ice cream of the future I went to the zoo this past weekend, and I noticed a familiar sight. No, I'm not referring to the familiar monkey exhibit sight. That's more like a familiar smell. I'm talking about Dippin' Dots, the overpriced ice cream-like product that, for some reason, is formed into little tiny spheres. So instead of actually getting a bowl of ice cream, you get about half ice cream and half air. "But look! The ice cream is spherical!" When I first saw this stuff years ago it looked pretty darn cool. "It's ice cream, but it's formed into little tiny spheres! Wow!" And when I noticed that it was called "The Ice Cream of the Future," well that just sealed the deal. I had to have it.

When this stuff came out 15 or 20 years ago, I could understand why it was called "The Ice Cream of the Future." We were into parachute pants, the space program, and Reaganomics. But let's face it, the future is here, kids don't want to be astronauts anymore, and we eat ice cream the same way we did 100 years ago. Apparently Dippin' Dots didn't revolutionize the ice cream world the way they thought it was going to. Ice cream eaters of the world have spoken, and we do not place a high premium on products that are formed into tiny spheres.

But here's the disturbing part. Dippin' Dots is still referring to its product as "The Ice Cream of the Future"! At what point will Dippin' Dots admit failure? "Shareholders, it pains me to do so, but I must make a disappointing announcement. We were wrong about the future. The future is now upon us, and there is no place in this future for spherical ice cream. We are now changing our slogan to 'Gimmicky Overpriced Ice Cream That They Only Sell at Amusement Parks and Zoos.'"

So the Dippin' Dots marketers were wrong. So what? People have been wrong before. Marketers have been wrong before. Plenty of cool-sounding ideas have come along. Take the "flying car" idea. What better way to beat traffic than to just take flight and soar away? But it never took root. We're still driving on roads. The way people drive, it's probably for the best that we don't expand these problems into the third dimension. The flying car is no longer the car of the future, it's the futuristic car of the past.

And so it goes with the Dippin' Dots. Now if we could only do something about the monkeys.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 10/18/2004