When I was a kid, Otter Pops were one of the various treats that mom didn’t buy. We were allowed to have them… but mom didn’t want them in the house. We could have them at Gran’s. We could have them if the kids next door got us one from their own freezer… but they were “pure sugar” and, as such, we didn’t have them in our own freezer.
If you are going to get them at Gran’s, you’d had better hope that they were recent purchases or else you’d be stuck with the kind that the cousins didn’t like. If you got them from the kids next door, you only got the ones they saw no value in keeping. I was a fan of Alexander the Grape, myself… but so were the other kids. That meant that I got Rip Van Lemon or Poncho Punch.
They were okay, I guess. I mean, better than not having an Otter Pop.
Then you grow up and can buy whatever you want and you look at the box of Otter Pops and see that you get *100* Otter Pops for FIVE BUCKS. Then you get the box home and you realize that you don’t like half of the ones in there. Almost makes you wish you had some kids next door to give them to. Well, the Louie Bloo Raspberry, anyway. I still like Alexander the Grape.
But, you know what? They taste different in 2021 than they did back in the 70’s. I don’t know if it’s that I’ve acquired adult tastes or that they used to use Real Sugar and Better Chemicals and now they use HFCS and Natural Colors. Lemme check the ingredients… oh, looky there. RED 40, YELLOW 5, YELLOW 6, BLUE 1. I wonder if the ones in the 70s had different numbers…
In any case, they don’t hit the spot the way they used to.
And so now it becomes a search for The Good Novelty.
The Firecracker is the quintessential Red, White, and Blue pop. Cherry, Lemon, and Blue Raspberry. The quintessential “not bad” popsicle. Never extraordinary but never a downright disappointment. Ephemeral.
However, the other day I found myself purchasing new popsicles (ones I have never tried) when I went to the hippie-dippy store.
The first is Chloe’s Marvel Spider-Man Strawberry & Lemon Frozen Fruit Pops. The lemon is surprisingly tart. Like, amazingly so. If a little kid gave you this as lemonade, you’d be tempted to suggest a little bit more sugar.
Like, I’m almost curious as to whether kids would like it. It’s that sour. The ones who like Warheads Sour Candy, maybe. Lucky for me, I am one of those.
So, yes, it’s *VERY* good. The problem is that they put the strawberry at the top of the popsicle and the lemon at the base. So you have a sweet start and a tart finish.
“I wish they had done it the other way around”, you will find yourself saying. Unless “tart” is your favorite kind of popsicle. If that’s the case, you need to get you a box of these RIGHT NOW.
And as you eat it, you can wonder why they put Spider-man on the box.
The second kind was the Goodpop Red, White & Blue. Like the firecracker, this one has Cherry, Lemon, and Blue Raspberry, but the dyes all sort of bleed into each other. Red, light blue, and blue, I guess. You start with the blue and it’s okay. You get to the lemon and it’s okay. The Cherry, however? Might be the finest Cherry portion of a popsicle *EVER*. I was blown away.
Like, I now enjoy starting with a Chloe’s and finishing with a Good Pops.
To bring us back full circle, Good Pops also makes their own version of Otter Pops: Organic Freezer Pops. I suppose that they had to put “organic” on there to make a product that mom would have bought us back in the 70s. But they’re not bad!
They come in three flavors: Cherry Limeade, Fruit Punch, and Concord Grape. The Concord Grape is off the charts. And Maribou can have the Cherry Limeade and the Fruit Punch.
These are silly little trifles forgotten after about the first week in September, but somewhere around June you remember “oh, yeah… we had those little things to help us beat the heat without, you know, touching the thermostat. Whatever happened to those?” And you find the firecrackers from last year in the back of the freezer and, after opening one and trying it, throw the remainder directly into to the kitchen trash.
This weekend, we’ll be using those to beat the heat in between chores, errands, and laundry.
So… what’s on your docket?
I remember these. The ice cream truck that stopped by the park where my summer camp was always had these.Report
I want to say that the ice cream truck had the Bomb Pop. The Bomb Pop was the KING-SIZE firecracker.Report
This is as I recall it as well. In Reagan’s America these were called “Bomb Pops” because everything was a metaphor for war, even ice-cold refreshment. (no politics)Report
Bomb Pop is a different (superior) brand.Report
we had the proto-organic kind, the “real fruit juice pops.” Lemon ones are pretty good, some of the berry ones are pretty good. Though we mostly made them *ourselves* from juice – my mom had a little set of molds, the plastic “holders,” I remember, had cut out animal shapes in the handles.
they were, of course, cheaper than the store bought and I thought worse (though really they were probably *better* because the flavors were real). They were also about 1/3 the size of a standard Popsicle.
We never had ice cream trucks in my neighborhood as a kid. I think they were actually banned? Or maybe, the abduction panic of the late 70s/early 80s shut a lot of that down. At any rate, it’s not something I have childhood experience with so I have no happy memories to conjure up when the truck comes out here, playing its tinny song (Still “Turkey in the Straw” here, though I know some groups have declared that song problematic and in need of replacement, literally my only association with it is “it’s the ice cream truck song” or “it’s something a very beginning music student learns to play”)
I will say as an adult with money and the ability to say “yeah it’s okay to have something sugary once in a while” I do sometimes go to one of the local “snowball” trailers here and get a shaved ice. I usually get Wonder Woman flavor, which is actually sort of a pina colada flavor (most of the flavors are named for the syrup colors used – this is a red and blue coconut and a golden syrup that’s probably the pineapple). I’m not quite brave enough to try some of the more outre concoctions (they have a pickle juice one, and I don’t know if it’s literal pickle juice, or just called that)Report
A quick google seems to indicate that, yes, that is real pickle brine.
