I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For... A New Tune

I can understand how it is that Mr Whippy might be reluctant to change his tune - but the time has come when he has to or he is a dead man.

The one in my neighbourhood can be heard for hours at a time. He is within earshot for so long because of the numbers of ovals and fields in my area. There’s also something about the topography that guarantees that for the entire time that he’s out there noisily and repetitively begging, I get to hear it.

In some things, tradition is important. I can’t actually think of any of those things right off the top of my head, but I am reliably informed that this is true and I will yield to wiser minds than mine. But if tradition is the argument for keeping the tune, let’s look at the sense of sticking with Greensleeves as the anthem of Mr Whippy.

Mr Whippy’s target demograph is not a hidebound bunch. I reckon a good proportion of kids who want an ice-cream (when they find out what all the noise is about) are hearing Greensleeves for the first time. Also, as I have illustrated before, kids are idiots. I don’t think it’s Greensleeves that elicits the Pavlovian badgering of mum and dad the next time they hear it. It’ll be a far simpler stimulus response, like, “Noisy, jangly truck equals choc-top.”

It’d be an improvement for the older group as well. A change is as good as a holiday and if I heard another tune out there, I’d be more inclined to go have a look, just to see what it was. If the truck came around playing “Ready to Rock” by Pianosaurus, I’d be hoping it sold beef jerky and cold beer. I’d then probably buy a sorbet anyway, simply to make pulling on my pants and running out into street worthwhile.

Imagine the cross promotional opportunity young, up-and-coming bands and Mr Whippy could get into.  He plays their music and every time they’re on telly, they slip in some endorsement like, “Yeah, thanks for that Fuzzy, now we’re gonna rock out with our choc out.”

At the outset, Greensleeves is a strange choice. It’s a teeny bit depressing. I had to learn the song at school and here’s the first verse:

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously
For I have loved you well and long (cor)
Delighting in your company

It’s a she done me wrong song - unrequited love and all the fun that that entails. To me, that doesn’t scream “gimme a frozen yoghurt with sprinkles!”

There is also some speculation that sleeves are made green by having a little rumpy pumpy in grassy fields. Apparently, a green dress was code for promiscuity. Now, when it comes to ancient ideas of prudery and prurience I am not a traditionalist. In fact, more power to you if you like to put out, but that’s not really an integral part of unloading dairy whip in a sugary cone and probably not an appropriate message for the kiddies. Why not “Ice Cream” by Muscles? This features the undeniably catchy hook “Ice cream, is gonna save the day… again.”

For the foreseeable future, I think that Mr Whippy is going to keep the infernal tune, and this does make him easier to identify and deal with. Future Mums and Dads, the first time your little cherub asks what the noise is, explain, "Why darling, it's Mr Whippy. He plays his music when he's run out of ice cream."