Klondike bar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Klondike bar is a brand name for a dessert generally consisting of a vanilla ice cream square coated with a thin layer of chocolate. They are generally wrapped with a silver-colored wrapper, upon which the mascot for the brand, a polar bear, appears. In the UK, the generic name for this type of dessert is a choc ice.

The Klondike bar was invented by the Isaly Dairy Company of Mansfield, Ohio in the 1930s. Rights to the name were eventually sold to Good Humor-Breyers, part of Unilever. It is known for its slogan "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?"

1 Varieties
2 Popular culture
3 Copycat product and legal conflict
4 See also
5 Sources
6 External link

[edit] Varieties

Several types of Klondike bar have been sold:

Original vanilla bars (with milk chocolate coating)
Krunch^® bars (with crisped rice in coating)
Heath^® bars (with Heath toffee in coating)
York^® peppermint patty bars (with peppermint ice cream)
Neapolitan bars (with neapolitan ice cream)
Planters^® caramel & peanut bars (with nougat-flavored ice cream)
Dark chocolate bars (with dark chocolate coating)
Caramel crunch bars (with caramel coating)
Cappuccino bars (with coffee-flavored ice cream)
Chocolate bars (with chocolate ice cream)
Hershey^® with almond bars (with Hershey chocolate and almonds)
Whitehouse cherry (with cherry ice cream)
Strawberry cheesecake bars (with swirls of strawberry syrup and pie crust)
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (with peanut butter cup pieces)
Oreo (with "cookies and cream" ice cream) (USA only)

Additionally, the following products have borne the Klondike name:

Minis Snack Size Vanilla Ice Cream Bars
Slim-a-Bear Premium Fudge Bar
CarbSmart™ Ice Cream Bars
CarbSmart™ Fudge Bars

Klondike ice cream was founded after the Eskimo Pie ice cream product. Eskimo Pie was the originator of the ice cream and chocolate bar. Eskimo Pie is currently owned by CoolBrands International, a Canadian based company.

[edit] Popular culture

The advertising campaign, with its slogan, "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" has been subject to much parody and references in popular culture.

In "I Never Met the Dead Man" on Family Guy, a commercial asks several questions (stand on one leg, act like a monkey). The announcer's last question is, "Would you...kill a man?" The man promptly shoots someone else.

[edit] Copycat product and legal conflict

In the 1980s, Kraft produced an identical product with a very similar wrapper (using a polar bear) called "Polar Bar", leading to a trademark infringement dispute with a company called Ambrit, Inc., which held the Klondike trademark at the time. The United States Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling prohibiting Polar Bar from using the wrapper, and Kraft paid $8.5 million to settle the suit. The brand had already been discontinued when bacteria was found in two ice cream factories where it was produced. An investigation started when a man died from meningitis after eating one of the bars.