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Summer is here, and where there's summer, there's lots and lots of ice cream. It's tough to envision a junk food item as "seasonal," but a cone full of pistachio always works better under the hot sun rather than aside animated Mrs. Claus dolls. Everyone has their own personal favorites in the frosty treat department -- some prefer snowcones, others delight in soft swirly sundaes. My favorite, sadly, went extinct a long time ago. I've mourned the loss and pleaded for a resurgence for many years, but Good Humor ain't God and they can't hear my prayers. Here's X-E's tribute to Colossal Fossil...
I don't have an exact year of distribution for these things, and in fact, there's very little information on 'em at all available anywhere. While the Internet has become a haven for the nostalgia enthusiast, "Colossal Fossil" ice pops have remained completely absent. Even after asking around to see if anyone else remembered these things, I was met with slant-faced emoticons and "huh?" responses. I'd hate to think that you all have no taste, so my best guess is that Good Humor only test marketed them in selected cities, mine included. Either way, Colossal Fossil was an undeservedly short-lived entity that went a long way in making the hot afternoons more passable during my childhood. But what were they?
The commercial told the story best -- a cartoon dinosaur, sitting in an oversized chaise and sipping happily on a tall glass of what's probably stego urine since lemonade couldn't have possibly existed back then, refuses to heed his fellow saurs' warnings of the impending "ice age." He was a rebellious dinosaur, see, like Denver or the grandmother on Family Matters. Course, his buddies weren't lying, and when the ice age came, our sunbathing dragon lizard paid the ultimate price...
BAM! Happy Dino ends up frozen in ice -- but not just regular ice, lemonade flavored ice on a stick, coated with frozen flavor syrup. And so the story of Colossal Fossil begins: lemonade ice pops with a gummy dinosaur trapped in the middle. It was a unique offering I couldn't resist, and for the duration of its stay in the freezer section, not a week went by where I didn't beg my mother to bring home more "dino pops." The ass-end of each stick was covered in either cherry or grape syrup, creating an impossibly delicious trio of flavors that by all rights should've had better sales. Let's explore why Colossal Fossil couldn't cut the mustard, and how us few fans can get past the grieving. To end this intro on a more motivating note, let's throw in some quick caps-locked bullshit to make the skim-throughers take notice: GUMMY DINOSAUR TRAPPED INSIDE A POP A POP IT'S INSIDE AND YOU CAN EAT IT. There we go -- if you're one of the aforementioned, stop looking for buzz sentences and read this from the damned beginning. The dinosaur got trapped in ice and transformed into candy for us -- the least you could do is offer ten minutes of reading time in tribute.
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You've got to remember, as far as most kids go, dinosaurs are just another fad topic. There's exceptions of course, but generally, dinosaurs on the whole are "hot" when there's an accompanying cartoon or movie to boost children's otherwise passing interest. If Colossal Fossil pops arrived in 1993, siphoning heat from Jurassic Park, it's likely that they would've lasted a bit longer. Why else do you think things like Pop Tarts now arrive with popular animated characters on the box touting the Tarts as being their own? Kids'll eat crap if someone they look up to, no matter how fictional, is attached to it. Yeah, it's a little more vague with a seeming perennial like dinosaurs, but the shoe still fits. Sucks, though -- these things were great!
Okay, forget about the lemon ice and the assorted other flavorings for a moment, because you can get those anywhere. Colossal Fossil was all about the gummy. I'm not sure if many of you have experienced eating a gummy candy after it's been encased in ice for weeks and months on end, but let me tell you -- it goes through a fantastic metamorphosis that ultimately leaves you with what's assuredly the greatest candy on the planet. The gummy swells, growing an almost-flavorless, wet "skin" which slowly dissolves the second it hits your tongue. I know it doesn't sound like much, but trust me, this feature alone justified the price more than the box of pops themselves.
Know how you always suck your gummy candy for a few minutes before chewing it to death? The dinosaurs included inside these pops were like pre-sucked, giant gummies -- only you didn't have to worry about licking someone else's saliva, and even if you did, it wouldn't matter much because the mystery person's saliva tasted so much like great lemonade. This was exciting stuff, folks.
