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The Fascinating History of Ice Cream Trucks · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. What's that familiar jingle you might be hearing, Well,
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Speaker 1: it's the sound of our super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 1: I am the ice cream man, y'all, I am I cream?
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Speaker 1: Do you make the ice cream? It's dump a dump
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Speaker 1: do you know? We'll probably talk about it a little bit,
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Speaker 1: but like this is normal by the way. Um, there's
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Speaker 1: like a couple of of iconic ice cream truck jingles.
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Speaker 1: There's that one that I was just humming, the Daisy days,
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Speaker 1: the bicycle built for two, you've got, um, let's see
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Speaker 1: do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do
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Speaker 1: DoD d dude, like the Beanie and cecil theme, I guess,
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Speaker 1: and then just the classic uh, well, what's another one?
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Speaker 1: Goodness gracious, there has to be another one that I'm
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Speaker 1: totally missing. You guys have any other iconic ice cream songs? Oh?
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Speaker 1: I'm ben um and I had I had a storied
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Speaker 1: history with a with an ice cream truck in our
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Speaker 1: neighborhood that was playing some very off the books kind
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Speaker 1: of ice cream jingles. It was. It was the driver's
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Speaker 1: kind of creative expression, and that's fine. He used to
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Speaker 1: play his mixtapes. Uh. He called himself the ice cream Man,
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Speaker 1: and his mixtapes were pretty good, actually awesome. My my,
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Speaker 1: my girlfriend, who is in this tiny hotel room with me,
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Speaker 1: just and pointed out that also do your ears, saying low, dude,
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Speaker 1: they wobble do. That's another iconic ice cream jingle. I
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Speaker 1: heard the version of it growing up. I heard the
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Speaker 1: version of that song with um balls. Yeah, yeah, everything
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Speaker 1: everything about the song, but without the years yet. Ice
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Speaker 1: cream trucks, though they're a um I think they're a
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Speaker 1: huge well of nostalgia for a lot of people in
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Speaker 1: the United States, and it is not uncommon for an
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Speaker 1: ice cream truck to roll through a lot of I
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Speaker 1: think they're associated often with suburbia nowadays, and it's weird
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Speaker 1: because when you look at the inside of an ice
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Speaker 1: cream truck, you see that there's a lot more going
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Speaker 1: on beneath the surface than people might assume. We want
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Speaker 1: to give a shout out to our research associate, Max Williams,
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Speaker 1: who brought us some awesome man brought us some awesome
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Speaker 1: articles from Mental Floss Smithsonian. Even TRIPLEA dot Com gets
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Speaker 1: in the conversation here. Uh maybe yeah, Like the song
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Speaker 1: is such a great entry point. We'd love to hear
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Speaker 1: your favorite ice cream jingles or ones that you have written.
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Speaker 1: And today we wanted to talk about the history of
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Speaker 1: ice cream trucks, which means I guess we need to
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Speaker 1: start with the history of ice cream. It's so serendipitous
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Speaker 1: that we're doing this episode today. I'm actually mentioned being
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Speaker 1: in a tiny hotel room. I'm in New York for
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Speaker 1: a friend's wedding and my girlfriend day and I went
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Speaker 1: to the Museum of ice Cream in New York, which
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Speaker 1: is a thing. It's sort of like an installation where
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Speaker 1: there's like lots of hands on fun ice cream related
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Speaker 1: sort of like you know, activities, but also some really
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Speaker 1: cool exhibits on early ice cream and like refrigeration and
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Speaker 1: all of that. And one of the things that it
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Speaker 1: discussed was, you know, ice cream dating much further back
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Speaker 1: than we might believe, you know, much further back than
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Speaker 1: things like Klondike bars and you know, Sunday cones and
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Speaker 1: all of that stuff. This is actually a global phenomenon.
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Speaker 1: There are certainly what we would call parallel thinking kind
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Speaker 1: of moments attached to ice cream. You had, you know,
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Speaker 1: very very powerful people in countries like Turkey and India
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Speaker 1: and Arabia that were creating flavored ice desserts to really
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Speaker 1: create a sense of opulence at banquets, because as we know,
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Speaker 1: the history of ice is also something that is associated
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Speaker 1: with opulence. People could only have ice if they could
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Speaker 1: keep it cold, and that was something that only the
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Speaker 1: very wealthy folks could do. But these early you know,
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Speaker 1: Turkish and Indian and Arabian versions of the treat were
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Speaker 1: flavored with things like fruit, pulp and syrups and even
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Speaker 1: flowers and herbs and kind of spices that you might
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Speaker 1: associate with like maybe chai or you know, more kind
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Speaker 1: of savory spices. Yeah. Yeah, rosewater would be another great
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Speaker 1: ice cream flavoring or ice flavoring at this point. You know,
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Speaker 1: years and years back, I heard this wonderful description of innovation.
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Speaker 1: I think it was at a commenced speech. There was
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Speaker 1: there was this speaker and I'll have to look for
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Speaker 1: the details who talked about the old business up in
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Speaker 1: the northeast of running ice from Canada and when refrigerators
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Speaker 1: came out, these ice truck empires. They didn't get into
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Speaker 1: the new technology. They doubled down on faster trucks, on
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Speaker 1: more absorbent hay because they would drive up to Canada,
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Speaker 1: knockout chunks of ice, cover it with hay or straw,
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Speaker 1: and then drive down as fast as they could to
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Speaker 1: the you know, the well healed consumers there in New York.
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Speaker 1: And it shows us. I don't know, ice cream is
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Speaker 1: such an interesting way to look at technology and how
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Speaker 1: people deal with it. And this is nuts when we
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Speaker 1: talk about the idea of an ice cream renaissance. But
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Speaker 1: it's it's a real thing, right, oh totally. And I mean,
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Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about sort of frozen ice desserts now,
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Speaker 1: the very early versions that were kind of used to
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Speaker 1: wow guests of these feasts. But it wasn't until the
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Speaker 1: sixteenth century during the Mughal era in India or something
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Speaker 1: called coalfie was invented, which was which was essentially the
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Speaker 1: first frozen dairy dessert that was flavored with some of
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Speaker 1: those things that we talked about, like rose, right, mango, cardamom, saffron, strawberry, peanut,
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Speaker 1: and even avocado and u Coalfie isn't a churned ice
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Speaker 1: cream the dessert. It is not whipped, which gives it
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Speaker 1: a more solid kind of frozen custard kind of vibe.
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Speaker 1: And it is actually a frozen in molds rather than scooped,
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Speaker 1: you know, onto cone, so it looks more like kind
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Speaker 1: of a creamy popsicle. And it's very, very popular still
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Speaker 1: to this day. But it wasn't until the advent of
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Speaker 1: mixing a bucket of snow with something called saltpeter that
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Speaker 1: the real kind of like ice cream renaissance as we
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Speaker 1: know it began over in Italy in the mid sixteenth century.
