With much Good Humor, vintage ice cream trucks serve nostalgia on a stick
By Ron Hurtibise
Jul 04, 2019 | 8:15 AM
Karmic Ice Cream serves up nostalgia and smiles with frozen treats sold out of vintage ice cream trucks.
The sound of the Good Humor Ice Cream truck's bells is embedded, like a long-unused cellphone ring tone, deep in the childhood memories of many Americans.
In South Florida, two nostalgia-driven ice cream sellers have made it their mission to ring those bells, summon those memories and share the joy that comes flooding out.
"It was a treat for many people," says Richard Blech, an attorney-turned-nostalgia peddler. "The world wasn't as affluent back then, and the simple pleasures of life weren't as common. Ice cream was special. You remembered it."
Blech's Good Humor memories go back to when he was 2. Growing up in Queens, N.Y., his grandfather drove a Good Humor truck on Coney Island. Those memories were burbling around his brain 15 years ago when "I thought, 'Whatever happened to those Good Humor trucks?' That's how it started."
Blech, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, spent 10 years checking out relics rusting in backyards and garages before finding the first truck he had to have — a 1966 Ford F-100. It still had the original Good Humor logo and artwork on the sides, etched in rustproof porcelain. In back is the original cold plate freezer that cools to 20 degrees below zero when plugged in overnight and then keeps ice cream frozen for eight hours of vending.
But that find in Portland, Conn., wasn't enough to satisfy his itch. Blech and his partner Jorge Fernandez kept hunting and found two more vintage Good Humor trucks, including a 1969 Ford F-100 and a 1949 Ford F-1 with a dry ice compartment to keep the product frozen.
In 2014, Blech and Fernandez created The Vintage Ice Cream Guys. They divide their time and their fleet between South Florida and Long Island, bringing the trucks to parties, fundraisers, corporate events, car shows and other gatherings.
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Steve Popkin, co-founder of Coral Springs-based Karmic Ice Cream, never forgot the best day of his life, his wife Debbie says. As a boy in Wantagh, Long Island, "he was playing outside and suddenly three ice cream trucks were coming at him at the same time — Good Humor, Mister Softee and Bungalow Bar," she said. The dopamine spike was so powerful, it imprinted a lifelong desire to own his own ice cream truck.
Now living in Coral Springs, the Popkins' years-long search led them to Connecticut in 2017 where they found a 1931 Model A Ford with a Good Humor-branded freezer on the back. They decided the find was "karmic" and named their company Karmic Ice Cream. Debbie Popkin left her job at a software company and the couple kept building their fleet, adding a 1935 Ford truck, a 1958 Chevy, a 1940 Ford truck and ice cream trailer, a Harley Davidson motorcycle with an ice cream freezer side car and a push cart.
The two companies sell Good Humor's classic stick bars — Strawberry Shortcake, Chocolate Eclair and Toasted Almond — plus other classics and modern treats for customers with special diets.
Blech and the Popkins can talk for hours about the history of Good Humor — some details learned online, and others from their customers' memories.
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The Good Humor story dips and curves along the same route that America paved in the 20th century. Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio, confectioner, developed a hard chocolate coating for ice cream in 1920, then patented the concept of freezing it with a stick through the middle to serve as a handle.
By the 1950s, Good Humor's fleet grew to 2,000 trucks that migrated into the suburbs to serve the post-World War II Baby Boomer generation. Drivers followed strict codes of dress and conduct. Good Humor trucks appeared in more than 200 movies, including a full-length feature in 1950 called "The Good Humor Man."
But as the Baby Boomers matured, the magic started to fade. In 1961, a subsidiary of the global conglomerate Unilever absorbed Good Humor, and in the 1970s, skyrocketing gas prices rendered street vending unprofitable. Unilever discontinued the street vending division to focus on grocery sales and sold the remaining trucks to independent operators.
Today, vintage Good Humor trucks can be found across the country, in operation by other nostalgia peddlers or waiting in dealers' barns. Blech and the Popkins say they are regularly contacted by hobbyists and would-be entrepreneurs seeking advice.
Roaming street sales is the one nostalgic activity Blech and the Popkins say they won't replicate. The vehicles are too fragile and most communities have banned the practice or burdened it with so much licensing and regulation that it couldn't turn a profit.
Bringing the trucks to events, though, is an ideal way to share them with ice cream lovers eager for a blast from the past, the owners say.
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The Popkins recently brought a truck to a fundraiser at the Coral Springs Fire Academy, and a few weeks ago were hired to stop at several Coral Springs city buildings and give away ice cream as a thank you to employees.
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"Whenever we bring it to an event, it inspires a million fond memories," Debbie Popkin said. "We stand around the truck and enjoy them. There's something very special about sharing ice cream with a neighbor or a stranger."
Blech said he's heard a "million stories" from people who chased the ice cream man down their streets as kids. "I've seen people back up off highway exit ramps to get a picture of my truck," he said. "A policeman pulled me over to tell me he hadn't seen one of the trucks since he was 12."
Displaying one of their Good Humor trucks at the New York International Auto Show last April, Blech said he was approached by a man who heard the bells as he was descending the elevators. "He found us and said he hadn't heard that sound in 50 years but knew it was a Good Humor truck."