blah blah blah Cookie Puss blah blah blah Fudgie the Whale.
That's about all I needed to set me daydreaming. It was a birthday ritual in my family that you got to go to the Carvel Ice Cream store in the local strip mall and flip through the big binder of designs and pick out your own ice cream cake. We never much went in for the character cakes, but here is a story from my very early childhood. Once when I was very young, maybe 5 or 6 years old, we went to some friends house for their big St. Patrick's Day dinner (gross). Of course, the only thing I was interested in was the ice cream cake, a big Carvel leprechaun, which I have since learned from the Wikipedia page was most likely Cookie O'Puss. Except my Mom wouldn't let me have piece of ice cream cake because I had been suffering from, shall we say, some loose bowel movements, that day. My mom was all about monitoring bowel movements back in the day. To placate me, my Mom and the friend of the family said they would put a piece of cake away for me and I could come over and eat it as soon as I was better. Then I had to sit there and watch my brother and the other children eat Cookie O'Puss. That was pretty much torture, but I sat there and took it. A few days later I returned to the house to claim my piece of ice cream cake and I had to be sat down and received a speech a long the lines of, "Nancy, we're very sorry but Mr. G saw the piece of cake in the freezer and he didn't know we were saving it for you and so he ate it. There is no more. We're very sorry." Friends, I was devastated. I don't remember if I cried, but the colossal disappointment I felt cannot be put into words. Naturally I blamed my mother and her policing of our bathroom progress.
To this day, I cannot control myself around ice cream cake.
According to this website for a Carvel retail location in Pennsylvania, a Carvel Cookie Puss cake today retails for $16.99. Here is a photo of my from my 24th birthday party trying to recapture some of that ice cream cake birthday magic with a cake from Maggie Moo's on 7th Avenue in Park Slope that cost around $45. That look on my face is disbelief that I actually spent that much on an ice cream cake, but sheer joy that I am about to leave the soul-crushing year of age 23 behind me. Also, I am drunk.
8 comments:
the link about fudgie isn't about fudgie. I'm just sayin'.
I totally wrote an entire blog entry on Cookie Puss! Did you know he's still on the Carvel Ice Cream Trucks? I saw him the other day! God, I miss that puss.
jesse, i fixed the fudgie link. the world shall know the truth about fudgie the whale.
NPW please include a link to your Cookie Puss post. Do you know what I would pay $100 to see (not really)? A photo of a vintage Cookie O'Puss to complete this traumatic childhood flashback.
I think we've all written a blog entry at one time or another about Carvel. Mine covered the best page on the Carvel website, which gives consecutive corporate bios for Senior VP of Sales and Development Geoff Hill and Spokescake Fudgie the Whale.
(Deleted the first comment because it messed up the link...)
That is by far the best page on the Carvel website. Do you think they had to get permission to use "Free Willy" and "Rocket Man"? And if they didn't pay for the rights, do you think they are now in the process of being sued by Big Entertainment, INC. thanks to this blog?
Also, can you include a link to your blog post Dan? I am turning this blog into a Carvel nostalgia blog aggregator.
Alas, that blog is now defunct. Here is the post in its entirety (except minus the sweet picture you can find on Google images):
Cookie Puss
Jun 07, 2006 - [11:44 am]
Let me start with a very large muchas gracias to all that helped make my 29th a great event and the start of what will most certainly be a better birthday year than 28.
Special thanks to Denise, Alex, Karl, Dave and Alex for some great dinner/mini-golf fun (Denise is a cupcake wizard and mini-golf master all in one!).
Next up, Pat R. left a very fond memory on the comments section yesterday that truly gave me pause. I am of course speaking of the great and powerful Cookie Puss ice cream cake.
While I was certain Cookie Puss was under deep cover in some type of cookie cake witness protection program, it would appear that he lives on with eternal fame via the great freezer of the internet.
I found an important historical piece online that really captures the essence of the man, the myth, the Puss. Below are some excerpts to cover the following areas:
the Concept
It's possible that Carvel wanted to suggest an all-American cake character who, by virtue of his sheer determination to be super excellent, learned to fly off the planet and breathe where oxygen doesn't exist.
the Creation and Commercialiaztion
After introducing himself, C.P. would fly around ice cream makers' heads, not at all challenged with the sight of seeing himself poured out into a cake mold. Cookie Puss understands his role, and the downsides of it: he's gotta commentate on slaughtered versions of himself being caketified.
the Cake
It's not the kind of cake you put back in the freezer immediately after cutting it, because let's face it, nobody wants to stop looking at Cookie Puss. On the dining room table he remained, a prisoner of immobility, tormented by the interrogating overhead lights. His death rarely came quick, but you know, he never stopped smiling.
[ 5 comments ]
Ok, I am deeply bummed that we do not have a Carvel in Oregon, and that I am on a diet because darn it I want an icecream cake!
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