h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hark! The sound of a tinny greensleeves and we all new it was time to grab the small change and rush out onto the hot asphalt in our bare feet and ask for a 99! mmmm

Here in Hereford I must confess to not hearing or seeing an ice cream van in many, many years. I am sure there must be some. This is a small market town that has city status and yet all the ice cream vans are nowhere to be seen.

All I wish for is a screwball. Have not had one in twenty years!

There's a company in North Devon called Hockings ice creams - I haven't been down there for a few years, but they used to only sell out of vans and only sell vanilla, but my goodness it was fantastic vanilla! Real old-fashioned ice-cream. They sold tubs too, and people would travel to the places where the vans were located just to get a Hockings.

Lbclaire

Ice cream from ice cream vans always seemed more... legitimate somehow than ice cream bought from a shop, except ice cream bought from a shop by the seaside. There were several ice cream vans that came down the road where I lived - some you could set your clock by - and all the kids knew the individual tunes that signified each brand and which was their favourite.

I was watching an old episode of Minder a few months ago when I heard a familiar sound in the background which instantly took me back 40 years or more. 'Blimey', I thought to myself. 'That's a Tonibell van!'. For years I wondered how they made that distinctive ice cream van sound, then one day I found out. I saw the driver winding up something down by his seat - it was a little musical box that played the tune, and beside it was a microphone which picked up the sound which, I later surmised, fed the input into a cheap, poor quality amplifier and it was then played through a loudspeaker above the cab, which explains why ice cream van tunes always sounded so tinny and distorted.

To the best of my recollection there were vans from four different companies that patrolled our neighbourhood - Tonibell, Mr Whippee, Mr Softee and Rossi's. Of the first three, Tonibell was my favourite, but I made a beeline for Rossi's when they - more rarely than the others - came along because they were they only one that used proper ice cream cut from blocks to make a cornet, instead of that stuff from soft-serve machines which comes out looking like whipped cream (who knows what on earth is in that stuff!). As well as the traditional vanilla cornet you could also get raspberry ripple, and probably other flavours too like chocolate, strawberry and neopolitan. And since you could also buy the very same blocks of Rossi's ice cream in the shops I think I trusted it more than the others.

One of the vans - I forget which - used to sell a weird ice cream which I think was called a Popeye. It was a plastic cone filled with ice cream that you ate with a spoon, and at the bottom was a gumball of the weirdest tasting bubble gum I've ever chewed. It didn't make very good bubbles either - perhaps being frozen messed up its bubble-making properties somehow. And one or two of them sold rocket lollies - an iced lolly in the vague shape of a rocket that had two or three colours/flavours, like a traffic light lolly. Well, this was the sixties and rockets, especially Fireball XL5, were what kids like me dreamed about when we weren't dreaming about being Stirling Moss or the driver of the Flying Scotsman.

Y'know, thinking about it, the kids down my road probably ate at least one ice cream a day during the summer, not to mention paying a visit to the local sweetshop three or four times a week *and* getting some kind of pudding with custard after dinner almost every day. It's a wonder I have any teeth left.

Those Popeyes sound like Screwballs - they were my favourite. Can't think why, as like you say, the bubble gum was sugary and rather useless...

Lbclaire

Screwball - that sounds very familiar. Perhaps a Popeye was something else, or maybe different companies had different names for them.

Screwball was the Mr Whippee name I think (or Mr. Softee) - I can't remember which one came round our street now. But we also had Tonibell (who also had a Screwball thing, called a Toniball)

I never really liked that soft ice cream, but since it was all we had it had to do. There were also those clam-shell things which were filled with ice cream (they held more than a cone) and what I considered to be an adult version which had marshmallow in the bottom. (bleuch)

My favourite ice-cream from a van came from when I visited my grandparents in Sheffield (on the Flower Estate in Shiregreen). There were two rival vans (well, I suppose they had more): Manfridi and Hill Top Dairy. Both run by Italian families, both sold "proper" white ice-cream off a block (only one flavour - vanilla - , but it was definitely real Italian ice-cream)

As far as I know the rivalry was cut-throat and even deadly, leading to at least one stabbing I heard of.

I remember the soft-serve ice cream being OK, but that's because it was thicker and more like just softened ice-cream. Unfortunately all you seem to be able to get these days is that foamy whipped-cream-like stuff. I haven't had a cornet from a van in years for that reason (usually have a Fab or something instead ).

Lbclaire

Now what was the name of those shell-like things with the marshmallow? I rather liked them. I know it was something pretty obvious given the shape but it wasn't 'clams', and it's not coming to me. Scallops? Shells?

No idea, I hated them because the marshmallow end bit had been dipped in (cheap, 'orrible) chocolate and sprinkled with coconut.

Oysters-marshmallow, chocolate and coconut then they spoil it by putting that horrible artificial ice cream in it
Thorntons do loverly ice cream, had one the other day, fastest I've ever eaten an ice cream sooo damn hot it melted at high speed.

Oysters!

thanks for that - it had been bugging me!!

I had a Thorntons toffee ice cream last week. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm