Keep Cool with Sublime Summer Ice Creams

SMOOTHIE BARS, MINTY FLAVORS, AND EVEN FRAPPUCCINO!



Summer weather is here and America’s ice cream makers have rolled out a number of tasty cold treats to help keep us cool, calm and collected.

Weight Watchers has introduced Strawberry Smoothie and Dark Chocolate Raspberry Bars.

Strawberry Smoothie Bars pair strawberry-flavored frozen yogurt with strawberries. Each bar is 1 point in the Weight Watchers “Points” system. Dark Chocolate Raspberry Bars feature low fat raspberry ice cream and raspberries covered with a dark chocolate coating. The points value per bar is 2. A package of 12 bars sells at a suggested retail price of $4.29 to $5.49.

Friendly’s, the popular ice cream company and restaurant chain in the Northeast, has debuted a new mint-derived flavor in is Sundae Xtreme line just in time for summer. Mint Cookie Collisions is the newest flavor in the “Xtreme” line along with Fudge Nut Brownie.

Friendly’s has also rolled out two new frozen yogurt varieties. Honey Granola is vanilla frozen yogurt with a honey flavored swirl and granola oat clusters. Forbidden Fudge Brownie is a double chocolate frozen yogurt with fudge swirls and fudge brownie chunks.

Each of the four new flavors is sold in a 48-ounce carton with a suggested price of $5.99.

Further west, Smith Dairy Products in Ohio has taken its Ruggles premium chocolate ice cream product and put it in a pint-size carton. Suggested retail price for a pint of Ruggles premium chocolate is $1.99 to $2.49.

Starbucks launched three new ice cream flavors that are “coffee-free.” The flavors trace their roots to several alternative beverages sold in the coffee chain’s retail outlets. Vanilla Bean Frappuccino, Signature Hot Chocolate, and Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino are available in pints in supermarket freezer cases in the $3.89 to $4.39 price range. Vanilla Bean Frappuccino is also available in a single-cup which sells for $1.29 to $1.39.

EDITOR’S PICK! While TFFG is not a regular consumer of ice cream, he enjoys the cool and creamy treat every now and then. However, while perusing the frozen food section of his regular grocery store not too long ago he was struck with an “I could really go for some ice cream” moment. His normal pick would have been a package of a “good for you”-type product like Weight Watchers, but TFFG didn’t really want to make the long term commitment to a 12-pack of anything or even a four-pack. But then, there it was—a single serve cup of New! The Skinny Cow Dulce de Leche. TFFG was both pleased and satisfied with the taste and texture of this one-cup flavor. He paid about $1.49 if memory serves him correctly, and found it worth every penny.

‘Peachy Paterno’ At Penn State

During last Saturday night’s prime time college football telecast of Iowa vs. Penn State on ABC-TV, the network ran a little feature filler of the Penn State dairy. Animal husbandry, veterinary medicine and agronomy are common to many State U’s (Kansas State, Iowa State, Michigan State, etc.) across the country in states with large agricultural areas, in this case, Pennsylvania, so it was a neat little look behind the scenes at the less-than-glorious State U universe.

The footage showed packages of ice cream rolling off the dairy’s assembly line and a close-up of a popular flavor, “Peachy Paterno,” named in honor of the Nittany Lions’ longtime and legendary football coach, Joe Paterno.

Unfortunately for Penn State and Coach “Jo Pa,” the game against Iowa was not at all “peachy,” as the home town crowd of 109,000 screaming fans in “Happy Valley” (a.k.a. Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa.) were not enough to overcome the visiting Hawkeyes (who knocked Penn State from a lofty high-ranked perch last season in Iowa City).

Iowa whipped the fifth-ranked Nittany Lions 21-10, pushing them out of the Associated Press Top 10 rankings and leaving them with an ignominious 0-1 record to start the Big 10 Conference season.

At least they’ve still got “Peachy Paterno” to help “lick” their wounds.

The Bunny Makes Friends in NYC

July is National Ice Cream Month and the folks from Wells’ Dairy in Le Mars, Iowa, got into the spirit of it all by heading to the Times Square area in New York to promote their Blue Bunny Champ! ice cream cones and Aspen frozen yogurt bars.

From Tuesday through Thursday last week representatives from Blue Bunny and its agency, The Barkley Group, Kansas City, fanned out along 50th Street, Broadway and Seventh Avenue Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passing out free ice cream samples of the Champ! cones and Aspen frozen yogurt bars.

The promotion tied into a Blue Bunny’s first-ever billboard in the upper Times Square area promoting the Champ! cone, which is a scoop of vanilla ice cream packed on a sugar cone, dipped in chocolate and rolled in peanuts.

The billboard features a carnivore-like creature’s upper and lower teeth in a menacing manner. The simple tag line beneath the image is “Champ Cones. Devour Them.” Upon closer inspection, all the teeth are ice cream cones. The upper “teeth” are cones in the usual form while the bottom “teeth” are the same cones inverted.

Blue Bunny distributed 50,000 of the Champ! cones samples while in New York.
Dave Smetter of the Wells’ Dairy marketing department says the weather was really cooperative and busy New Yorkers were not at all too busy to stop for a cool, free treat. Emphasis on the free, as Smetter noted well dressed businessmen carrying briefcases would take two or three and throw them in their briefcases. “I really wondered if they realized that was ice cream.”

Smetter says his throwing arm got a good workout out as their busy Midtown turf was chock-a-block full of double-decker tourist buses. Visitors to New York flock to the upper deck of these vehicles for sightseeing, and when they realized there was free ice cream available on the street level below, they challenged Blue Bunny’s demo team to oblige them--upper deck and all. “And we did,” says Smetter. “I did real well in tossing the samples to them. Got them all up there.”

The Blue Bunny team also got a taste of food retailing, New York-style. Some of the local mom-and-pop vendors smelled opportunity, so when there didn’t seem to any set limit on the number of free samples, these savvy businessmen took as many as they could and then put them in their own freezer cases, all marked up and ready to sell. Smetter didn’t reveal any details but he said they did manage to put a stop to that.

He also found some appreciative New York bus riders as he hopped on an uptown bus and spread the good word of ice cream via the free samples to the bus driver and some very thankful passengers.

TFFG SAYS: The Frozen Food Guy sat down with Dave Smetter from Blue Bunny and Kaylan Viveros from Barkley on Friday morning and they regaled him with tales of their three days spent on the busy streets of New York handing out free ice cream. The weather cooperated, as there was no rain, and thankfully for this “Bunny team” the heat and humidity had returned to more normal July temperatures after a relatively run of mild weather--perfect summer ice cream weather. TFFG was relieved to hear the cops didn’t hassle them, as Blue Bunny got all the various permits needed to “vend” on the city streets, so to speak. The total team of Blue Bunny distributors was about a dozen they said, and a van equipped for refrigeration purposes was used to handle the inventory. They were most impressed how friendly New Yorkers are but noted how they were at first a bit skeptical about what was going on. Yet once these city folk found out the ice cream samples were free--they were all for it!