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Speaker 1: M And I'm glad that you mentioned the Mughal era
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Speaker 1: and that innovation because you can see other versions of
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Speaker 1: ice cream throughout history. It makes me think of don Derma,
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Speaker 1: which is a Turkish ice cream like analog. And if
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Speaker 1: you ever want a little bit of eye bleach or
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Speaker 1: want to give yourself a giggle on a tough day,
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Speaker 1: then go to YouTube and check out Turkish ice cream vendors.
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Speaker 1: They're for the different they do. They're infamous for the
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Speaker 1: parkour that they use when they they never just give
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Speaker 1: you the ice cream if they think you're cool, and
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Speaker 1: it's it's just magic. It's almost like up close magic.
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Speaker 1: They kind of like, yeah, it's really, really really I
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Speaker 1: completely that's a really good recommendation. There's some funny videos
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Speaker 1: out there. And that is a tradition carried over from
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Speaker 1: you know, the beginning of the time that we're talking
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Speaker 1: about here, and they are these certain little outfits and
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Speaker 1: have these certain little kind of trolleys. They also, yeah,
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Speaker 1: they have carts. So let's go back to this kind
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Speaker 1: of European renaissance of ice cream. It becomes this cold
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Speaker 1: creamy treat, becomes the hottest thing amongst the elite European
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Speaker 1: courts love it. If you are a royal chef, then
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Speaker 1: some aristocrat is coming up to you and saying like, hey,
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Speaker 1: the chef at the other place makes ice cream, what
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Speaker 1: are you doing? And so they start putting ice in
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Speaker 1: everything the way that every so often restaurants in the
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Speaker 1: US will go through this phase where they put truffles
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Speaker 1: and everything. They put ice in red wine, and they
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Speaker 1: made the icy custers you mentioned earlier. They made like
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Speaker 1: nut flavored confections. Almond's creams were very popular. They loved
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Speaker 1: a sorbet. Who doesn't love a sorbet? And they just
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Speaker 1: started they were throwing everything in there to see what
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Speaker 1: would work, what would click. And while people loved this stuff,
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Speaker 1: it was thought to be food of the elite. Right like,
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Speaker 1: if you were the average person in Western Europe or
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Speaker 1: even in Italy, you're not eating ice cream for quite
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Speaker 1: some time, just because the technology to preserve it wasn't there. No,
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Speaker 1: that's right, And it wasn't until it kind of came
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Speaker 1: to America with the first colonists that the sort of
9:19
Speaker 1: you know, ice cream for the people movement kind of began.
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Speaker 1: A little bit didn't happen right away, but British settlers
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Speaker 1: brought these recipes with them, and you actually saw some
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Speaker 1: supporters of this in the found Among the Founding fathers.
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Speaker 1: George Washington was a huge fan. Thomas Jefferson was a
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Speaker 1: huge fan, and he actually studied how to make the
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Speaker 1: stuff in France when he was abroad and came back
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Speaker 1: with a machine that he was able to install at
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Speaker 1: his you know, famous estate at Monticello. So you know,
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Speaker 1: it was the idea of these Founding Fathers being sort
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Speaker 1: of like the figureheads for separation from the elite, even
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Speaker 1: though of course they were really their own forging their
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Speaker 1: own new elite class. That it did become something that
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Speaker 1: needed to be available, you know, kind of to the people.
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Speaker 1: It was like, you know, the people's treat. But it
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Speaker 1: wasn't until we started to see refrigeration kind of take
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Speaker 1: hold that the stuff could be delivered and by the stuff.
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Speaker 1: At this point, I'm literally just referring to ice, because
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Speaker 1: it wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that folks, you know,
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Speaker 1: who weren't super wealthy and could afford their own ice
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Speaker 1: houses and all of that stuff could get just plain
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Speaker 1: old ice. Yeah. Yeah, And this is the industry I
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Speaker 1: was I was referring to earlier from that commencement speech.
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Speaker 1: So this whole aggloberation of companies. Really they start harvesting
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Speaker 1: ice whatever rivers freeze, and because they reached an economy
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Speaker 1: of scale, they were able to ship enough ice to
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Speaker 1: make this kind of affordable, you know what I mean.
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Speaker 1: It's no longer just for the emperors of the world.
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Speaker 1: And then another innovation comes along, hand crank ice cream.
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Speaker 1: Hand crank ice cream. And I don't want to ruffle
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Speaker 1: any feathers here or upset any sorbet trays, but hand
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Speaker 1: crank ice cream is a fun thing to do, like
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Speaker 1: once or twice as a kid. But otherwise, you know,
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Speaker 1: I don't even I don't know anybody who regularly hand
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Speaker 1: cranks ice cream these days. But back in this era,
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Speaker 1: it was the most affordable way to create your own stuff,
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Speaker 1: and people started making Sundays at home. It became for
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Speaker 1: quite some time, starting around the eighteen thirties, it became
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Speaker 1: the like notable treat for Independence Day, kind of the
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Speaker 1: way turkey at Thanksgiving. Well, and again it really did.
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Speaker 1: It was I think as a result of I mean again,
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Speaker 1: maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it makes
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Speaker 1: sense to me that what once was a treat of
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Speaker 1: only the super wealthy and like you know, the kind
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Speaker 1: of uh colonizers and all of that stuff, and the
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Speaker 1: folks that you know, the US were trying to separate
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Speaker 1: themselves from both both you know, governmentally and in terms
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Speaker 1: of image. You know, we have no kings and all
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Speaker 1: of that that they would want to attach this formerly
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Speaker 1: only for the super opulent treat to an average people's
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Speaker 1: you know, celebration of a holiday light July fourth. But
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Speaker 1: still there were some folks that couldn't afford to make
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Speaker 1: their own ice cream at home. So, uh, what's what's
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Speaker 1: what's what's the what's the line from Hamilton immigrants, we
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Speaker 1: get the job done or something like that. Yeah, they
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Speaker 1: came to the rescue and in the form of street vendors,
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Speaker 1: which really, if you think about it, is the kind
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Speaker 1: of advent of the ice cream truck. Even if they're
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Speaker 1: were motorized, yet they were portable, and that was sort
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Speaker 1: of the point. They could come to where the need was,
12:48
Speaker 1: they could come to where the demand was in the
12:50
Speaker 1: in the US, it's definitely the beginning of the ice
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Speaker 1: cream truck. And a lot of these immigrants were channeling
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Speaker 1: their earlier experience in Europe where they saw ice cream carts, right,
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Speaker 1: something like that. So this idea comes to the rescue
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Speaker 1: for what we would call the middle class and the
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Speaker 1: working class. And if you were in New York in
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Speaker 1: this time, then one of your favorite street foods is
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Speaker 1: the tragically named penny lick. This one's really gross. As
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Speaker 1: a guy who literally has physical problems touching metal, penny
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Speaker 1: lick sounds like a federal level punishment. Well, you're not.
