Memories of Mello-Rolls
Try explaining the concept of what a Mello-Roll was to your grandchildren and it becomes a ridiculous task, and much laughter on their part. They can’t understand the concept of ice cream that came wrapped in something that looked like the center cardboard roll of toilet paper, with ice cream stuffed inside. That was the only way I could think of explaining it to them.
Ice cream was sheer joy and luxury in those days and the creaminess was probably double that of today’s ice creams. Then the Mello-Roll disappeared from the scene, and the memory has now faded. Only those above the age of 50 remember summers full of Mello-Rolls. The distribution was mostly in candy stores because it offered the ideal portion control method of dispensing ice cream. You could get a small single roll, a double single roll, a tall single roll and if you wanted to pig out, a double tall cone.
Made by Borden’s for retail stores in Canada the Mello-Rolls were packed 24 to 30 for your local stores under three different names. A Mello-Roll ice cream beginning was a freezing machine called a Vogt Instant Freezer invented by C. W. Vogt in 1930. The ice cream mix and air were pumped into the freezer barrel and then rapidly frozen to a stiff consistency. The ice cream continued its journey by being pushed out of a pipe into a cylindrical bar shape of the Mello-Roll. According to the Toronto City Dairy a tube former and filler wrapped the bar with two continuous pieces of paper, forming paper tabs on each side that would later serve as handles for unwrapping.
Mello-Rolls came in three flavours and vanilla was the most popular followed by chocolate then strawberry. Occasionally other promotional flavours were made, one of which was black raspberry which could have been mistaken for grape since it was light purple. In my day the only available flavours were chocolate, vanilla and, I think, strawberry, as in those days ice cream came in very few flavours anywhere. An advantage to the store owner was that inventory could be tightly controlled, unlike scooped ice cream. Another advantage to the parents of small children was that the ice cream didn’t hang over the edge of the cone, and it wouldn’t drip down the outside of the cone to make the hands sticky. I never ever thought there was enough ice cream in a Mell-O-Roll! You knew you weren’t a kid anymore when you could peel the paper away from the cylinder of ice cream without having it land in the sand. When you were young, this happened all the time. Then you cried. Then your dad trudged back to the concession stand to get you another one.
A quarter was a lot of money for a kid to have then, and in most cases if you had a nickle you were lucky. A Coke was five or seven cents, and the store owner would get mad if you took more than two straws. I would go to Mayheu’s on the corner store of Oliver and Albert Street in Cowansville and with 10 pennies come out with a paper bag full of potato chips, marshmallow filled mini-ice cream cones, wax lips, and Popeye candy cigarettes.
I don’t think I was much older than five when I used to be sent to Bonneau’s grocery store on the corner of Albert and Main Street every week. Things were different in those days, and communities were safe and most grocery stores looked the same in every village or town. Stores had a human element, and there was nothing you couldn’t buy in the familyrun stores. There was always fresh bread, gossip, and the grocery store was arguably one of the most important businesses in town. Each store had a wooden counter that people shared conversation around. The grocer always had a pencil behind his ear, a smile, and quick precision as he wrapped a piece of fresh meat, in brown paper tied with string.
The penny candy in the grocery store was always a favourite of mine even though a neighbour informed me that her grandfather had warned her that such candy could spread polio. In those days everything “caused polio”, but candy was supposed to be the number one culprit. No doubt some mindful parent had begun the rumour to keep her children away from the sweets.
The Mello-Roll finally disappeared around 1965, sooner in some areas. Sadly, it would have no place in today’s world, takes too much time and skill to unwrap. It was a quieter, gentler time when neighbourhood children congregated at family-owned corner stores for MelloRolls, Honeymoon Candy, Black Balls and five candy cigarettes for five cents. With it goes an age erased by the advent of far-flung suburbs, impersonal shopping centres, never-ending big-box stores, and now let’s replace the extinct Mello-Rolls with some fancy gelato.