ICE CREAM MAAAAAAN!

I was so inspired by my mention of the ice cream man in my Friday list last week and by my run-in with him at the park today that I had to make this Friday's list all about it.
So without further ado....

Top 5 Ice Cream Truck Treats of All Time

5. The classic chocolate/vanilla cup - OK, a boring start perhaps, but since I have just spent the better part of five years ordering only this treat from the ice cream man I have to give credit to a timeless classic. The c/v cup has not changed at all over the last fifty years because it is ice cream perfection. To begin, the awesome pull-tab paper top that you get to lick as an appetizer. Then - it comes with a utensil! How awesome was that as a kid? OK, maybe it was made of cheap balsa wood and was a case of oral splinters waiting to happen (wonder if that ever has?), but it was still fun. The ice cream itself is pretty good too. The vanilla is standard issue, decent vanilla, but the chocolate is that weird, not too chocolaty kind that you'd be disappointed getting anywhere else, but seems really good in that cup. The c/v cup is also a personality test disguised as a dairy treat. Do you eat one side first, and if so which one? Or do you just scoop away willy-nilly? Yeah, yeah, I meticulously ate the chocolate side first as kid lest the flavors infect each other. Shocking.

4. The Bomb Pop - Yet another classic, The Bomb Pop (BP) wins by sheer girth alone. Definitely the largest frozen treat on the truck it didn't matter that it didn't taste that great. The top, red, section was OK because it was cherry, the middle a tolerable lemon, and the bottom - which had usually melted all over your hand anyway because how fast can a seven year old eat three pounds of Italian ice on a stick? - was an indescribable flavor which was later identified in the late eighties as "blue raspberry". Regardless, all that for a buck - you can't beat that with a stick.

3. Fat Frog - The bayou cousin of #1 on my list, Fat Frog was the brightest, most horribly green ice cream ever created. In fact, I'm not even sure it was ice cream, just some frozen, sweetened dairy byproduct, with knock-off M&M's for the eyes. Any ice cream that came with a secondary sugar delivery system was a winner. It was also a hefty item. Manys the summer day I wasn't sure the wooden stick would hold up under this confection's weight and I was forced to inhale it immediately. Or so I told myself. Sadly, FF, is now extinct.

2. Good Humor Coconut Bar - I really toyed with making this my number one choice for quite a while before putting it in second place. The Good Humor Coconut Bar is, to this day, the best ice cream I have ever had in my entire life. Perhaps it's the fact that it's no longer available and memories of childhood foods are so strong because you have about a billion taste buds when you're little, but I swear to you, these things were better than any gelato I had in Rome. The interior was a slightly coconut flavored vanilla ice cream which was then covered with shredded sweetened coconut. And you know how I love some fake coconut. Sure, Ben and Jerry's makes a good knock off coconut flavor, and those FrozFruit (love the kitschy spelling) things come close, but it's all I can do to drown my sorrows in a whole box of Toasted Almonds to make up for my loss.

1. Bubble-O-Bill - Oh where do I begin? This treat was so popular in my town there was a shortage on the ice cream truck. Kids would eagerly line up to buy a BOB only to be stuck with the vastly inferior Fat Frog mentioned above. What was so special about this confection? To begin, it was actually made of ice cream and tasted like it. Shaped like the face of a cowboy, it was a combination of the same chocolate and vanilla from the classic c/v cup. Then the whole back of it was dipped in chocolate - I know! The piece de resistance, however, was the gigantic, bright pink, gum ball nose smack in the middle of the face! This was not only a secondary sugar source, but one that lasted for hours! Ice cream and gum? I think I feel faint.

I can still recall my method of eating this highly coveted treat - carefully eat the chocolate shell off the back, then the ends of the hat. By this point, the bottom will have started to get soft so eat that part next, then work all around the edges until you are left with a nest of ice cream keeping the gumball intact - which was the only way because where were you going to put this humid, tacky ball while you ate the ice cream? Your linty shorts pocket - I think not. Unlike kids today, our parents were not at all worried about us dehydrating and we ran around all day without water bottles strung around our necks which we probably could have used clean the it off. Woe is you if the worst happened and it fell on the ground because then you were faced with the dilemma of, "Did anyone see that? And if not, can I still eat it?"

As with FF and The Coconut Bar, Bubble-O-Bill has been discontinued. Sure, there are pretenders to the throne - there's a Dora pop now with a giant head made of a weird ice-milk with scary, black eyes. Seriously, who thought black gumballs were a good idea for four year olds - the target demographic? It is the parents of these tots who remember the forefather of this atrocity and we weep that our children will not know such ice cream nirvana.

So there it is, yet another post about food. I think I have a problem. I should rename this blog "I bitch about my kids and fetishize food". Anyway, I hope the ice cream man makes a stop in your neighborhood this weekend and you can get a Bomb Pop for yourselves since now you know how to eat it without turning yourself into a Smurf.
Happy Friday to all!