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Speaker 1: You're not licking pennies, but you are licking something that's
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Speaker 1: been handled by various and sundry others. This this is
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Speaker 1: before the advent of disposable you know, cups or waffle
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Speaker 1: cones or certainly waffle cones, and they would just kind
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Speaker 1: of have like one glass per vendor, maybe a couple.
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Speaker 1: The customer would come and like, you know, eat the
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Speaker 1: ice cream or literally lick the glass clean and then
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Speaker 1: give it back to the vendor, who would quote unquote
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Speaker 1: sanitize it. Yeah, in the form of what like they
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Speaker 1: swish it in a pale you know, cool super sanitary,
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Speaker 1: which led one of our favorite authors for this episode,
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Speaker 1: Laura B. Weiss, author of ice Cream of Global History,
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Speaker 1: led Laura to say the mixins were bacteria, not chocolate chips.
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Speaker 1: Unfortunately true. That is not chocolate chips on the chuck
14:32
Speaker 1: E cheese plate right there. I mean, I gotta say,
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Speaker 1: like the worst part is together think they weren't changing
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Speaker 1: out that pale water very so you're getting people before
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Speaker 1: This is also before the advent of like disinfectants really too, right,
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Speaker 1: so there wouldn't have even been maybe there would have
14:50
Speaker 1: been something like wet bleach. They would they would have
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Speaker 1: known that would have affected the taste as well, and
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Speaker 1: they didn't. They probably didn't have time to give it
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Speaker 1: a hot wash and then dry it. If you are
15:03
Speaker 1: interested in other unsanitary street or carnival foods, check out
15:08
Speaker 1: our two part episode on the history of lemonade pink
15:11
Speaker 1: lemonade in particular, cut clown pants. Let us leave it
15:16
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah, called it the Rise of clown pants
15:20
Speaker 1: because we're adults. So here's the moment you've all been
15:23
Speaker 1: waiting for. He says to maybe twelve people, maxt oh,
15:28
Speaker 1: thanks man, can we get a drum roll? Perfect, We
15:32
Speaker 1: proudly present you the ice cream sandwich, the ice cream
15:39
Speaker 1: confection that melted social boundaries. White collar workers, blue collar workers,
15:44
Speaker 1: the rich and the poor alike loved these sandwiches. People
15:48
Speaker 1: just generally dig stuff in sandwich form. And there's this
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Speaker 1: great article that comes out on August nineteenth, nineteen hundred
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Speaker 1: in the Sun, and it's all about Wall Street brokers
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Speaker 1: buying ice cream sandwiches and eating them side by side
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Speaker 1: with like the couriers, the office gophers. You know, is
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Speaker 1: the ice cream set at least that's what the Sun
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Speaker 1: would have us totally. Yeah, you gotta have an angle
16:15
Speaker 1: of the sun. Yeah. Can you imagine how sticky those
16:18
Speaker 1: ticker tapes must have been, you know, the sticky ice
16:21
Speaker 1: cream fingies I mean it got of course it's the US.
16:26
Speaker 1: So things are there's a recursive cycle, right of something
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Speaker 1: becoming popular and then they're being a backlash. Ice Cream
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Speaker 1: became so popular that philosophers, authors, thinkers of the day
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Speaker 1: like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, hey, we're going too far,
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Speaker 1: like ice cream is uh is a ice cream is
16:47
Speaker 1: a cobblestone on the road to hell sort of. They
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Speaker 1: said it it's making America more materialistic, more gluttonous. And
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Speaker 1: he was like, and you could see it on street
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Speaker 1: corners across the country. The devil smoothie. I don't know,
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Speaker 1: he didn't say that part. I don't know if he
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Speaker 1: said it. Smoothie wasn't a word, no, no, no. That
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Speaker 1: came later. That's when they started to try to rebrand
17:08
Speaker 1: ice cream in a healthy light. The smoothie. No but
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Speaker 1: I but ice cream was hugely popular. You know, these
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Speaker 1: vendors were dealing with, you know, unhinged crowds of folks
17:21
Speaker 1: clamoring to get their hands on one of these ice
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Speaker 1: cream sandwiches or you know, one of these disgusting penny licks.
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Speaker 1: So you know, ice cream really was a street food.
17:30
Speaker 1: It was it was walking around food, you know, it
17:32
Speaker 1: was something that you could it was self contained, specifically
17:36
Speaker 1: the ice cream sandwich. And again you got to think
17:38
Speaker 1: about the what made the ice cream sandwich unique was
17:40
Speaker 1: it was its own packaging, It was its own kind
17:45
Speaker 1: of vessel, you know, that you could also eat. And
17:48
Speaker 1: this is before the ice cream cone. We're gonna get
17:51
Speaker 1: into that a little bit too. Yeah, let's fast forward
17:54
Speaker 1: to nineteen twenty, give ourselves a few decades. We'll travel
17:57
Speaker 1: to Youngstown, Ohio. It was recently in that area. Youngstown,
18:02
Speaker 1: Ohio was home to a confectioner, a guy named Harry Burt.
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Speaker 1: Just like our pal Max Williams. He's a real life
18:10
Speaker 1: ice cream man, candy man, and he had a bit
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Speaker 1: of a dilemma because his daughter, like many kids, loved desserts,
18:18
Speaker 1: loved treats. And when Harry Burt invented a chocolate coating
18:23
Speaker 1: that could encase ice cream, his daughter loved it, but
18:26
Speaker 1: she said, I the one His daughter, apparently sounds like
18:30
Speaker 1: Larry David said, I love the taste, but I don't
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Speaker 1: love the mess that comes with eating it. And her
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Speaker 1: name was Ruth Burt. She says, delicious, too messy to handle,
18:41
Speaker 1: and so her brother offers a suggestion to their dear
18:45
Speaker 1: old dad said, why not give it a handle? Yeah,
18:49
Speaker 1: it's too messy to handle, give it a handle. Too
18:51
Speaker 1: hot to handle, too cold to hold. Ye, popsicle sticks
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Speaker 1: are in control. Stick. Everything goes on a stick. Everything
18:59
Speaker 1: gets a stick. It's the advent of the everything shoved
19:02
Speaker 1: on a stick era. And actually, you know this wasn't
19:05
Speaker 1: the first X on a stick you know thing, this,
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Speaker 1: this had been done before. Harry Bert Senior, in fact,
19:11
Speaker 1: had previously developed a treat called the Jolly Boy. It
19:16
Speaker 1: just sounds delightful, essentially a lollipop, you know, the Jolly Boy. Um.
