Why Doesn't Ice Cream Come In Boxes Anymore?

[Nevilledog]

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bettina makalintal
@bettinamak
i wrote this deep dive into ice cream packaging and the nostalgia of a square-shaped box of ice cream

Why Doesn’t Ice Cream Come In Boxes Anymore?
Because of consumer preference, round pints and “squrounds” replaced boxes of ice cream. But nostalgic ice cream makers are reviving the old look.
vice.com
8:09 AM · May 4, 2021

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx55em/why-doesnt-ice-cream-come-in-square-boxes-anymore

You’re certainly familiar with the shape of a pint of ice cream. But it wasn’t always that way.

In the earliest days of commercial American ice cream making, the frozen dessert came in large metal cans. This was because people didn’t really eat ice cream at home, but rather at soda fountains and ice cream parlors—popular public spaces during the Progressive Era and Prohibition. But after the rise of refrigeration in the 1930s, customers started stocking ice cream at home, and the treat became synonymous with small, rectangular paperboard cartons. Beginning in the 1930s—as Rachel Hunnicutt, a design history and theory lecturer at Parsons School of Design, put it—“the square was king.”

That had a lot to do with how ice cream was made, Hunnicutt said. As we can see in a video from a Breyers Ice Cream plant in the 1940s, large blocks of frozen ice cream would float down conveyor belts to machines, which would drop them into paper half-gallon and pint boxes. “When I was a kid growing up, that's the way we had our ice cream in the mid 60s,” said Murray Bain, vice president of marketing at the food and beverage packaging manufacturer Stanpac.

Look on shelves now, though, and that’s no longer the case. Though round containers had already been used for decades, Hunnicutt said that by around the 90s, boxes of ice cream had largely given way to cylindrical pints with circular lids as well as half-gallon tubs, in a rounded but vaguely rectangular shape that came to be known in the industry as a “squround.” By 2003, the trade publication Dairy Foods called the squround “the king of cartons,” writing that “in recent years, it [had] been given an unofficial coronation as the best all-around package for take home sales.” So where did boxes of ice cream go, and why?

*snip*

[Irish_Dem]

1. The same place the milkman and milk in glass bottles went.

To dairy heaven.

[mwooldri]

7. Sorry the milkman is alive and well.

https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/

The pandemic was good for the milk delivery folk.. and yes the milk does come in glass bottles...

[Irish_Dem]

9. Oh wow. I would love to see this first hand.

[Wingus Dingus]

18. Colorado has a dairy that delivers milk.

I'm a customer, have a milk box on the front porch.

[Irish_Dem]

19. That is so neat....

Brings back so many memories.

[Dave Starsky]

31. The Seattle area has Smith Brothers Farms

They are quite popular, actually. My brother has one of those cooler boxes on the front step.

[Wingus Dingus]

32. That's good to know, I'm glad there's a few places that still do this--

when I was a little girl in the 70's our milk delivery ended around 1974-75. Still have vague memories of checking the galvanized metal cooler box for my mom in the mornings.

[hurple]

2. Ummm...

They still do.

[Srkdqltr]

3. Boxes are boring? Having dug out a lot of icecream rounded containers

Are easier.

[Staph]

4. I remember in the 1960s or 1970s

my mom would buy the square box of Neapolitan ice cream for a treat. She would cut vertical slices, so that everyone got all three flavors, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.



Such an elegant dessert!

[regnaD kciN]

5. I read an account that said those boxes were inefficient...

…as the corners tended to melt more quickly than the rest.

[Amishman]

28. this, plus I remember the lid always wanting to flop back over and getting in the way when scooping

while it might have nostalgia value for those who are older, it was a poor design and is better off left in the dust.

[hydrolastic]

10. When i was nine or ten and my sister was a year younger

We lived across the alley from the vita milk distribution center at green lake in Seattle. I remember one summer in particular i would wait for the workmen to go on break and steal a box and we would eat it right there across the alley. later i would grab the ones by the door. I realize now they were leaving them there for me to grab. How fun for them. Hydro

[forgotmylogin]

6. My grocery store still carries some in boxes.

It tends to be the cheaper store brands, and I think it's a matter of marketing - the packaging raising the impression of the quality of the product.





Even the store brands now that are still packaged in cardboard have developed a more rounded rectangle-shaped container with a lid. I think the lid and the lack of corners for the product to leak out of when sitting out is optimal.

[WA-03 Democrat]

11. We switched to Walmart monthly delivery.

We been happy with their service ($12 charge per month w/unlimited delivery orders over $35 per) and we had a lot of time to sample the great value brand. The Great Value brand stuff our family likes. I have not tried the ice cream but their house brand does the trick.

Turkey Hill! That sounds good too.

[David__77]

23. Yes, I recall box leakage.

It probably meant I was sitting with it eating it for quite some time lol...

[Deminpenn]

25. +1

But the real reason is probably that ice cream is less than 1/2 gallon now.

[BigmanPigman]

8. Krogers still comes in rectangular cartons

at my CA supermarket.

[PSPS]

12. They've also shortened the height of the round containers without lowering the price.

What used to be a half gallon shrank to 1.75 quarts, now 1.5 quarts. 25% less yum!

[Budi]

20. Aaaaahhh!!! My favorite. Tillamook. I'm totally into 'Malted Moo Shake' flavor.

Ok. I'm heading to the freezer.~


I did notice they recently made the container a bit shorter.

Doesn't even matter, They could sell it in a ziplock bag & it'd still be the best flavor I've ever tasted & I'd still buy it.

[bif]

30. Their chocolate peanut butter is amazing!

[BlueSpot]

13. Why do we care what shape the ice cream is? n/t

[oasis]

21. Since ice cream's a treat, and "you're only as pretty as you treat people".

[Blue_Adept]

26. It's an interesting part of history of why things change

So many people fear change without understanding why it happens.

It's good bar trivia too.

[Freethinker65]

14. Honestly, I prefer the square shape for freezer space optimization

[Blue Owl]

15. My grandma always had square cartons of Walgreen's brand ice cream in the old ice chest

Neapolitan, Butter Brickle, and French Vanilla for her homemade apple pies...

[Demovictory9]

17. ice cream with hot apple pie... haven't had that for decades

[Demovictory9]

16. I recall my parents buying large round tubs. don't recall the squares

[In It to Win It]

22. I remember we used to buy the neapolitan ice cream in a box.

[nuxvomica]

24. Stewart's Shops still has boxes

But I remember when I was a kid you could get little, single-serving boxes. Sometimes as a treat the nuns would walk us down there and we'd all sit around on the floor with our little boxes of ice cream and disposable wooden spoons. I think the store provided it on the house.

[no_hypocrisy]

27. I'm a cashier. Boxes would be easier to bag.

[NurseJackie]

29. Boxed ice cream was fine. But it developed ice-crystals on the surface...

... if you didn't use it all quickly.