Do You Remember The Words To The Carvel Jingle?
Few things on this Earth are more incredible to a kid than ice cream and cake — and when put together, you just try to find a kid (or adult, for that matter) who isn't wearing a smile on their face. We all have fond memories of getting a big ice cream cake for our birthdays, and one of the companies who made the birthday of any kid special was Carvel. Those ice-cold cakes with their creamy middles, decorative frosting, and those little chocolate "crunchies" were stuff of legend.
While you may remember licking leftover frosting and pools of vanilla ice cream from your plate, the other details might be a little fuzzy. Those ice cream cakes would sometimes come in the form of certain characters — specifically, Carvel original characters. You could get a cake in the form of "Hug Me the Bear," a bear; Cookie Puss, a cross between a clown and a friendly alien from "Planet Birthday"; or Fudgie the Whale, a popular choice for a "whale of a dad."
Of course, no matter what the cake was, it was promised to be "made fresh every day, the Carvel way" — at least, according to the chain's jingle.
The story behind the Carvel jingle
A woman cheerfully sings over a simple rhythm and the hum of cathode rays. "Made fresh every day, 'cause that's the Carvel way..." The commercial shows how Carvel ice cream cakes are made, from how the chocolate "crunchies" are layered inside to how the finished products take the shape of Cookie Puss and Hug Me the Bear. The playful melody and cascading soft serve were enough to make you really want some of that fresh Carvel cream. Maybe you also remember an older voice talking on TV? A low, gravelly voice reminiscent of your beloved grandfather, a boisterous salesman, or Tom Waits proclaiming that Carvel is the "freshest ice cream in America"?
That voice was Tom Carvel, the creator of Carvel Ice Cream. According to Carvel's website, Tom was one of the first men to sell what would later become soft-serve ice cream, peddling soft, somewhat melted cones from the back of his ice cream truck around the late 1920s. In 1936, only 2 years after the first Carvel opened, Tom would patent a "no-air pump super-low temperature ice cream" — ice cream that would later be used in the company's famous cakes. Tom's vocal style on the company's commercials was described by critics as rough and filled with flubs and mistakes that still aired on TV despite how poor they sounded (via the New York Times). But to Tom, he was simply showcasing that he was an ordinary man talking plainly to ordinary ice cream buyers.