19:20
Speaker 1: But ice cream was such a cutting edge, trendy, you know,
19:24
Speaker 1: confection that this was a big deal. And because he
19:29
Speaker 1: was combining something old with something new, it actually earned
19:33
Speaker 1: him two US patents, therefore also launching the ice cream empire.
19:38
Speaker 1: That was good humor, m yeah, and a great name,
19:44
Speaker 1: not bad holds up. It feels you know, very mister Rogers,
19:47
Speaker 1: very mid. It's not making crazy claims. It's not saying
19:51
Speaker 1: great humor or the funniest thing ever. I like reasonableness
19:56
Speaker 1: in advertising. And then these other comp editors enter the fray.
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Speaker 1: You know you've got things like the Klondike Bar, the
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Speaker 1: ice cream bar spelled I space Scream like the film franchise.
20:08
Speaker 1: And then Bert's contribution doesn't stop there. He is the
20:13
Speaker 1: first guy that we know of who moved from just
20:16
Speaker 1: a pushing cart kind of like a hot dog cart,
20:19
Speaker 1: to a motorized truck. So now his entire salesforce can
20:23
Speaker 1: roam the streets. He expands his business. Other people, of course,
20:27
Speaker 1: instantly find out about this and do the same. And
20:30
Speaker 1: this is where the nostalgia begins from modern America. This
20:35
Speaker 1: is where the ice cream truck becomes a thing. You know, Ben,
20:38
Speaker 1: I gotta ask. Another popular brand of the time was
20:41
Speaker 1: the Eskimo pie. I kind of feel like that's fallen
20:45
Speaker 1: out of political correctness. What would you say? Yeah, a
20:49
Speaker 1: pejorative term, right, but the idea that like all you know,
20:53
Speaker 1: Inuit people they eat frozen things all the time. It's
20:57
Speaker 1: sort of like inherently, you know, stereotypical. Yeah, I believe.
21:02
Speaker 1: Now it's called the d's pie ed y apostrophe s.
21:05
Speaker 1: I think you're damn rous. It's still the same thing,
21:08
Speaker 1: but they thankfully changed the name. And it's it's interesting too,
21:11
Speaker 1: because we we were talking about the confection that that
21:14
Speaker 1: that hair that burt Um presented his daughter Ruth, that
21:19
Speaker 1: was like essentially an ice cream rap, you know, wrapped
21:22
Speaker 1: in a presumably hard chocolate coating, but that it was
21:27
Speaker 1: too messy. I gotta wonder why, because the Klondike bar,
21:30
Speaker 1: you know, and the D's Pie or whatever it's called today,
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Speaker 1: essentially the same thing. It doesn't have a stick. You
21:36
Speaker 1: just handle it, you know, on the chocolate, get the wrapper.
21:39
Speaker 1: Though maybe I think that's a good point. That's a
21:43
Speaker 1: good point. You know what. This reminds me of a
21:45
Speaker 1: while back, and it's probably still around now. I think
21:48
Speaker 1: it was Hershey's chocolate syrup came out with the hardening syrup,
21:52
Speaker 1: which do you get chocolate magic shell? The magic shell
21:55
Speaker 1: that's the name. Yeah, you're right, And I remember try
22:01
Speaker 1: like trying that, and uh my mother at the time,
22:05
Speaker 1: this was her idea of a prank. I tried it
22:08
Speaker 1: and was hardening, and no one told me, and I
22:11
Speaker 1: thought that was just how chocolate syrup worked, and I
22:14
Speaker 1: had to eat it more quickly. It's like it's the
22:16
Speaker 1: equivalent of those birthday candles that re light when you
22:19
Speaker 1: believe everybody loves those said nobody ever. I think they're fun.
22:23
Speaker 1: I know, I feel like maybe you had a bad experience.
22:26
Speaker 1: I don't even know who hurt me, but somebody so
22:30
Speaker 1: good to good to know. We're celebrating our birthdays, which
22:33
Speaker 1: are I was in a few months. Oh my god,
22:35
Speaker 1: you're right, yeah, I can't, but God, another year around
22:38
Speaker 1: the sun. God time is weird. So we talked about
22:41
Speaker 1: Good Humor, and it really truly was an empire. I mean,
22:45
Speaker 1: we think of them as one of the kind of
22:47
Speaker 1: og vintage ice cream brands um and some of their
22:51
Speaker 1: most popular offerings are still just as popular today as
22:55
Speaker 1: they were. Let's let's talk about what led to this
22:58
Speaker 1: this this brand, this come and he kind of taking
23:00
Speaker 1: over the world of ice cream. Oh well, first off, distribution, right,
23:05
Speaker 1: he's got the truck fleet. He had twelve refrigerated trucks
23:09
Speaker 1: at this time. He equipped them with bells and they
23:13
Speaker 1: only sold Good Humor. So next, he's got exclusivity. And
23:16
Speaker 1: then I would say one of the big things to
23:19
Speaker 1: our question about the container is his ice cream because
23:22
Speaker 1: it all came with a stick. Didn't need a bowl
23:26
Speaker 1: or a cone or god forbid, a penny licked glass.
23:29
Speaker 1: Somebody gave you the money, and you just gave them
23:32
Speaker 1: the ice cream and then go with God, you know.
23:35
Speaker 1: And people dig this because it seems like a more fancy,
23:42
Speaker 1: more reliable solution to the street ice cream of the time.
23:48
Speaker 1: That stuff didn't have the best reputation. People said, look,
23:52
Speaker 1: we're just saying the ingredients may not be the highest quality.
23:56
Speaker 1: They're out in hot streets all day during summer, and
24:01
Speaker 1: it's not uncommon for people to get food poisting from
24:03
Speaker 1: these things. It was it was a known fact. And
24:06
Speaker 1: if you can, dairy does turn right, right, so good
24:11
Speaker 1: humor trucks when they first come out, they're kind of
24:14
Speaker 1: like the Apple Store versus Circuit City. It's true. They
24:20
Speaker 1: built that reputation on being unimpeachably clean and Christine these like,
24:26
Speaker 1: you know, shiny, brand new white trucks. The drivers wearing
24:31
Speaker 1: these like lab coats, you know, white presss, you know,
24:35
Speaker 1: dress whites. I guess you'd call them almost like a
24:39
Speaker 1: military uniform, you know. Or it's veryly maybe conjuring images
24:43
Speaker 1: of the milkman, right, or like chef whites or a doctor.
