Popsicle Pete and friends

Popsicle (now owned by Unilever of all people) was another staple of kids' advertising.

In April 1939, Popsicle Pete was introduced on the radio program Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as having won the "Typical American Boy Contest." The character told listeners that they could win presents by sending wrappers from Popsicle products to the manufacturer. During the 1940s, Popsicle Pete ads were created by Woody Gelman and his partner Ben Solomon. The ads appeared in print, television commercials, and activity books until 1995.

But the real fascination came with those red dots.

Pop culture historian has a more personal take.

That's right: It's the dictionary definition of empty calories — the orange popsicle. I liked the way they looked. I liked the way they tasted. I liked that nothing bad ever happened to you while eating an orange popsicle and I regretted that that time period lasted such a brief time. Sadly, you couldn't draw it out and make the "safe" feeling last because the popsicle would melt at a rapidly-accelerating pace and drip all over you and become more of a problem than a joy. Still, it was great while it lasted.

This feeling, by the way, only applied to orange popsicles. A grape popsicle or a red one was just a hunk of frozen flavored water. I was never sure what the red ones were. I think they were whatever you wanted them to be. If you asked for strawberry, they gave you a red one. If you asked for cherry, they gave you the same red one. Or raspberry. Or one time, even apple. I'm sure that if I'd asked for a tomato popsicle, they would have handed me one of those red ones. It tasted as much like tomato as it did any of those other flavors.

As wonderful as they were, there was another downside to orange popsicles: The two sticks. I could rarely get the one-stick variety in my area. which was silly. Think how many trees they could have saved by only inserting one…but they gave you two on the faulty premise that some folks might want to split the popsicle in half and share it with a friend.

First thing wrong with that concept: Share it with a friend? Never. Let my cheapo friend get his own orange popsicle. Even if you were eight, it wasn't a significant expenditure.

Second problem: Splitting one of those things in half was about as easy as splitting the atom and almost as dangerous. I certainly never successfully accomplished either.

Usually, attempting it would send one entire half of your beloved orange popsicle plunging to the pavement. Or one stick would come out, making the popsicle impossible to share and awkward to eat. In the TV commercials, some trained ninja popsicle-divider would grasp the two sticks, give an artful twist and bisect the popsicle perfectly. They should have put up a little disclaimer: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME — because it never worked like that in reality.

So you'd just eat the popsicle with two sticks, which would put you perpetually off-balance. Whichever one you held was the wrong one. But I still loved them…up until about the age of twelve or thirteen.

When you're in that age range, much changes in your world. Certain toys you own seem childish and you toss them out as a rite of passage. You have to start seriously thinking about a career or at least a way of start making spending money. If you're a boy, girls suddenly seem a lot less yucchy. And orange popsicles lose a large chunk of their magic.