‘Good Humor’ bars unite vanilla and chocolate

Youngstown, Ohio, is the birthplace of “Good Humor Ice Cream Suckers,” and the man who invented the icy cold dessert treat there is “a folk hero in eastern Ohio.” 

Harry B. Burt was 18 when he opened a confectionery in downtown Youngstown in 1893. The archivist at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society in Youngstown said Burt began selling “old-fashioned chocolate cream drops,” but he soon branched out into ice cream and baked goods. Before long, Burt was running a soda fountain, grill, bakery and restaurant. 

“In the early 1920s, Burt developed a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with vanilla ice cream. His daughter, Ruth, said the ice cream bar was ‘messy.’ The solution, suggested by his son, Harry Jr., was to add a wooden stick, as if the product was a lollypop candy.”

 

“The new chocolate-coated ice cream bar, ‘Good Humor,’ alluded to the 19th century belief that a person’s humor or temperament is related to a person’s sense of taste, or the ‘humor’ of the palate.” Amen to that. 

Burt was the first to mass produce ice cream bars and sell them in area neighborhoods from a fleet of 12 freezer trucks. Sing-songy bells were attached to the vehicles, so drivers could ding-a-ling as they drove. 

Good Humor drivers wore clean, snappy, crisp white uniforms and brimmed caps. The ice cream men were viewed as role models by youngsters.

Shortly after Burt’s death in 1926, investors purchased the brand from his widow, Cora Burt, and formed the Good Humor Corporation of America in Chicago. The company grew into a national phenomenon. 

In 1965, TIME magazine reported: “To the young, the Good Humor Man has become better known than the fire chief, more welcome than the mailman, more respected than the corner cop.” 

Another ice cream pioneer was William Isaly of Mansfield, Ohio, who started making his own ice cream bars in 1922, about 110 miles west of Youngstown. 

Isaly thought Burt’s frozen treats with a wooden handle were “kid stuff.” He aimed for a more mature audience, so “he created thick, chocolate-coated ice cream squares, wrapped in a fancy, silver foil wrapper,” wrote Candace Braun Davison for Delish.com. 

“The treat was named after the Klondike River in the Canadian Yukon Territory,” she said. The Klondike ice cream treat logo, with a white polar bear and a royal blue Artic sun design in the background, is an American classic. 

The frozen dessert treats industry has undergone a series of twists and turns, and ironically, famous brands such as Good Humor, Breyers, Ben & Jerry’s, Klondike, Popsicle and Sealtest are now all part of the same family – under the Unilever umbrella.   

Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company, headquartered in London and in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.