24:47
Speaker 1: Maybe like they knew what they were doing and this
24:50
Speaker 1: was this is a fun thing. We found their training
24:53
Speaker 1: manuals from back in the day even included uh, some
24:57
Speaker 1: kind of personal lifestyle advice. If you work for Good Humor,
25:01
Speaker 1: you're supposed to get a proper amount of rest. You
25:03
Speaker 1: are supposed to eat healthy, always be clean shaven, and
25:07
Speaker 1: always have a nice haircut. Look like you can sell
25:10
Speaker 1: bibles door to door as I say, whatever, I get
25:13
Speaker 1: a haircut. You know, it's funny this this iconic kind
25:15
Speaker 1: of image of the Good Humor ice cream truck man
25:18
Speaker 1: was has been sort of not lampoo mean well maybe lampoo,
25:21
Speaker 1: but like definitely like a sort of used in various
25:25
Speaker 1: pop cultural kind of you know images throughout the years.
25:28
Speaker 1: Like if you think of the Smashing Pumpkins video for
25:31
Speaker 1: the song Today off of Siamese Dream, Billy Corgan is
25:35
Speaker 1: seen kind of like as this sort of wandering ice
25:38
Speaker 1: cream man, like in a art film, and then in
25:41
Speaker 1: the end, his his clean you know, Good Humor uniform
25:44
Speaker 1: gets splattered in like psychedelic paint. And then there's a
25:47
Speaker 1: really funny kind of new metal band from the early
25:51
Speaker 1: two thousands called Coal Chamber and they had a song
25:54
Speaker 1: called Loco and in the video there's like a crazy
25:58
Speaker 1: ice cream man who he's crazy and he's coming to
26:01
Speaker 1: get your children. And then you may also recall the
26:04
Speaker 1: series of schlocky. Maybe only one horror movie he literally
26:07
Speaker 1: called The ice Cream Man, starring Ron Howard's kind of
26:11
Speaker 1: odd looking brother. Yeah, the same I'm forgetting, and he's like,
26:15
Speaker 1: you know, a murderous ice cream Man. Clint Howard, Clint,
26:18
Speaker 1: I gotta jump in here because that's the Star Trek
26:20
Speaker 1: reference right there. Clint Howard has been in Star Trek
26:23
Speaker 1: basically as long as anyone. Yes, he is the Baby's Baby,
26:29
Speaker 1: and he's in DS nine and most recently he was
26:32
Speaker 1: in Discovery. Oh okay, I think he might have showed
26:34
Speaker 1: up somewhere else. I can't remember, but I know he's
26:36
Speaker 1: in Discovery as well. He's in Ariyon in Discovery. Clint. Yeah. Yeah,
26:40
Speaker 1: he's got a very he's got a very memorable vibe.
26:43
Speaker 1: Yes he does. I also want to shout out a
26:46
Speaker 1: an amazing, quite surreal and very dark comics series called
26:52
Speaker 1: ice Cream Man. It is an anthology that's like the
26:57
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone when Rod Serling is having a bad day.
27:00
Speaker 1: Do we check it out? It's beautiful, but again it's
27:04
Speaker 1: very dark. I think it's because good humor had this
27:08
Speaker 1: appearance of safety and you know, very controlled delight. I
27:15
Speaker 1: think again, American culture being so reactionary and recursive, I
27:20
Speaker 1: think it's natural that that becomes something sinister, you know,
27:24
Speaker 1: just like clouds. Look, this guy is making so much money,
27:28
Speaker 1: and terrible things that happen in history all kind of
27:34
Speaker 1: help good humor. And we're not saying they caused prohibition
27:38
Speaker 1: nor the Great Depression. We're not saying they didn't though were.
27:41
Speaker 1: We are saying they made a lot of money as
27:44
Speaker 1: a result of those two things. Like prohibition happens people
27:47
Speaker 1: who would have spent their money on vices like alcohol,
27:51
Speaker 1: instead they spend their money on treats that won't get
27:55
Speaker 1: them in jail. So ice cream consumption rises by forty
27:59
Speaker 1: percent during the nineteen twenties. And then let's see what
28:03
Speaker 1: happens when we go to the Great Depression. Well, in
28:06
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two and the Great Depression kicked in, Good
28:10
Speaker 1: Humor bars were absolutely flying off the shelves or out
28:14
Speaker 1: of the refrigerated bins or what have you. Fourteen million
28:19
Speaker 1: of them were sold in New York and Chicago alone.
28:25
Speaker 1: And in those days, if you had a job working
28:28
Speaker 1: for Good Humor, you were making commission. Baby, you were
28:32
Speaker 1: clear in bank. Oh yeah, you were making you were
28:38
Speaker 1: making one hundred dollars a week. That would be something
28:42
Speaker 1: like two one hundred dollars per week, which kind of
28:47
Speaker 1: makes you the richest guy in the neighborhood if you
28:50
Speaker 1: if you just do the math on a monthly basis.
28:52
Speaker 1: Drivers are like the earlier example you mentioned about a milkman.
28:58
Speaker 1: They're an established neighborhood presence, similar to the mail carrier.
29:02
Speaker 1: And because the Good Humor truck had no door on
29:05
Speaker 1: the passenger side, the driver could pull up to a
29:08
Speaker 1: curb hop on the sidewalk, hand out the treats from
29:11
Speaker 1: the freezer in the back. And then the next question
29:15
Speaker 1: is how how do we make sure people know we're there.
