I scream, you scream

We all scream for ice cream. peels back the layers of a Kiwi classic.

IT’S BEEN GOING almost 80 years and is still New Zealand’s second best-loved brand. So how did we all become Tip Top fans? SMALL BEGINNINGS Tip-Top started in 1936, when two friends, Albert Hayman and Len Malaghan, opened an ice cream parlour in central Wellington’s Manners street.

Ice creams like the Jelly Tip, Choc Bar and Trumpet have been around since the early days, as has Eskimo Pie, a block of vanilla ice cream dipped in a layer of chocolate with no stick.

The company has had several guises, being at one stage part of listed company General Foods Corporation. It was bought by Fonterra in 2001. ICONIC ADS Tip Top is one brand which has truly embedded itself in New Zealand pop culture, says group marketing manager Minna Reinikkala. There has been some classic advertising over the years, she says, most of it created by ad agency Colenso BBDO, with whom Tip Top has had a long-term relationship.

Take Moggy Man in the 1960s and the Popsicle Band in the 1970s. Then there were the Oooh ah Fruju ads, Trumpet’s “Togs, togs, undies”, and the Memphis Meltdown Sheriff. In the 1980s, supermodel Rachel Hunter scored her first TV slot aged 15 in a Trumpet ad.

Meanwhile, it was Tip Top which created the hokey pokey and goody goody gum drops flavours. Both have become part of the country’s vernacular, as has the trumpet, says Reinikkala. INNOVATION There has also been some cool Tip Top innovation over the years, she says.

In 1962, the original founders built what was