What Won’t You Do for a Klondike Bar?

It only comes around once a year — National Ice Cream Day — it’s being celebrated on Sunday (July 17), and by happy coincidence, it aligns this year with the 100th anniversary of an iconic frozen treat, the Klondike Bar.

As if anyone needs an excuse to celebrate either.

For those taking a dim view of 2022, this may lend some perspective into what’s bad and what’s worse. Sure, everybody’s saying there’s going to be a recession in 2022. That’s bad. On some level worse is the fact that Klondike Bars were sold only in Pennsylvania and Ohio … until 1978.

That’s cold, even hard to grasp, but so says Unilever, which acquired the maker of these yummy chocolate-dipped slabs of ice cream in 1993, placing it into the Good Humor-Breyers portfolio of frigid delights. Sensing the moment, Unilever said, “This acquisition put Americans of every age within reach of the most comprehensive line of chilly treats in dessert history.”

If really you want to thank someone, we refer you to the late visionary businessman Henry DeBrunner Clarke Jr., whose firm Clabir made its real money in defense contracts. He bought the rights to Klondike Bar in 1976, adding it to his food holdings — and possibly for military applications — reportedly bringing sales of the dessert from $800,000 annually at the time of the acquisition by Clabir to more than $60 million when he sold it in 1989.

In the most recent sales figures we can find, IRI data from 2019 said U.S. sales were over $309 million that year. That was also the year actress Anna Farris was the face of a Klondike campaign that dared people to legally change their name for a lifetime supply of said treat.

Confronted with the question herself, there’s not much Farris won’t do for a K-Bar. See it here.

Back to Clarke, who signed a noncompete when he sold, but only covering the U.S. That takes us down the rabbit hole of his later exploits in the U.K. and Europe, going lick-to-lick against archrival Häagen-Daz. But that’s a cool story for another National Ice Cream Day.

This one’s for the 100-year-old Klondike Bar, which incidentally was not conceived as a treat for children. Inventor and dairy owner Henry Isaly believed sticks were for kids. “Isaly thought frozen treats with a wooden handle = kiddie,” Delish reported. “He aimed for a more mature audience, so he removed it and packaged the bars in a fancy silver foil wrapper.”

And don’t forget the polar bear. We don’t know the significance, but it’s branding brilliance.

Meanwhile, in Unilever’s Klondike division, they’re not letting this centennial pass without all kinds of dairy doings. For starters, “Cake Boss” star Buddy Valastro was commissioned to create a towering Klondike Bar cake. A sweepstakes winner will get to eat some (all if they’re fast).

Per the Klondike Bar website, “To enter for a chance to win, post a photo or video on Instagram of yourself completing one of our decade-themed challenges with #4aKlondike100Sweepstakes and tag @klondikebar. BONUS: one lucky winner also has a chance to win the Klondike Kard that comes with coupons and a check for free Klondike treats for one hundred years!”

Typically retailing for $3.99 and assuming one Klondike Bar per day for a century, we’re talking almost $150,000 in Klondike Kard kredit at current valuations. Issuers, watch your backs.

In “but wait, there’s more” fashion, on July 17, look for Klondike Bar popups in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, Navy Pier in Chicago, and along Santa Monica’s promenade.

The coated ice cream block that put Pittsburgh on the map has even more in store, with a series of fun challenges from “Re-mix the WWYD jingle in the style of a barbershop quartet” to “Make a bow tie out of Klondike foil” all of which link out to Klondike’s Instagram page. We dare you.

We would be remiss not to touch on the legendary jingle and slogan, “What Would You Do for a Klondike Bar?” made famous in this 1986 TV commercial. You’d be surprised.

In 2009 a man tried to shove two K-Bars down his shorts and exit without paying. As reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune, in the ensuing parking lot confrontation he offered to pay $69 for the purloined goodies to be set free, but they turned him in anyway. Talk about frosty.

Another guy went all out, filling half a duffel bag with stolen Klondikes. Apparently a known serial shoplifter in the area, he was facing seven years in prison at the time Lancaster Online reported on the incident. In riveting detail that story reads: “the assistant manager approached him. She felt the bag, and felt it was ice cold. She could tell the ice cream was in there.”

Sounds like an episode of “NCIS: Ice Cream Truck,” but clearly some people would call the police for a Klondike Bar (two packages of them in that case). The takeaway: Don’t steal ice cream — especially not this weekend. Have some respect for a commercial centenarian.