29:19
Speaker 1: That's where Bert's idea about the bell comes in, and
29:22
Speaker 1: this is the origin of the ice cream jingle. As
29:25
Speaker 1: soon as people hear the bell, you know, shout out
29:28
Speaker 1: to Pavlov, they start thinking of ice cream instantly, because
29:32
Speaker 1: that's the main time they hear this bell. And consumers
29:35
Speaker 1: loved that there was a bell, so people would wait
29:39
Speaker 1: during summer, they would wait until they heard that, you know,
29:41
Speaker 1: the ring ding ding ringing ding ding, ring ding ding
29:45
Speaker 1: and they would drop everything and running catch the truck. Well,
29:48
Speaker 1: this is before the advent of whatever technology allows those
29:52
Speaker 1: bells to play little tunes, So at this point it
29:55
Speaker 1: really was just to ding ding, But then, of course
29:57
Speaker 1: we saw an evolution of that. But this was it
30:01
Speaker 1: really kind of became a spreading of good cheer, good
30:06
Speaker 1: humor if you will, you know, I mean, in a
30:08
Speaker 1: time when people were really needing something positive to glom onto,
30:13
Speaker 1: hearing that bell put a smile on your face. The
30:16
Speaker 1: kids came a run in, you know. It was excellent
30:20
Speaker 1: branding on the part of the Good Humor Company. A
30:22
Speaker 1: journalist in New York, Joan S. Lewis, had this to
30:25
Speaker 1: say in a nineteen seventy nine essay, a quote new
30:28
Speaker 1: friends were made while purchasing that delicious ice cream, while sleepovers,
30:33
Speaker 1: birthday parties, and picnics were often planned right at the
30:36
Speaker 1: truck's wheels. So it kind of became this like rallying points. Yeah, time,
30:41
Speaker 1: like the town square water cooler kind of situation. One
30:44
Speaker 1: hundred percent. Now, the ice cream industry had its ups
30:48
Speaker 1: and downs, and one of those downs occurred, you know,
30:51
Speaker 1: during World War Two, because there was rationing. The rationing
30:55
Speaker 1: included restricting the amount of dairy people and companies could
30:59
Speaker 1: consume stuff. I had to go to the war effort. Luckily,
31:02
Speaker 1: the industry survived, and there was this huge boom in
31:05
Speaker 1: ice cream consumption after World War Two. Now, the post
31:08
Speaker 1: World War two boom was huge for the United States
31:11
Speaker 1: in general. But now all of a sudden, people could
31:14
Speaker 1: eat as much ice cream as they wanted, and statistics
31:18
Speaker 1: would later show that what the average American wanted was
31:22
Speaker 1: about twenty quarts of ice cream per person per year,
31:26
Speaker 1: or more than that. In nineteen forty six, people were
31:29
Speaker 1: eating a lot of ice cream, and good Humor was
31:33
Speaker 1: right there with them. Just one on to point out
31:41
Speaker 1: real quick. I mentioned earlier that I went to the
31:44
Speaker 1: Museum of ice Cream in New York, very popular attraction.
31:47
Speaker 1: You gotta kind of book your tickets in advance, but
31:49
Speaker 1: with the entry fee comes unlimited free ice cream. There
31:53
Speaker 1: are little stops throughout the experience, I guess you call
31:57
Speaker 1: it where you get little ice cream treats and you
31:59
Speaker 1: can go through as many times as you want. There's
32:01
Speaker 1: a giant ball pit made of like sprinkles and stuff.
32:05
Speaker 1: It's it's it's kind of fun. It's a little goofy.
32:07
Speaker 1: You might relate it to something like candy Topia, if
32:09
Speaker 1: you've ever heard of that experience, Like I think that
32:12
Speaker 1: the travels the country or maybe it's in Atlanta only,
32:15
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's it's worth, it's it's worth. Look, I
32:17
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. So ice cream consumption is absolutely booming, as
32:21
Speaker 1: you said, around World War Two, especially after dairy rations
32:26
Speaker 1: were lifted. We know, along with these kinds of conflicts
32:29
Speaker 1: comes factories. Perhaps the ones created one thing that are
32:33
Speaker 1: then converted into creating things for the war effort. Certain
32:36
Speaker 1: you know, ingredients perhaps that were a staple of home
32:40
Speaker 1: cooking get rationed. So in the nineteen fifties, the company's
32:44
Speaker 1: fleet of ice cream trucks had hit a whopping two
32:49
Speaker 1: thousands because of that increase in demand due to the
32:53
Speaker 1: lifting of the rationing. So it also led to other
32:59
Speaker 1: you know players entering the game. Yeah, of course, right,
33:04
Speaker 1: because other people see that there is an opportunity and
33:08
Speaker 1: they think they want to get in on it as well.
33:11
Speaker 1: So this is where we see a new challenger entering
33:15
Speaker 1: the field or entering the fray. It's mister Softie s
33:18
Speaker 1: o ftee. Started by two brothers, Willie and James Conway.
33:24
Speaker 1: I don't know if he likes to be called Willie.
33:26
Speaker 1: He probably was a will or a William. And they're
33:28
Speaker 1: in Philly in the nineteen fifties and they were working
33:32
Speaker 1: for an ice cream machine manufacturer and they said, hey,
33:37
Speaker 1: you know what, Willie and James look at each other
33:40
Speaker 1: and they say, we're getting more and more request for
33:42
Speaker 1: ice cream machines that could be installed in trucks. Huh.
33:47
Speaker 1: And then they said, there's a problem because our machines
33:51
Speaker 1: are designed to be stationary, right, They're going into kitchens,
33:57
Speaker 1: they're going into soda pop counters and stuff like that.
34:00
Speaker 1: So we have to sort of reverse engineer these injury
34:03
Speaker 1: riggum and eventually they break down because they're not purposely
34:08
Speaker 1: they're not designed to be in trucks, and they were
34:11
Speaker 1: just being bolted to the truck and they didn't have
34:15
Speaker 1: shock absorbers. They couldn't the machines couldn't stay cool all
34:20
Speaker 1: the time, right, because let's remember not all these trucks
34:23
Speaker 1: had air conditioning necessarily, right. And if we're talking about
34:27
Speaker 1: we're talking about the crank style of ice cream creation, right,
34:31
Speaker 1: I mean not not not the hand crank style, but
34:33
Speaker 1: they like the salt style that would make you know,
34:36
Speaker 1: the scupa bowl kind of ice cream. Yeah. So the
34:40
Speaker 1: machines here work just fine when they're bolted to the
34:45
Speaker 1: ground of say a kitchen, but when you're on something
34:48
Speaker 1: that's rolling, possibly through pretty heated weather, it's going to
34:53
Speaker 1: mess up. It's taken all sorts of bumps, you know,
34:56
Speaker 1: along the way. So they said, we need to build
34:58
Speaker 1: a new kind of truck. It's like that. It's like
35:01
Speaker 1: the intro to that old TV show The two thousand
35:05
Speaker 1: Dollars or Bionic Man. What was it called, remember fifth
35:08
Speaker 1: the ten million dollars ten million dollars Man. They look
35:14
Speaker 1: at this ice cream truck and they're like, we can build,
35:16
Speaker 1: rebuild it better, faster, stronger. Think about if you ever
35:19
Speaker 1: had a dryer where the drying basket or whatever it's
35:24
Speaker 1: called gets out of balance because of like maybe the
35:27
Speaker 1: floor's not level or there's a something, it starts to
35:31
Speaker 1: go good junk good, chunk good, junk good, chunk good.
