Old-School Ice Cream Truck Treats We Totally Forgot About

Buying ice cream on the street used to be a risky proposition. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, your scoop of ice cream would come in a reusable glass bowl, called a penny lick, which you'd have to finish quickly so it would be available for the next customer. This was just as unsanitary as it sounds. Everything changed, however, with the invention of edible cups and cones as well as portable ice cream treats. Ohio resident Christian Kent Nelson devised the idea of ice cream bars covered in a hard chocolate coating, and another Ohioan, Harry Burt, pioneered the idea of ice cream on a stick along with the idea of selling ice cream bars from trucks.

Burt's company, Good Humor, became synonymous with ice cream trucks. He intentionally sought to overcome the historically dodgy reputation of mobile ice cream vendors by cultivating an ultra-wholesome corporate persona, with friendly drivers dressed entirely in white. Burt's timing was perfect too: By the time Good Humor was up and running, the Great Depression and Prohibition were both in full force, making ice cream bars one of the few indulgences that were both affordable and legal. And while Good Humor gave up its fleet of trucks in the 1970s, other vendors stepped in to fill the void. Today, however, their numbers are diminishing, and the popular treats they carried are harder to find. Still, here are some favorites worth searching for.

The flavor profile of the Choco Taco is nothing unusual –- just a waffle cone, vanilla ice cream, chocolate, and peanuts. It's a combo that shows up in any number of other treats. But its unique hard-taco shape (with the waffle cone batter baked into the form of a taco shell) made it a compelling bite. "When you eat a sugar cone, you generally eat the nuts, chocolate, and ice cream on the top, and then when you get to the cone, you're [only] eating ice cream and cone," Choco Taco inventor Alan Drazen told Eater. "With the Choco Taco you're getting the ice cream, cone, nuts, and chocolate with just about every bite."

So when Klondike announced in 2022 that it was discontinuing the Choco Taco, fans went apoplectic. Ice-cream scalpers began selling the remaining Choco Tacos for outrageous prices online, and not long after, enterprising ice-cream makers rushed to fill the void. In 2024, ice-cream maker Salt and Straw collaborated with Taco Bell to offer a reimagined Choco Taco, filled with cinnamon ancho ice cream and served with sweet and spicy sauce packets. The treat is still reportedly in the testing phase and has not been available beyond a 2024 promotional event. Cold Stone Creamery also introduced its version of the famous treat, though it was available only as a seasonal special. So while the original is no more (unless you're willing to buy overpriced 3-year-old ice cream online), with some hunting, you might be able to find a tasty substitute.

Ice-cream truck treats tend to fall into three categories: chocolaty, fruity and icy, and other. The appeal of chocolate is self-explanatory, and fruity, icy treats draw you in with their bright colors and promise of refreshment. The third category, however, is where the sleepers can be found. One example is the classic Strawberry Shortcake Bar, a multilayered treat with a strawberry ice cream core surrounded by vanilla ice cream and covered with pink-tinted cake crumbs.

Strawberry Shortcake Bars were one of these things you could always count on seeing on ice cream trucks in the 1970s, and even if you never ordered one, you may still associate them with your childhood. Good Humor discontinued their production for several years, which suggests they weren't among the company's more popular items. However, the company revived them, along with several other vintage products, in 1992. They continue to attract nostalgic fans –- but some grown-up devotees say they're not the same as they used to be.

For active kids who loved both chocolate and ice cream, Drumsticks were the total package. These sturdy waffle cones, filled with vanilla ice cream coated with a hard chocolate shell encrusted with chopped peanuts, offered not only a riot of textures and flavors, but superior portability. They were easy to carry and more durable than a basic ice cream bar or ice pop. They also melted more slowly than most other frozen treats, making them neater to eat and thus a great choice for snacking on the go.

These vintage treats, invented in 1928, are still around if you know where to look. But some modern ice-cream fans find Drumsticks' durability a bit disturbing. In 2024, a TikTok user left a Drumstick at room temperature for 22 hours and found it was still partially solid. This seriously freaked him out. "Just think. Your kids are eating this. Heck, I was eating it. But I will not eat it any longer," the poster declared (via Food and Wine). The reason for this, according to Food and Wine, is simple: The frozen vanilla filling is not technically ice cream (made from milk fats and solids) but a vegetable-oil-based frozen dessert. Stabilizers in the mixture, such as guar gum, enable the treat to keep its shape for startling long periods of time. So no, this childhood favorite is not made from top-shelf ingredients. But back when we were messy little kids, that didn't really matter.