I do find Colossal Fossil's colossal failure a bit surprising though, as it's one of the only ice pops with a veritable gimmick. I don't get why the current crop of permanent pops are so boring, I really don't. We live in a world when yogurt is pawned off to kids either lukewarm in plasticky test tube vials or lukewarm mixed with coloring that makes it appear "vomit" colored. In plasticky test tube vials. So we've got, what, ten trillion ways and three kazillion food companies all pining for the top spot in the apparently lucrative business of peddling lukewarm yogurt, in plasticky test tubes, but some of the chart-topping themed ice pops have been plain red ones with a singular black stripe that somehow passes for a Spider-Man promotion? What gives? Ice pops are way more marketable than warm yogurt. There's room for fun in that part of the freezer, and there's certainly room for improvement. You know, like, fuck yogurt and rage against the machine and shit. At least Good Humor brought something to the table with Colossal Fossil.
It was more than just the gummy candy, too. Remember, kids are terminally impressionable, and even a thirty-second promo spot can feel as real to them as the scalp-gnawing lice slowly digging through their heads. The commercial played the pops out as if any kid who ate them would be freeing that friendly green dinosaur from his icy, great tasting prison. For creatures still very in tune with their juvenile sense of animism, this was a pretty clever route. I remember that feeling of pride each time I freed a new gummi T-Rex from his lemonade coffin, and the consequential rewards as I ate each of them with total disregard for the preservation of the prehistoric.
Okay, so he's no Earl Sinclair, but this guy only had a few seconds to unleash his charms. "Colossal Fossil" came and went in a flash, seemingly forgotten by all except me and the guy who voiced the animated fat kid who kept eating them. The pops aren't something I dwell on too regularly, but I still recall fonder days where my supermarket's freezer section packed a little more class. Click on the pic below to download Colossal Fossil's one and only commercial, with a video quality so grainy you'll wish you never did. And that's a testimonial.
Better yet, why don't we skip the lamenting and figure out a way to bring Colossal Fossil back, Good Humor or no Good Humor? Here's my guide to creating your own Colossal Fossil ice pops, which surprisingly is a lot easier than you might think.
INGREDIENTS/SUPPLIES: Lemonade, Popsicle molds, Gummy Dinosaur candy, love for the labor.
Fill the popsicle molds with lemonade, or whichever fruit juice you prefer so long as it's at least a little translucent. You want to see the dinosaur inside, don't you? Remember not to overfill, because even though I can't predict any pitfalls of such actions, the label on the popsicle mold package said not to. Warning labels don't lie. If they did, Wow! chips wouldn't cause so much fear.
Choose your gummy dinosaurs. For accuracy, it should be a T-Rex, but my bag only brought a colorful legion of triceratops. When recreating decades-old ice pops in tribute, you quickly learn to overlook the small stuff. The only mandatory aspects of this step is making sure the gummies are dinos, and choosing ones that are dark enough to be seen through frozen ice. But you knew that, you're not stupid. You're not the one who crafted homemade Colossal Fossil pops.
Add one gummy to each watery mold, trying your best to get it to land in the middle. This, incidentally, is impossible. Don't get too upset when your frozen gummy's head is popping out of the lemon fossil. You've used your means to do your best, and in spite of Good Humor's shortsighted view of the classics, that's all that really counts. Place the filled molds in the freezer, where they must remain untouched for several hours. Don't pull that "I'm gonna twirl with the stick after an hour to check the progress!" bullshit, or your Colossal Fossil pop will come out all messy and unprofessional. Initiative good, patience better.
When finished, that's how your popsicles should look. Admittedly, like crap. Such are the follies bestowed on those who'd seek to turn water into wine, or in this case, lemonade into fossil. The point is you've tried, and that's more than we can say for around 4,999,999,994 other people.
Though surely an artistic failure, your homemade Colossal Fossil pops will perfectly mimic the glory of the originals in the gummy dinosaur department -- same swollen, sugary goodness, and now you can have it whenever you want! Make several! Pride in your dino love and pledge allegiance to Colossal Fossil. They're not too important, but hey, they made ice pops plenty more interesting.
RETURN TO X-E!
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