35:33
Speaker 1: That's probably what would have happened with these traditional ice
35:35
Speaker 1: cream machines. If the trucks say, we're going up a slope,
35:39
Speaker 1: you know, or hit a bump or whatever, So they
35:41
Speaker 1: really needed to kind of reinvent the wheel, create a
35:45
Speaker 1: process that could be you know, reliably replicated while on
35:50
Speaker 1: the go. Yeah, exactly. And the Conways said they went
35:55
Speaker 1: to their boss. They said, hey, we've got this idea,
35:57
Speaker 1: and their boss said, Ah, that's a lot of time
36:00
Speaker 1: and that's a lot of money. I don't know if
36:02
Speaker 1: it's worth it for us to make these purpose built
36:05
Speaker 1: ice cream trucks. So the brothers said, we're going to
36:08
Speaker 1: do it ourselves. And their machine was designed to create
36:12
Speaker 1: perfectly soft, smooth ice cream, hence the name mister Softy
36:17
Speaker 1: from the back of a moving truck. And they started
36:20
Speaker 1: adding more and more trucks to their fleet, and then
36:23
Speaker 1: they said, hang on, you know what we could be doing.
36:26
Speaker 1: We could just sell these trucks as franchises. And they
36:31
Speaker 1: did it for like they were doing Gangbusters business, folks.
36:36
Speaker 1: From nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy, mister Softy franchises
36:40
Speaker 1: grew by three thousand, six hundred percent, which doesn't even
36:45
Speaker 1: sound like a real number, does it. Yeah. And as
36:48
Speaker 1: many you know, New Yorkers out there might know who
36:51
Speaker 1: grew up, you know, around here, mister Softy was kind
36:54
Speaker 1: of more of a regional affair. It didn't really reach
36:56
Speaker 1: the same you know, heights in terms of like expansion
37:01
Speaker 1: that Good Humor did. They kind of stuck to sort
37:03
Speaker 1: of more of like a territory, right, Yeah, yeah, because
37:06
Speaker 1: you know, with a franchise, you want to guarantee of
37:09
Speaker 1: some sort of exclusivity unless your mattress firm. So Good
37:15
Speaker 1: Humor is still doing their thing, they're doing just fine.
37:18
Speaker 1: By the nineteen sixties, they have not only expanded their
37:22
Speaker 1: fleet again, but they have expanded their ice cream, their treats.
37:27
Speaker 1: They have eighty five different types of ice cream based confections.
37:32
Speaker 1: But they're starting to think we might not be able
37:36
Speaker 1: to keep the trucks going forever because in nineteen seventy five,
37:40
Speaker 1: New York City authorities came calling. They charged Good Humor
37:44
Speaker 1: with almost two hundred and fifty counts of falsifying records
37:49
Speaker 1: to cover up evidence of bacteria in their ice cream treats. Wow, yeah,
37:57
Speaker 1: it was. It's pretty significant too. About ten percent of
38:00
Speaker 1: all Good Humor ice cream bars sold between nineteen seventy
38:04
Speaker 1: two and nineteen seventy five were found to have been
38:08
Speaker 1: tainted by these these these bacteria and products from the
38:13
Speaker 1: company's Queens, New York factory, according to the authorities, were
38:18
Speaker 1: quote not securely protected from dirt, dust, insects, parts thereof you,
38:26
Speaker 1: and from all injurious contamination. Company got hit with an
38:31
Speaker 1: eighty five grand fine in nineteen seventy something dollars nineteen
38:37
Speaker 1: seventy five dollars, which was you know, I would I'm
38:39
Speaker 1: gonna guestimate, Yeah, it would be around maybe two hundred
38:43
Speaker 1: thousand roughly, so not insane, not like a company, you know,
38:49
Speaker 1: breaking fine, but you know, not insignificant. And it forced
38:54
Speaker 1: them and their competition to modernize quality control. It is
38:59
Speaker 1: a good m of course. Yeah. And they also said, look,
39:05
Speaker 1: let's go straight to grocery stores. We don't have to
39:08
Speaker 1: be on the trucks anymore. And you know, reminds me
39:11
Speaker 1: a little bit of how the dream of a lot
39:13
Speaker 1: of pop up food operations is to eventually open their
39:16
Speaker 1: own store. Right. So this seems like a good evolution
39:20
Speaker 1: for everybody involved. But some of the Good Humor drivers
39:24
Speaker 1: are die hards, and they say, I'm gonna keep making
39:27
Speaker 1: my rounds. The most famous, probably guy named Joseph Valardi
39:31
Speaker 1: in White Plains, New York. He got his Good Humor
39:34
Speaker 1: truck in nineteen seventy six, and he owned it, and
39:37
Speaker 1: he kept the same route he'd had since the early
39:40
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. And he was so consistent in the town
39:43
Speaker 1: that when he tragically passed away in twenty twelve, the
39:47
Speaker 1: town declared August six, twenty twelve, good humor, Joe Day, Oh,
39:53
Speaker 1: good old good humor. Sounds like he was a good dude.
39:55
Speaker 1: It does sound like that. And you know it's interesting
39:57
Speaker 1: now is I mean, there are probably, you know, franchised
40:03
Speaker 1: ice cream truck operations, but mostly you see them as
40:06
Speaker 1: being kind of sole proprietors or folks that like, you know,
40:09
Speaker 1: buy the stuff in bulk, get themselves a truck and
40:12
Speaker 1: kind of refirm it and create themselves a little ice
40:15
Speaker 1: cream delivery business. Oh yeah, yeah, And there are some
40:18
Speaker 1: sketch ice cream trucks out there. You know, there is regulation,
40:23
Speaker 1: but people get around it sometimes. And we'll get to
40:27
Speaker 1: some of the sketchier ways that ice cream trucks have
40:30
Speaker 1: been employed in the modern day. But right now, let's
40:33
Speaker 1: talk about the the sad fact that ice cream trucks
40:38
Speaker 1: may be encountering another down period. We don't know if
40:42
Speaker 1: they're going to go away or if they're going to
40:44
Speaker 1: bounce back. But according to folks like Steve Christensen, the
40:48
Speaker 1: executive director of the North American ice Cream Association, the
40:52
Speaker 1: ice cream truck may be a thing of the past.
