What Would You Do?

Since smoking is socially taboo, and "walking a mile for a camel" is something we wouldn't do, we wondered . . . what would you do?

For a Klondike® Bar

We know what we would do — walk 20 feet to the freezer !

Curious to know a bit more, I learned that the Klondike bar is nearly 100 years old. It was created in the 1920s when William Isaly, the son of Swiss immigrants, founded the Isaly Dairy Company, Mansfield, Ohio. Why it was named after the Klondike River of Yukon, Canada, wasn't explained. Nearly every fan of ice cream treats will recognize its unique silver foil wrapping with a polar bar mascot. The Klondike Bar has never had a stick, a feature that's often been touted in its advertisements.

The original Klondike Bar was handmade by the Isaly family as square slices of homemade ice cream were dipped into pans of rich Swiss milk chocolate. The bars were produced in outside of Youngstown, OH and Pittsburgh, PA. By the 1940s, the Isaly family had a dozen dairy plants supplying more than 400 dis and dairies. Klondike Bars were sold in all of these as the family grew its regional dairy business in locations throughout the midwest.

To help people remember and spell the company name, a marketing campaign was: I Still Always Love You Sweetheart.

The Klondike Bar was seen as one of the earliest attempts to market an ice cream product specifically for adults. But since it was sold only in Isaly dairy stores, its reach was limited. An early marketing trick the company used was that one in every 12 Klondike bars had a pink center. Anyone who found one, got the next one free. This backfired, as customers bought and stored the bars in home freezers. In the 1960s, changing consumer demands, declining home delivery sales and consolidation led to the shutdown of Isaly's facilities and the family liquidated its holdings. The final company meeting was in March 1972. Rights to the name were eventually sold to Good Humor-Breyers, part of Unilever.

Klondike Bar wasn't the company's only ice cream treat. It also invented the Skyscraper Cone which, instead of rounded ice cream scoops, was fashioned as a long, inverse cone shaped dip using a patented scoop with the Isaly name on the handle. According to local legend, when the family sold its stores, the family's grandfather and close colleagues buried the original scoops in a parking lot.

Are Klondike Bars good for you?
An original Klondike Bar has 250 calories and 14 grams of fat, which while not healthy, is better than other ice cream treat. But, wait there are lighter versions: 100-calorie bars (5 grams of fat) or No Sugar Added bars (5 grams of sugar).

How many flavors are there?
When Klondike Bars were introduced in 1922, there were 5 flavors with chocolate coating: vanilla, strawberry, vanilla, maple, and cherry.

Today, there's 12 different chocolate-covered bar flavors: Original, Cookie Dough Swirl, Heath, Reese's Peanut Butter, Mint Chocolate Chip, Krunch, Caramel Pretzel, Oreo, Dark Chocolate, Rocky Road, Double Chocolate, and Chocolate Neapolitan. ALL were on sale in a nearby supermarket last week. (Yes, we bought a few 6-packs as part of our research to find out which flavors we like best. All in the name of science, of course.)

Our favorites . . .Reese's Peanut Butter, Dark Chocolate, Rocky Road, Double Chocolate and just about every one we've tried so far. We still have a couple varieties to try, but there's no rush because for Grenville and myself, there's always time for a Klondike Bar and all we have to do is walk to our freezer!

How about you — What are your favorites and what would you do?

(or have you already done)