The Orange Creamsicle is proof that you don't have to shout to be heard. First introduced in 1937, the simple bars of vanilla ice cream coated in a layer of orange sherbet may have looked plain next to their more brightly colored or exotically shaped cohorts, but their flavor –- a lively mix of creamy, sweet, icy, and tart — kept ice-cream lovers coming back for more.

Like a lot of old-school ice cream treats, orange Creamsicles fell off the public radar when ice cream trucks did. They are still around, but you are more likely to find them deep in a supermarket freezer than on a passing truck. Still, loyal fans didn't forget them. Mixologists paid tribute to the treat with Orange Creamsicle cocktails featuring orange juice, cream, and vodka. And for reasons no one fully understands, the once-forgotten flavor is now hot again: The classic combo of tangy orange and sweet now appears in everything from hard seltzers to sodas, milkshakes, and even skin-care products.

Patriotism takes many forms. Some people show love for their country by buying savings bonds or enlisting in the military. Others volunteer at parks or museums. But in 1955, when Kansas City inventors Doc Abernathy and James S. Merritt felt inspired to honor their country, they invented a red, white, and blue rocket-shaped frozen treat, which they dubbed the Bomb Pop.

Their concoction was very much a product of the post-World War II era and a shameless expression of the patriotic frenzy and optimism of the time. It was not only fun to look at, with its bold layers of red, white, and blue, but tasty, too. Each layer featured a different fruity flavor (raspberry in the blue layer, lime in the white layer, and cherry in the red layer). Abernathy and Merritt introduced the Bomb Pop during the summer, which proved to be a smart move: The cooling, refreshing treat hit the spot with curious eaters, and the fruity, colorful bar (and its many copycats) soon became favorite treats to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Many classic ice-cream truck treats, such as the Strawberry Shortcake Bar, pay homage to other beloved foods. Chocolate malt cups, however, are so old-school that they're named for a long-ago favorite few modern diners have ever encountered: the chocolate malt, a chocolaty milkshake flavored with malted milk powder, which gives it a toasty, caramel-like flavor. For teenagers in the 1940s, malts (or malteds, as they were sometimes called) were the go-to drink at soda-fountain get-togethers. They were not only tasty, but also considered healthy and fortifying, since malted milk powder itself was originally invented as a nutritional supplement.

Chocolate malt cups are basically that old treat in frozen, rather than slurp-able, form. Unlike other ice-cream truck treats, they didn't come on sticks or cones. Instead, they came in little cardboard cups, with disposable spoons (often made of the same wood as popsicle sticks) to scoop up the icy malt. Because the frozen malt itself wasn't much to look at, manufacturers served them in colorful branded paper cups. Today, these old cups (with the frozen malt itself long gone) are collectors' items.

Little kids (and a lot of big kids, too) eat with their eyes: If something looks cool, it must taste good too, right? Whoever came up with the idea of character pops understood this. If you're a hungry little kid on a hot afternoon, what could look tastier than an icy pop shaped like Tweety Bird or one of your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The fact that some of the characters had eyes made of big gumballs was another plus, as was the fact that they tasted pretty good. Depending on which character you chose, you'd be treated to a different flavor (Tweety Bird has orange and cherry flavors, and Sonic the Hedgehog features blue raspberry and cherry flavors).

The Popsicle brand was using cartoon characters as early as the 1930s to market its frozen goodies to kids, so turning cartoon characters into ice pops was a logical next step. And of course, using cartoon characters to sell food to kids is a time-honored practice, as anyone familiar with fast food or popular breakfast cereals can attest. And they remain a guilty pleasure of adults reliving their days of Powder Puff Girls or Dora the Explorer fandom. Never mind that the pops, when unwrapped, bear only a vague resemblance to the characters they're supposed to depict. They're colorful, fruity, and sweet, and that's all that matters.

Ice cream truck pioneer Good Humor has been around long enough to see many of its offerings go in and out of fashion. By 1960, the company offered 85 different products, but over time it dropped some of its older offerings. In 1992, it brought back several of these vintage treats, which it called the classics, including the Strawberry Shortcake Bar and the Toasted Almond Bar, which featured a core of almond ice cream covered in vanilla ice cream and almond-flavored cake crumbs.

Unfortunately for fans of the bars, the revival was not to last. In 2022, Good Humor discontinued production of the Toasted Almond Bar to the disappointment of many people, who launched an unsuccessful petition to bring it back. Devotees of the bar seem resigned to seeking out substitutes. "If you pour a little bit of amaretto on vanilla ice cream and top with toasted almonds, it's pretty similar," one Redditor suggested. And food bloggers have developed a number of copycat recipes if you want to recreate the bygone treat at home.