40:55
Speaker 1: It costs more to operate the truck. Gas prices are
40:59
Speaker 1: growing up, the cost of making ice cream is going up,
41:02
Speaker 1: and you have to have your permits from the city
41:05
Speaker 1: or the community to be a vendor. It's just less
41:08
Speaker 1: and less profitable to operate one of these ice cream
41:12
Speaker 1: trucks or ice cream vans as they're called in the
41:14
Speaker 1: United Kingdom. It's true. I mean, we we've we've really
41:17
Speaker 1: probably seen them more replaced by food trucks, you know,
41:21
Speaker 1: taco trucks and stuff that often you know, they're not
41:24
Speaker 1: making the rounds. They're kind of posting up their mobile
41:27
Speaker 1: and then. But you know that that's also true of
41:29
Speaker 1: ice cream trucks in more urban settings. You'll see them,
41:31
Speaker 1: mister softy trucks in New York, for example, at like
41:34
Speaker 1: street fairs. But they're not just rolling around. They're like
41:36
Speaker 1: sitting on a particular corner. They go to a lot
41:39
Speaker 1: of events now, weddings, you know, festivals, get togethers of
41:43
Speaker 1: any sort, block parties, and that's helpful for them because
41:47
Speaker 1: then they know they will definitely have customers. It's way
41:51
Speaker 1: less risky than just rolling through a suburb and hoping
41:55
Speaker 1: people hear the song. Right. There's also this idea that
42:02
Speaker 1: ice cream trucks and the in the concept of the
42:04
Speaker 1: mobile refrigeration unit really launched a thousand carts. You know,
42:09
Speaker 1: because Harry Burt with his idea of bringing the treats
42:14
Speaker 1: to the people. Uh, he probably inspired the food truck industry, right,
42:20
Speaker 1: like to that point. You know, food trucks are carrying
42:23
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy stuff, some of its very very
42:26
Speaker 1: high end as well. And the idea of combining the convenience,
42:32
Speaker 1: the mobility, the instant gratification, it's all. It's all very
42:36
Speaker 1: very American, which means there's a there's a dark side. Yeah,
42:42
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a dark side. Let's talk about
42:45
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of those those things, huh, because
42:48
Speaker 1: not trucks are necessarily selling ice cream, and then I know.
42:52
Speaker 1: The San Jose Mercury News on August twenty six, two eighteen,
42:57
Speaker 1: reported story about quote, two men arrested in North Long
43:01
Speaker 1: Beach over the weekend on suspicion of dealing drugs out
43:04
Speaker 1: of an ice cream truck after detectives found methamphetamine, marijuana,
43:09
Speaker 1: and a revolver in the vehicle. Yeah, that's not your
43:14
Speaker 1: typical good humor menu. We also we also know that Max,
43:20
Speaker 1: you found this one. Earlier this year, March of twenty
43:24
Speaker 1: twenty three, New Orleans police arrested a woman and impounded
43:28
Speaker 1: her ice cream truck because it was carrying meth and
43:32
Speaker 1: ice Cream trucks have been used in the past and
43:34
Speaker 1: probably will be used again in the future as a
43:37
Speaker 1: drug distribution front. However, that front is becoming less and
43:43
Speaker 1: less viable because there are fewer and fewer actual ice
43:47
Speaker 1: cream trucks out there. Right, They can't really blend in anymore,
43:51
Speaker 1: can they? Right? Yeah, they stick out. You know what
43:53
Speaker 1: they need to do is use uber I guess I
43:56
Speaker 1: guess so. But but okay, So we started with the music,
43:59
Speaker 1: how about we, there, guys, the classic ice cream jingle.
44:06
Speaker 1: As you pointed out at the top, there are various
44:09
Speaker 1: iterations of this, various different songs, each of which has
44:12
Speaker 1: become kind of iconic. But it turns out the ice
44:16
Speaker 1: cream jingle itself is influenced by some dark, dark things
44:23
Speaker 1: in America's past. You know, it's funny, of all the
44:25
Speaker 1: ones that we named at the top of the show,
44:26
Speaker 1: this was not the one that we came to. It
44:29
Speaker 1: is because it's sort of an amalgam of different sort
44:32
Speaker 1: of popular tunes. But the classic ice cream truck jingle
44:37
Speaker 1: really is based off a nineteenth century folk song called
44:40
Speaker 1: Turkey and the Straw, which was itself based on an
44:43
Speaker 1: even older British folk tune called the Old Rose Tree.
44:47
Speaker 1: And like many things in the eighteen hundreds, it was
44:49
Speaker 1: sort of revamped to have a overtly racist message and
44:55
Speaker 1: incorporated into a lot of the traveling minstrel shows that
44:59
Speaker 1: we know and despise. Yeah, and this is something that
45:06
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't know, and they wouldn't be
45:09
Speaker 1: so excited about the song if they knew its full history.
45:13
Speaker 1: And you know, we don't have any evidence that the
45:17
Speaker 1: ice cream men of ages past were super duper neo
45:21
Speaker 1: Nazis or something. They were just going for a song
45:23
Speaker 1: that was very familiar to everyone, and Good Humor wanted
45:27
Speaker 1: to make this right. They wanted to change things, so
45:30
Speaker 1: they did something that I love. Yeah. Yeah, they they
45:35
Speaker 1: talked with Rizza, the legendary Yeah, the producer behind WU
45:42
Speaker 1: Tang's most massive hits, the legendary Rapper, and they came
45:45
Speaker 1: to Rizza and they gave him a pitch that I
45:47
Speaker 1: just know Riza must have loved. They said, Hey, we
45:50
Speaker 1: found out the ice cream song is racist. Can you
45:53
Speaker 1: help us make a new ice cream truck jingle? And
45:56
Speaker 1: he did because he's a cool guy. And now this
45:59
Speaker 1: song is available to drivers across the country for free. Boom.
46:03
Speaker 1: I want to sample it. I've not heard of this
46:05
Speaker 1: until we until Max's research on the topic, so I
46:09
Speaker 1: want to look into that a little bit myself. Ben,
46:11
Speaker 1: thank you for taking this ice cream truck ride with
46:15
Speaker 1: us today. Is that what you call it? Yeah? Thank
46:19
Speaker 1: you for riding with us the weird ice cream truck
46:22
Speaker 1: that is our podcast Ridiculous History. Thanks also to super
46:26
Speaker 1: producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
46:30
Speaker 1: the jingle that we use every time we do this show.
46:34
Speaker 1: Who else? Who else? Oh Man Jonathan Strickland, the quister who,
46:37
Speaker 1: by the way, gave me a fabulous Broadway show recommendation
46:41
Speaker 1: that I think he mentioned to you as well when
46:43
Speaker 1: we were playing miniature golf with him at the Peter
46:46
Speaker 1: Pan Mini Golf course in Austin day and I went
46:49
Speaker 1: and saw Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which is a Monty
46:52
Speaker 1: Python esque kind of send up of the popular Peter
46:56
Speaker 1: Pan the musical where literally everything goes wrong. So thanks,
47:00
Speaker 1: thank you Quister for your your nefarious recommendation of a
47:06
Speaker 1: Broadway show. Thank you also to Christop Raciotis. Thank you
47:09
Speaker 1: to Eaves, Jeff Coach, thanks for a pal. Gabe Louisier,
47:13
Speaker 1: who started as a research associate here now as his
47:16
Speaker 1: own show This Day in History Class. Do check it out.
47:19
Speaker 1: And I can't wait to hear what jingle is gonna play.
47:22
Speaker 1: I know Max will do something Jingle Jangle, Morning Baby.
47:37
Speaker 1: Let's see you next time. For more podcasts from my
47:52
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
47:55
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.