Requiem for a (ice) cream

Nooooooooo not the Toasted Almond!

Things have been a little serious around here lately. So let’s keep it going shall we?

Because we need to discuss the tragic, if not entirely unconscionable demise of the Toasted Almond, news which hit me (and about half my Instagram Stories readers) pretty hard last night.

Goodbye, Toasted Almond, you were taken before your time.

I mean it’s bad enough when the perfect BB cream borks the “improved” part of “new and improved” with your latest purchase, or that you realize that that same bag of chips you’ve been buying forever now contains 20% fewer chips and 20% more useless air.

But it’s the next level of wrong to take a beloved frozen ice cream novelty from our childhoods, one carefully formulated with just the right combination of sugar, artificial flavors, and assorted multisyllabic chemicals, and deem it terminated for good.

I mean, what’s not to love? Image via Good Humor. With a h/t/ to Lisa Belkin on Instagram for revealing the tragic news to me.

Evidently The Toasted Almond has been out of stores for a year now—perhaps the mysterious reason sales have dropped? Just spitballing here—and yet all this time I had presumed that my local bodega was simply prioritizing its limited freezer space for nine different varieties of ice cream sandwiches, and the six-pack of fancy Haagen Dazs bars that cost the semester tuition of a respectable community college.

I was wrong.

Good Humor claims they discontinued The Toasted Almond because “it was not popular around the country.” A dubious claim, if you ask me.

Want to know what else is “not popular around the country?” Autotune. Subway manspreaders. The improper use of the word “literally.” Standardized testing. Empty soap containers in movie theater restrooms. Capcha photos that equate identifying highway overpasses with proof of your humanity. The 50 Shades sequel. People who talk about themselves in the third person. People who say “impor-dent” instead of important. AI-generated artwork. Concern trolls. Martin Shkreli.

Yet they’re all still around, aren’t they? Yes they are.

Whyyyyyyy Good Humor? Whyyyyyyy?

I don’t truly know if I there is room in my heart for forgiveness of this magnitude. I mean, I’m still salty that you eighty-sixed those ice cream bars with the big chunks of chocolate at the center coating the stick that we always got as kids because it was like getting a secret bonus candy bar when your parents just thought they were giving you money for ice cream.

Toasted Almond: You were delicious. You were perfect in your own way. And most of all, you were not Strawberry Shortcake, because that stuff is nasty.

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Is there a product, a food, or a flavor that was discontinued and you’re still sad about it? (First person who jokes “New Coke” gets banned. )

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