It was 1920 in Youngstown, Ohio, when Harry Burt, owner of an ice cream and candy store, created a unique chocolate coating for his ice cream. Although her daughter liked the taste, she found it unpleasant to eat, so her son suggested freezing the ice cream coated and inserting a stick. Already selling lollipops, Dad modeled the treat after his Jolly Boy Suckers, and thus the ice cream bar was born. Much like the invention of an Iowa entrepreneur who had devised Eskimo Pie a year earlier, Burt ran (or rather drove) with it, executing his unique distribution of getting product to his customers instead of waiting for them to come to him. your store. Apparently great minds think the same, because several years later the Popsicle was born but made with frozen fruit-flavored juices, not ice cream.
Pictures of the products were on the outside of the truck, but we didn’t need them as we all had our favourites, and the Good Humor man always knew which little door to open, pulling out our requests in a flash. On busy city streets, pushcarts often lined the sidewalks with a limited selection, but one thing that never changed was the instantly recognizable drawing of the chocolate-covered ice cream bar.
The name Good Humor was obviously derived from America’s love of sweets and the up-and-coming business of novelty ice cream. Not much has changed since then, except for the great selection of frozen treats now available, but clearly Good Humor was a pioneer. In an effort to distribute his new, albeit somewhat primitive, creation in the 1920s, Burt came up with the first vending trucks equipped with jingling bells to alert kids that frozen treats were in the neighborhood—an ingenious way and inventiveness to market your new creation. It was an instant hit. Push carts soon followed to capture the inhabitants of the city and not obstruct the traffic of the streets. The good-humored man in his starched white uniform was a minor celebrity on his route and became a household name in the ’50s and ’60s, often appearing in movies.
Not surprisingly, the company recognized the importance of mass distribution in grocery stores, and by the mid-1970s, Good Humor bars took their rightful place alongside popsicles and Eskimo tarts. By merging with Popsicle and Klondike, all three now dominate the novelty ice cream market.
Though Klondike reigns as America’s most popular ice cream parlor, the addition of the Oreo Ice Cream sandwich tops the Good Humor brand’s repertoire (not surprisingly, with the popular Oreo cookie flavor), followed by Strawberry Shortcake in second place. and Chocolate Eclair in third place. Sadly, some of the original classics, like Chocolate Malt, are no longer on the menu, but they remain in the memory of many a Boomer (including this author’s).
Although the familiar white pickup truck of the ’40s and ’50s has all but disappeared, and many other options have appeared in supermarket freezers, the sight and sound of that pickup will remain indelibly in the minds and hearts of Boomers, and nothing more will be entirely to take its place.