There is an invasive species in the Spanish ice cream ecosystem that is threatening the existence of classic examples such as rum and raisins or nougat. I’m talking about metaphorical children’s flavors, a genre that has inhabited the counters of local artisans and the tubs of industrial brands for years. Unicorn, rainbow or smurf: they might seem like the lysergic hallucinations of someone sticking a little tobacco in their joint, but no, this confectionery industry has insisted on flavoring and flavoring the ethereal and imaginary. And there they are, leaving no room for elaboration with names denoting tangible elements, squatting the cones corresponding to others out of simple rationality. The apocalypse of cold is already here, and this time it’s not coming from beyond the wall.
Spaniards ate 149 million liters of ice cream between June 2020 and May 2021, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It is very difficult to know how much of this corresponds to metaphorical infantile tastes, although it may not be much. Because we must not forget that the target group are children between the ages of two and nine and adults with obvious maturation and personality development problems. Amalia Domínguez, saleswoman at La Abuela ice cream parlor, located just in front of Seville Cathedral, confirms this: “The Smurf is the one that children ask for the most, although there are some older ones who want to try it.” However.
Why?
Everyone who enters an ice cream parlor and finds a dough next to the tray with figs and pine nuts that cannot be assigned to any known fruit or ingredient asks this question. There are several sub-types within the above genre, but all have in common the combination or use of Desigual’s color palette: bright blue for a courthouse door, highlighter yellow for oppositionists, or JiggyPLuf pink are some of the most common.
Such a look can only please children and of course Okuda San Miguel. Because the same thing happens to the kids with the Colorines as the Cayetanos do with the Spanish flag. It’s looking at them closely and they go half-mad. At home they like chocolate, cream or vanilla, but outside they are seduced by the visual stimuli of a sticky ball. Perhaps the answer lies in a study by the American researcher Vanessa Simmering, in which she concludes that children under the age of five do not associate the objects around them with a particular color and are therefore attracted to them the most striking. The problem is that 19-year-old and 37-year-old women are asking for a rainbow tub, and Vanessa has little to say about that.
How do they taste?
“We can’t assign them to any taste. And it hurts me that they’re targeting a kid audience that you can persuade with these tricks, because nobody invites an adult to eat a Lamborghini ice cream cone,” he says. Fernando Saenz, dellaSera’s ice cream masters, in Logroño. “Gastronomy doesn’t exist, they sell a product just to make money from it. It’s legal, but not moral by my standards because it doesn’t refer to anything edible,” says Fernando.
If we think about it for a moment, a unicorn is a tuned horse, so an ice cream with that name should at least give off some stable smell. And by that same logic, the rainbow should taste like damp or wet cardboard and the Smurfs like the hallucinogenic mushrooms they lived under. I say come on because it seems these designations are only justified by their looks and not their taste, which is what ultimately matters about a food.
Well, no: They’re all cute and sweeter than a teen ad. Named after those repellents, goblins? Blues usually taste like bubble gum. Here, of course, comes another question: which of them? In particular, it reminds me of the fat white balls that came in vending machines. And the sugar. Very much. So much so that we briefly consider whether the turnips are extinct and if we end up doing the same thing with them as we did with the Iberian lynx. “And why don’t they stick ‘chewing gum’ on it?” someone will ask. Daughter, I don’t know, and why did the mayor of a remote town in the Sierra de Málaga order that all houses be painted light blue in honor of these drawings?
Who created them and who tRafican with them?
May Iñaki Gabilondo forgive me, but I have absolutely no idea who the creator of the metaphorical flavors for children was. My hypothesis is that they were developed by a second paternal cousin of Mussolini – because of the famous Italian artificial gelaterias – and the maternal owner of Mr. Wonderful. Only such a sweet spirit can give birth to a unicorn in the shape of a sundae or a crispy rainbow.
There will be those who think that the purpose of such an invention is to make money by making children drool with a sweet tooth and they are right. But taking into account the aforementioned origins of the same, many other goals are not excluded: collect inheritances from people with diabetes, cause epilepsy in people you ended up with after saying for months: “Let’s see if we meet one day.” see” or prank your color-blind colleague by telling him not to worry, he is from stracciatela.
If at this point, just like a corpse, you’ve also been bitten by the virus, you can try those by well-known rainbow and unicorn ice cream brand Alacant, or those sold by Kalise with the best name in history: Prestige Nube. A risky marketing bet that leads me to believe I hope it tastes like a mix of tar and a Ryanair plane engine. If that’s the case, I’ll betray my principles and buy a kilo of this metaphorical flavor, I swear. Then, after the first spoonful of sugar on the tip, I will scream what these Galicians demand for justice: “Never again!”.