'n Crunch after a promotion? Did he retire after having that arrow shot through his hat? Was it a legal thing? We have questions. But at least this Strawberry Shortcake bars still exist. Just without the mascot.

Image: Popsicle / eBay

12. Flintstones Push-Ups

Did you prefer Yabbo Dabbo Doo Orange, Lime Rock Lime or Bedrock Berry?

Image: Reddit

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21 Comments

Bob 33 months ago
if you've never had a Beatles' bar, I don't want to know you
beyde 51 months ago
I loved the "Good Humor" Strawberry Shortcake, and the almond flavored ones...I remember (about 1966 or so), those little vanilla/chocolate cups, and that stupid wooden spoon gave me a splinter in my tongue!!! Great marketing! 😄
idkwut2use 53 months ago
Omg, I LOOOOVE the Snoopy & baseball mitt ones, and Flintstones push-pops. More than anything I miss the Mickey Mouse face pops with chocolate ears & fruity Mickey's Parade ice ones.
I like character-shaped popsicles in general...the little cups of chocolate/vanilla ice cream with wooden spoons (excellent for birthday parties!) or Italian ice...
Never knew Col. Crunch existed, but those bars are wonderful.
I was surprised not to love the chocolate+banana combo as much as expected when I tried one at an ice cream stand a few summers ago.
djw1120 55 months ago
The only one I remember is the Strawberry Shortcake.
And that was put out by Good Humor not Popsicle.
Also, whatever happened to the Chocolate Fudge Cake with the candy bar in the middle and the Toasted Almond?
RandyJepsen 56 months ago
Flintstones Push Ups used to be so good. Had a sweet sour taste. Yum. Then back in the 90s, the taste was changed. Very bland. Ruined them.
oldiesfanjohn 57 months ago
It might have been a Scooter Crunch, but it had a little block of thick chocolate when you got down to the end of the stick after you got done with the ice cream. The chocolate was an added treat.
That was one of my favorites.
JeffTanner 57 months ago
I have never heard of most of these, except for the Strawberry Shortcake bars.
Dawn 57 months ago
I only knew about #2, 11 & 12
Barry22 57 months ago
Don't recall any of these frozen treats, but we did have a Good Humor truck in our neighborhood when we were growing up.
CaptainDunsel 57 months ago
"[...] we'd like to point out a colonel outranks a captain."
Not in the navy, it doesn't. The naval rank of Captain is the equivalent of a Colonel in the Army or Marines. And our dear Captain Crunch is indisputably a naval officer.
LeeHarper 57 months ago
Nope. These must have been after my time.
JeffTanner LeeHarper 57 months ago
I think you mean BEFORE your time.
ELEANOR 57 months ago
I REMEMBER EXACTLY NONE OF THOSE ICE CREAM TREATS LISTED ABOVE.

The Dreamsicle, an orange and vanilla concoction, was memorable.
MrsPhilHarris 57 months ago
I grew up in Vancouver and we had none of those.
Wells 57 months ago
I'm old enough to remember the Good Humor truck ringing it's bells as it circled the neighborhood. You could get a popsicle for a nickel, but if you were lucky enough to afford fifteen cents, you could get a premium ice cream like a coconut bar, chocolate or strawberry cake bar. I can still remember the driver dressed in white with black tie and white cap and the fog from the dry ice when he opened the door to get your treat.
stephaniestavropoulos 57 months ago
The instant I started reading the story, I remembered about my sister. She was never a rebel, she a good girl. {I'm the one that gave our parents fits. I wasn't THAT bad. I would take my sister's stuff, which I wouldn't have for very long, because I returned it right away. It didn't take long to get caught!} I wasn't a very good student. Misdemeanors, nothing "hardcore."
Well, one day, {am not exactly sure how old she was maybe between 9-11, something like that.} Becky heard the ice cream truck, and she went into the house to ask mom if she could get something. Mom said no, because it was close to dinnertime. But, she went and did it anyway. As the saying goes: "Paybacks a bitch!" Because she disobeyed Mom, the popsicle {which was grape, that's the flavor she always got, I always got cherry; That was true regardless: whether it was a snow cone, a Mister Misty from Dairy Queen, whatever} ended up being stuck to the roof of her mouth! I mean really stuck! It took a bit of doing to get it unstuck. Once it was pried loose from her mouth, not only did the popsicle come out, but a layer of skin from the roof, did as well! Told ya payback's a bitch! For the rest of her life, she was always sensitive up there.{I don't think the skin ever grew back. If it did, it didn't grow back enough to not bother her.}
Oh, forgot to say that I think I remember seeing some of these in the grocery store: The push ups, the fat frog, Snoopy. But the only one I actually ate {that I remember eating, I could've eaten some of the others but just don't remember;} was the Vampire's Secret. {I must not have minded them all that much, because I know they were purchased more than once.}
Jacqueline05478 57 months ago
I recognize very few of these. I lived in such a small city (city & town population = 10,000) that I can only remember having an Ice Cream Truck one summer when I was a kid. After swearing I would never return after college, I ended up back here raising my children and we still had sporadic Ice Cream Truck summers.
It always tickles me when folks refer to a population of 10 or 20 thousand as "so small".
The town where I was raised had a total population of 600.

The "Now Entering" and "Now Leaving" signs were on different ends of the same board.

Dad suggested to the town council that they put a mirror at one end of town to make it look bigger.
Dawn CaptainDunsel 57 months ago
love the thought of a mirror.
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