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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
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.
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?
That was one of my favorites.
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.
The Dreamsicle, an orange and vanilla concoction, was memorable.
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.}
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.