I don’t know. I’m just putting the question out there.

The two of them look like they want to punch each other. And surely fistfights were a rare thing in proximity to Good Humor trucks.

That’s not ]]> Now, why would a lovely teenage girl with a delicious Good Humor be staring angrily at her friendly Good Humor Man?

I don’t know. I’m just putting the question out there.

The two of them look like they want to punch each other. And surely fistfights were a rare thing in proximity to Good Humor trucks.

That’s not a movie still. It’s some kind of news or promotional photo. If only we had a caption; something like “Even Juvenile Delinquents love Good Humors” would explain things.

Of course, if this was Glasgow instead of suburban America, and it was the 1980’s instead of the 1940’s, we’d know that the Glasgow Ice Cream Truck Turf Wars were to blame. But this probably does not represent a drug deal gone bad.

More likely, the teen-ager is simply fed up with all the damn advice the Good Humor Man is dispensing with his ice cream.

I’m guessing that The Good Humor Safety Club, which issued the pinbacks at right, was created in response to ice cream truck-related injuries and deaths. It’s a battle that’s still being fought: there’s a vocal group of anti-ice cream truck people out there who want to banish this already-vanishing summer tradition.

And not all of them are concerned about the potential for accidents. Some of them just hate the music, like the grouches in Vancouver, who don’t seem to realize that “…the chimes are the only way we have of knowing that the the [sic] ice cream man is in the neighbourhood.”

The petition suggests that the silent majority have no objection to the chimes and that the bylaw changes suggested by the city council would “…put us out of business!”

Doubtless they are supported in this assertion by industry rags like The National Dipper, the magazine for frozen dessert retailers, and the “strong united voice” of The International Association of Ice Cream Vendors.

But I beg to differ.

Good Humor once provided, to any customer who made a request, a giant placard sporting a huge letter “G.”

All you’d have to do would be to place the placard in the window of your home, and your friendly local Good Humor man would know to stop and stock your home freezer. (Few of these placards have survived, which explains why the IAICV is ignorant of this alternate business model… and why the example shown here looks kinda grungy).

But wait. If we put the industry back on the placard business model, we would lose those lovely chimes!

No.

In fact, if you want to hear ice cream music, you have other options. You can listen to ice cream music 24/7, if that’s your desire, thanks to a couple of CD’s that push the musical genre beyond its traditional limits.

Songs for Ice Cream Trucks is a CD released this year – that would be 2007 – by a very talented guy named Michael Hearst. Here’s the solution for all of those disgruntled people in Vancouver: buy this CD, and then… don’t play it.

I love this CD and highly recommend it, but then again, I’ve been writing about ice cream trucks for four days. But there’s at least one person out there as interested as I am. Check out the trailer for the documentary! (Thanks, MH!)

Actually, make that two, because we’ve also got the incredible music of John Charles Alder, who has released Ice Cream Truckin’, another CD of tunes (many of them using toy piano) that would sound just great anywhere. Even in Vancouver. His band is called Twink, and I also recommend checking out Broken Record, another Twink CD that samples old kiddie records in wonderful and hilarious ways.

You can listen to samples from each CD at the respective sites linked above.

If you want to watch ice cream trucks, rather than just listen, you have to hope that The Good Humor Man is released to DVD sometime soon. It’s a wild live-action cartoon from Frank Tashlin, the man who first won our hearts with his fabulous Porky Pig shorts of the late 1930’s.

Are Good Humor trucks dangerous places? Watch what happens to Jack Carson.

The bite out of the bar. The little square cutouts that not only draw your eye to the bar, but also present the opportunity for additional, strategically-placed icicles. The white reflections on the bar suggest it’s shown actual size. A happy, open, simple upper- and lower-case font presents ]]>
Consider the old Good Humor logo. It’s perfect.

The bite out of the bar. The little square cutouts that not only draw your eye to the bar, but also present the opportunity for additional, strategically-placed icicles. The white reflections on the bar suggest it’s shown actual size. A happy, open, simple upper- and lower-case font presents the company name; a company name that doesn’t mind at all if the stick and the bar partially obscure it; they are that easy-going. Then… the all-caps “brick” of ice cream at the bottom. I’m not a designer, but is this not brilliant?

And the sheer brilliance of the name itself, suggesting that no problem exists that cannot be solved by a little ice cream and a smile. From Unilver, who now owns the brand:

In 1920, Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio candy maker, created a special treat called the Jolly Boy Sucker – a lollypop on a stick. The same year, while working at his ice cream parlor, Burt created a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. It tasted great, but the new combination was too messy to eat. So, Burt’s son Harry Jr. suggested freezing the wooden sticks that were used for Jolly Boy Suckers into the ice cream. Burt called his creation the Good Humor Bar, capitalizing on the then widely held belief that a person’s “humor,” or temperament, was related to the humor of the palate (the sense of taste).

Times have changed. If somebody told you they had a special treat for you called the Jolly Boy Sucker… you’d call the cops. And, of course, they made a teeny little revision to the Good Humor logo in recent years:

Oh, this works, right? Designed by the same people who created the beloved biohazard logo, Good Humor picked this new logo up on the cheap at a garage sale held by The American Heart Association, who a) remind you to substitute fat-free milk and nonfat or low-fat frozen yogurt for whole milk, cream and ice cream, and b) rejected this as the AHA logo because it was ‘too clinical.’

Consider the Good Humor Truck.

Friendly, right? Clean, open, driven by the friendly man who sells Good Humors, who is outfitted in an all-white uniform and who takes this ice cream business very, very seriously.

You don’t see that guy driving one of these great old trucks on the road much any more. What you see instead is some variation on this:

Oh, my God. This panel van contains stuff in it that people actually purchase and eat? This is not the friendly man who sells Good Humors.

This is the man afraid to leave the truck, the man currently cowering behind the steel mesh teller’s cage, waiting anxiously for the installation of his new “Good Humor Drawer.”

More Good Humor coming this weekend.