Click on pictures to enlargeBy FRANK BARNING
Our previous blog post included a 60-year old photo of Marilyn Monsrud Frese eating a Mello-Roll at Jones Beach. Now we offer some Mello-Roll history. A Google search yielded interesting information:
The Mello-Roll cone was of the "waffle" variety and not of the "sugar-cone" variety which was crunchy. The stem of the cone had a flat bottom instead of a point. On the top it had a rectangular opening about 2.5 inches by about 1.25 inches in which nested the Mello-Roll. The ice cream was a cylinder a bit larger than a flashlight battery and it had a paper wrapper with a tab that ran along it lengthwise. There was an art to placing the roll in the cone, and then pulling the paper off as the roll rotated. It only came in vanilla, it appears, but some people remember chocolate.
They were popular in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. Many people remember them served at Jones Beach in the 1940s and 1950s. They were sometimes spelled “Mell-O-Rolls,” perhaps like “Jell-O".
The television show "Welcome Back, Kotter" (1975-1979) was based on comedian Gabriel Kaplan’s life, as expressed in his 1970s off-color comedy album "Holes and Mello-Rolls". Kaplan, born in 1945, played the role of Gabe Kotter. One joke line on the TV show — “Up your nose with a rubber hose!” — was originally "Up your hole with a Mello Roll!", according to Kaplan. That's a chilling image.
I remember a taunt used by some Levittown boys at least a dozen years before "Welcome Back, Kotter". It was "Up your hole with a Tootsie Roll." The reply was, "Up your hole with a fish hook. It doesn't rhyme but it hurts." We were so clever.
There was also this sweet exchange;
Up your hole with a Tootsie Roll,
Twice as far with a Hershey Bar,
All the way with a Milky Way.
Kaplan is now a professional poker player who spends a great deal of time in Las Vegas, home of your blogger for the past six years. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Kaplan has earned over $1.7 million in poker tournaments since he started playing seriously in 1979. In 2010 he made $145,000."
If I happen to cross his path here in Sin City, I will greet the Brooklyn-born Kaplan with "Up your hole with a Mello-Roll". Perhaps he will smile, or give me the famous Brooklyn middle-finger salute.
11 comments:
From Epstein's mother...
Robert Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein on '70s sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter, died Thursday (Jan. 26, 2012), the New Jersey Star-Ledger reports. Hegyes, who died of an apparent heart attack after suffering chest pains at his Metuchen, New Jersey home, was 60.
Mello-rolls absolutely came in chocolate. I used to get them when I visited my grandparents in Brooklyn, and I didn't eat vanilla ice cream. Our neighborhood in Brooklyn didn't have them. Late 50's, early 60's.
I first heard "up your hole with a mello-roll" in Richard Benjamin's wonderful but underrated film My Favorite Year.
I used to get them at Jones Beach on Long Island in the 60s. Here's a link with many, many comments of people reminiscing about Mell-O-Rolls
http://www.inthe80s.com/food/mellorollicecreamcone0.shtml
Please tell me where we can get a Mellow-Roll. Are there any still around? I remember them so very well. Mr. Lachman was positively able to get the wrapping off without touching or damaging the ice cream. We had them in Ridgewood Brooklyn in Chocolate and in Vanilla. It is time for them to come back.
When I was a kid in the eary 50s in Queens. NYC we would go to Bayville beach on the N. Shore of LI and they had mello rolls. I always had to have 2 before we went home.
We had them in Bayside, Queens, in the fifties.
I just posted today on F/B asking if anyone one remember a roll of ice cream that fit into a rectangular type cone. And then I found this page. I am so glad I was not dreaming about this. We lived in Ridgewood section of Brooklyn on Central Ave. and there was an ice cream store across from our apartment. This is where we would get them in the late 40s (48/49). Thank you all for telling me the name .... Mello Rolls.
I grew up in the Bronx and I loved Mello rolls! Chocolate was my favorite! No one I know remembers them.
All over town (Roosevelt, Freeport, Hempstead,Uniondale) Nassau county, at most places where ice cream sold in the mid 1940's/ 1950's. Vanilla or chocolate. Wish still had them! Yum!
I remember, when I was in elementary school, my friends + I were fans of the w.b.K. tv show.
We would taunt each other with the "up your nose..." line, + add these two replies:
"Up your nose, with a rubber hose."
" Twice as far, with a Hersey bar."
"Get off my CASE, Toilet face!"
I don't know if all 3 of those lines are from the show. Those were fun times. :D
Post a Comment