This has already been the hottest summer most of us can remember — the thermometer routinely tops 100 degrees — and now we’re moving into the real heat. August. High summer. The dog days.
So what could be better than contemplating literally two of the coolest confections ever created: frozen ice cream bars and Popsicles. Two summertime treats created not quite 100 years ago.
And which soon ended up at each other’s throats in court.
Actually, the pre-history of chocolate-covered ice cream goes back just a bit further — to 1919, when an Iowan named Christian Nelson figured out how to coat an ice cream bar with chocolate. He named his new creation the “Eskimo Pie” (a name so politically incorrect today that last year Dreyers, which owns the brand, announced it was “retiring” the name. Presumably, they’re now called “Guardian bars.”)
Nelson patented his creation, and not long thereafter, a fellow named Harry Burt, owner of an ice cream parlor in Youngstown, Ohio heard about Nelson’s invention and replicated his own version. According to folklore, Burt’s daughter thought the new confection was too messy (has anyone told Klondike bars about this?) and suggested that her father use a wooden stick as a handle. (Some accounts claim that Burt initially experimented with tongue depressors — hopefully before anyone’s actual tongue was depressed with them.)
Burt found that the ice cream bound well to the wooden sticks, and in 1922 applied for his own patent. Initially, the Patent Office rejected his application, believing Burt’s product too similar to Eskimo Pies to qualify. Eventually, the Patent Office reconsidered (allegedly after Burt took the Patent Office actual samples to demonstrate the benefits of a wooden stick). His patent was limited to the process to freeze the stick inside the ice cream bar.
In one of those odd coincidences in such matters, in 1905, in Oakland, California, 11 year-old named Frank Epperson mixed sweetened drinks for himself using powdered flavoring. One cold night, a drink he had left outside in a glass tumbler, with a wooden stirring stick in it, froze solid overnight. Epperson had invented . . . well, at that time, just frozen water with a little sugar and food coloring. But over time, he began making these drinks intentionally, and in 1924 he likewise patented frozen fruit-flavored drinks on a stick. He called it the “Epsicle ice pop”. But around his household, his children had taken to calling it “Pop’s Epsicle” or simply “Pop’s sickle.” The rest is history.
And a lucky thing they called him “Pop,” too, else we’d all have spent our childhoods enjoying “Dadsicles.”
In the meantime, Harry Burt was selling his new taste sensation, named the “Good Humor Bar,” using a fleet of trucks equipped with freezer compartments. He had strict rules: his drivers had to wear a white uniform head to foot, complete with white peaked cap and white gloves. Soon, many cities had a fleet of Good Humor trucks roaming their streets, especially in summer. Drivers rang a bell to announce their presence in a neighborhood — and that bell likewise became a part of many an American child’s youth.
Now, probably no one has ever confused the two kinds of frozen treats on a stick — one uses ice cream covered in chocolate, while the other is frozen fruit-flavored water. But Harry Burt saw it differently: both products were frozen; both were sweet; and both were eaten while the patron held a wooden stick. And perhaps most importantly, Harry Burt had patented Good Humor bars before Epperson had patented Popsicles. Burt filed suit against Popsicle in 1924.
The following year, however, in October, 1925, the two companies watched their legal bills mount and reached a settlement. Popsicle would pay Good Humor a licensing fee for its products, and limit itself to the sale of frozen suckers made from fruit flavoring and the like. Good Humor got the ice cream end of the business, with the right to pursue similar products, such as frozen custard.
But though Good Humor forced Popsicle to settle the lawsuit, Popsicle did prevail in one small part of the frozen confection business. To this day, when someone builds something out of small wooden sticks, they’re almost universally referred to as “popsicle sticks.”
I mean . . . built anything out of Good Humor sticks lately?
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.