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Les Waas, creator of the Mister Softee jingle, has died


mjzee

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Ok, frozrn custard, my favorite!

Did they have dispensers on the truks, or were the cones pre-made?

Always went to Dairy Queen for my FI fix until a few years ago, when some outfit called Rita's moved in just around the corner. Still gotta hit the DR for the Blizzards though!

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They did have dispensers on the trucks.  Kids generally love any ice cream they're given.  Mister Softee's ice cream wasn't great; the novelty was that the truck drove around your neighborhood, really to your front door.  The jingle is more notable than the ice cream: for most kids, it was their introduction to Pavlovian theory.  Hear the jingle, start salivating, start begging your mom for money.

Dairy Queen is good.  Carvel really owned the Northeast for soft serve, IMHO.  A vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles was always my "official" way to start Spring.  Actually, my parents made even better ice cream.  They owned a small store, bought the mix, and made their own.  Almost 20% butterfat, as I recall.  As a result, I was a chubby little kid.

Nowadays, soft serve frozen yogurt is all the rage.  Menchie's is pretty good, and they're open late.  Since coming to Houston, our non-soft-serve ice cream of choice is Amy's.  Amazing ice cream, though the lines are often too long.

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Wow, you grew up in an ice cream shop family...I am SO envious...ice cream remains one weakness against which for me resistance is futile.

There's a St. Louis outfit, Ted Drewes, that has been doing frozen custard since 1929. They are amazing, and yes, in summer, lines can wind around several blocks.

Somebody should do a coffee table book about the Blizzards of Texas, you know, the way the servers flip them upside down for you once they're completed. Nobody does it the same way, how could they, there is a definite aura of personal presentation with so many of them, it's part of the culture, especially when you get high school kids doing it A book of all the different looks and styles of the upside down Blizzard might make for a more interesting photo collection than might be expected.

2012-07-26-07-01-35-MJ-270712-DQ%20Blizz

No two people do it alike!

That's a big part of why I still get the Blizzard, just to see how the server's gonna flip it. It's a wonderful subsubsubset of Texas sociology.

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Ted Drewes - there's a name I hadn't thought of in a long time. I remember getting introduced to that place shortly after I came to St Louis for grad school. You're right about the lines, I don't recall going more than a few times because of them. But very very good.

Just got a Coldstone Creamery coupon in the email, they've been the place of choice for a while and I think its time to check out the closest one here in central Florida.

(Actually my wife was thrilled when Friendly's showed up in Delray Beach shortly after we moved in 2004.  They would be the "name" place, ahead of Carvel, during my younger days in CT.  Sue loved black cherry sundaes.)

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Why do they turn them upside down?  I'm not familiar with DQ lore.  My first experience with DQ was when I went to college in upstate NY in the '70's.  At that time, DQ switched from ice cream to ice milk.  It tasted like crap.  I guess they've since repented from their evil ways.  I like their cone with the hard chocolate shell that hardens as you wait.  I think that's neat technology (and yummy too).

I'm not a fan of Coldstone - too sweet.  There's a competitor around us, Marble Slab Creamery, that's really good.

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39 minutes ago, mjzee said:

Why do they turn them upside down?  I'm not familiar with DQ lore.  My first experience with DQ was when I went to college in upstate NY in the '70's.  At that time, DQ switched from ice cream to ice milk.  It tasted like crap.  I guess they've since repented from their evil ways.  I like their cone with the hard chocolate shell that hardens as you wait.  I think that's neat technology (and yummy too).

Couple of things about that...

First, Texas DQs are a world unto themselves. They have a special arrangement with the national DQ organization to operate as they do with all their signature food items, like the Beltbuster, Hungerbuster, etc. Steak AND Chicken fingers, and gravy, don't leave without having had gravy, if only for your fries.

That's because of the unique place that DQ has in Texas small town history. Pretty much any town with any real population had one, and it was a real social center, as there was no place else to go. So Friday nights (before and after the game, never during), Saturdays, Sundays after church, DQ was where you went to hang out, meet with family & friends, cruise for chicks on school nights, that was where you did it, at the Dairy Queen. I sure did!

As DQ became more positioned as a frozen treats operation nationally, there was a basic conflict between where they were going and what was already entrenched in Texas. I remember about 25 or so years ago, there was a bit of a dustup about the national org wanting to step in and get Texas DQs in line, but there was pupblic upcry and that idea never really gained traction.

As more, other, franchises have moved into more small(er) towns, that monopoly has lost some of its grip. But not all, hardly. Texas DQs still have that aura, and the smaller the town, the more it remains. They're still very local, community-centered.

Now, as for the Blizzard. I was around when it was introduced, and I think the hook had something to do with, like a real blizzard, this thing was so hardcore that you couldn't move in it, everything was stuck right where it was. Something like that. The flip was meant as a physical demonstration of DAMN, this thing is so thick and cold that IT DEFIES GRAVITY! It started out as a shtick and became a tradition.

My favorite flippers tend to be high school girls, they're just so INTO the show of it, with that type of naive enthusiasm that only high school girls who really believe in the omnipotent healing power of happiness, cheerleaders, majorettes, SPIRIT for crying out loud! Those type of servers will give you some since personal choreography, there will be a whole range of body motions in a very compact timeframe, a smile, and a handing off of the Blizzard to your own hands that will just warm and break your heart in equal measure, because, you know, Caroline, No, where did your long hair go, all that near-inevitability not yet on the horizon for them, not yet, and yeah, that's why I still enjoy going for the Blizzards, because of that, of Keeping Hope Alive for as long as it it there to be kept alive.

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46 minutes ago, JSngry said:

My favorite flippers tend to be high school girls, they're just so INTO the show of it, with that type of naive enthusiasm that only high school girls who really believe in the omnipotent healing power of happiness, cheerleaders, majorettes, SPIRIT for crying out loud! Those type of servers will give you some since personal choreography, there will be a whole range of body motions in a very compact timeframe, a smile, and a handing off of the Blizzard to your own hands that will just warm and break your heart in equal measure, because, you know, Caroline, No, where did your long hair go, all that near-inevitability not yet on the horizon for them, not yet, and yeah, that's why I still enjoy going for the Blizzards, because of that, of Keeping Hope Alive for as long as it it there to be kept alive.

Thank you for that wonderful word portrait.  I've never had a Blizzard in my life (no DQ in the small MO town I grew up in, only an A&W with actual carhops back then!), but I long to order one now just because of this paragraph.

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Hey, make it out this way and I'll treat you to one.

A summer weeknight after a Little League or soccer game is when the whole thing really comes together. Either that or Sunday after church if you're in one of those really small towns (I'm not).

But even without the trappings, those things are GOOD. One year at Thanksgiving they had Pumpkin Pie Blizzards, and they used a whole can of pumpkin pie filling in each one (I had a large, so that's probably why the whole can, but it was Libby's or some other grocery store stuff, not some generic DQ-label generic faux-concoction), and real pie crust (ok, "real" pie crust, but it still tasted like pie crust).

I've tried to do the Sonic shake thing, especially with half-price after 8 PM, but those things leave a sweet residue that kinda bugs me. Not Blizzards. What the difference is, I couldn't tell you.

Sorry to be DQ-ing in the Mister Frostee thread, but it's ice cream I know. No offense, I hope.

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