Screwball
The ice cream truck treat with a surprise at the bottom: a conical cup of ice cream hiding a bubble-gum ball down at the point of the cone. Eat your way to the bottom, then keep chewing.
The screwball dates to the 1970s and became a classic American ice cream truck order, a cold treat engineered around a payoff. Good Humor owns the brand name 'Two Ball Screwball' as a registered trademark, though the word long ago went generic for any version of the treat.
The construction was the whole appeal: ice cream — cherry in the classic version — packed into a conical plastic cup, with a bubble-gum ball waiting at the bottom point. The reward for finishing was less about the last spoonful of ice cream and more about digging out the gumball and chewing it long after the cold part was gone, which meant a screwball kept you busy well past the truck's departure.
That simple two-in-one design is why it stuck: part dessert, part prize. It still turns up from ice cream trucks and freezer cases, the same conical cup and the same gum-at-the-bottom surprise generations of kids raced to reach.
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