The mass produced ones merely use “pickle flavor”.
This strikes me as something that four people go in on and each tests and then each can conclude “I thought you were kidding. That’s real pickle juice.”Report
Yeah, I didn’t experience the concept of the “ice cream truck” until we moved to Texas for a (thankfully) brief period spanning 5th-5th grade. Before that, if you wanted iced refreshment, you went to Dairy Queen.Report
Frozen Fruit pops were an elementary school favorite at my house.Report
Unrelated, but for Jaybird:
I started playing Hardspace Shipbreaker, and it’s not easy. The conceit is that you are essentially an indentured servant of the Lynx corporation working as a zero-G recycling specialist. The ships come in, you analyze the components in your HUD, cut the bits up, and kick the pieces into the various recycle bins.
It’s those last two that are the trick, since you only get paid for what goes into the bins correctly, and you have to do it all in Zero G, in your spacesuit. Your crappy, off the rack space suit with dodgy thruster controls. I thought at first that the clunky controls were a symptom of my laptop having an older graphics card, but even after I dialed the graphics down, it was still clunky, and I realized I need to earn money to upgrade my suit.
So you have to move slow and careful (luckily the suit has a ‘brake’ function where the suit automatically applies thrust to kill all your motion relative to the little recycle station you work in), and plan your cut job to minimize material loss, and every cut or push or what not gives you and the ship and the parts a bit of momentum you have to deal with.
Oh, and the recycle bins? They aren’t good for your health, and you aren’t good for theirs, and if you damage them by carelessly tossing your body into the bins, you will be billed for the damage (you’ll also be billed for the new body the company has to print for you, so…).
Anyway, it’s a challenge.
Also, remember Rebel Galaxy, that fun little privateer style game that had all the combat happen in a 3D space, but you were limited to a 2D plane (no pitch or roll)? Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is out for $30, has 3D space combat, and a bigger part of the galaxy to stomp around in.Report
My game box is on the fritz but I will check that out.
(I loved Rebel Galaxy… The fact that Dope Wars is still a magnificent game template remains amusing to me.)Report
Never played Dope Wars, I always think of it as a Privateer style game, because that is the first time I encountered a space sim shooter with an economic model.
RB outlaw is a prequel, as you play as Aunt Juno. You get more systems to explore (a lot more), but fewer ships to fly (although 3D combat, yea! – no more 2D broad sides), and no capital ships to play with.Report
Okay, on my wishlist. (Early access has burned me too many times, though.)Report
I’m more of an ice cream guy than a flavored ice guy, but we have paleta vendors here in the city that’ll sell you a nice fruity ice on a stick, and it’s made with real fruit.
The British Open is this weekend, so I’ll be glued to the set. I might try to get out myself.Report
I also… ice cream > popsicle always. But, if I have to go for frozen artificial sugar flavors, it’s Cherry… maximum cherry… like nuclear cherry. At our local Appaloosa festival I finally had a cherry ice so intense even I was like, settle down cherry master.
I used to play golf with my Grandpa as he was loosing his sight; I was his spotter. Then I worked at Golf Courses for several years through highschool… played a ton of golf then just stopped forever. It doesn’t mesh with my temperment.Report
The Amy’s drive-through near us makes an orange milkshake that tastes exactly like a Creamsicle.Report
Both granddaughters’ current favorite is the frosted strawberry lemonade at Chick-Fil-A. When I take them to lunch, I’m not allowed to suggest eating anywhere else.Report
We just got the check from our local Livestock exchange where we took four nuisance billy goats; as it happens, we hit the goat livestock bonanza as I guess there’s a muslim holiday upcoming. $3/lb LIVE weight… so about $800 for 4 dwarf nuisance billies. That’s a really high price if you haven’t been pricing out goats recently. Totally by accident on our part… just one of those chores we finally procrastinated into good fortune.
We also totaled our main car and the middle son lost the expensive kind of key for the truck… so, some good fortune to offset some misfortune… but still THREE DOLLARS a pound LIVE weight!Report
Wait, does this happen often enough that you can cash in on it next year too?Report
Sure, sort of… two movable feasts that the livestock exchange tracks… so if you get your breeding right you can hit those moving dates – as I say, we just hit it by accident since we were doing a cull run.
But that’s like triple word bonus, the other bonus is just a general meat shortage which is driving up prices right now… and that’s just plain farming…When you chase the good prices, it turns out everyone is chasing the good prices which means the prices go down… for commodities especially.
Normal prices for these sorts of cull animals are more like $0.75 – $1.25 per pound live weight… I thought we might get as much as $1.50 since goats have been in ‘higher’ demand since about 2015… but $3.00? That’s yahtzee.
I will say, though, at $3 live weight for Sheep/Goats, you could pay for a year of tuition with 50 market lambs/goats… which would require a breeding herd of about 30… which would be ‘do-able’ for an enterprising 14-18 yo.
Also at $3 live weight… commodity farming becomes almost viable. So let those prices float! End the Urban subsidies to farmers!
[Sorry, belay that last sentence… no politics]Report