Those are the words of Baskin-Robbins co-founder, Irvine Robbins, who passed away on Monday at the age of 90.

Irvine was an important figure in ice cream history. His stores were among the earliest franchised scoop shops. The first was founded in 1945, and today there are more than 5,800 locations worldwide. Even though Baskin-Robbins is known for their “31 Flavors,” they’ve actually created over 1,000 varieties in the past 63 years, including special flavors to commemorate the moon landings, our nation’s bicentennial and the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. It was his love of new and unusual flavors that helped separate Irvine’s shops from their competitors, and ushered in an era of flavor experimentation that is seen throughout the ice cream industry today.

Like Turkey Hill, Irvine’s ice cream dream began humbly. In December 1945, after a stint in the U.S. Army, he opened his first ice cream shop in Glendale, California using $6,000 his father had left him. On the first day, he sold $53 worth of ice cream, $39 of which was purchased by his cousin, Sybil. A few years later, Irvine teamed up with his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, to form the Baskin-Robbins partnership we know today. The brothers tossed a coin to decide whose name came first.

Yes, Irvine Robbins will be missed, but his memory and the influence he has had on the world of ice cream lives on. It lives on in Rocky Road ice cream, a flavor he helped create. It lives on in ice cream cake, which his shops invented and made available to the public. It lives on because ice cream lives on, and every man, woman and child has a soft spot in their hearts for that frosty treat.

“Everybody has a proprietary interest in ice cream,” Irvine once told the New York Times. “All you have to do is mention ice cream, and everybody has a flavor.”

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Cinco de Mayo is an unofficial holiday that celebrates Mexican culture, usually observed with food, music and dancing.

Oddly enough, the day is more widely celebrated in the United States than it is in Mexico. And contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo isn’t the observance of Mexico’s independence day (that would be September 16th). The day actually commemorates a key victory by the Mexican army over French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

So if you’re planning your own Cinco de Mayo celebration by cooking up a Mexican themed dinner tonight, don’t forget to add Turkey Hill’s April Limited Edition flavor – Fried Ice Cream – to your shopping list. (Here’s a recipe, in case you can’t find it in a store near you.) This flavor is our ode to one of Mexico’s favorite desserts and we’re pretty sure you’ll find it delicioso.

Is it really May already? Hard to believe, isn’t it? Hopefully some more of that warm Spring weather we saw last week returns soon. It’d be nice to see some of those temperatures this weekend during our Country Classic (Saturday from 7am to 2pm, in case you forgot).

Our April Ice Cream Journal poll asked you which flavors you’d like to see in next year’s Ultimate Flavor Tournament. According to your votes, the favorites are: 

Premium Flavor – Columbian Coffee
Light Flavor – Banana Split
All Natural Recipe – Chocolate
Creamy Commotions – Moose Tracks
Limited Edition – Southern Lemon Pie
Frozen Yogurt – Orange Cream Swirl
Duetto – Root Beer

Congrats to the fans of all those flavors. They will be among the many other flavors facing off in next March’s ice cream throw down.

As for this month’s poll (on the right), we want to know how many containers of ice cream you have in your freezer RIGHT NOW? Is it one or two, or are you one of those people (like many of us) who have to rearrange the meat and frozen veggies to make room for yet another container of French Vanilla? Feel free to sound off with your answer and with a comment below.

Each year the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) gives out awards to the best promotional efforts by its members. This year’s awards were handed out at the IDFA’s annual SmartMarketing Conference in New Orleans, La.

As members of the IDFA, we entered our promotional campaign for Duetto in the category of “Best Overall Mixed Media Campaign,” which basically includes any marketing campaign that uses multiple methods of promotion or communication. The Duetto campaign definitely fits that description. It used TV ads, billboards, the internet, a public relations campaign, Giant Cow sampling events and much, much more.

After all the competition was scrutinized, analyzed and judged, our Duetto campaign won first place in “Best Overall Mixed Media Campaign” AND it won “Best in Show”! According to our Consumer Marketing Manager, Melissa Mattilio, the Duetto campaign is “one of the most successful new product launches in company history.” That’s says a lot considering we’ve been launching new products for over 75 years.

Needless to say, everyone here at Turkey Hill is extremely happy about the award. It means a lot to us recognized by the IDFA. They’re a big part of the dairy industry, with over 570 members. Below is a picture of the Turkey Hill team with our new award. We’re still trying to figure out where to hang the plaque.

We just finished taking a look at some of the traffic and comment totals on the Ice Cream Journal during the Ultimate Flavor Tournament and we have to admit, we’re impressed! In terms of total visitors to the blog and total comments, March was the second best month ever in the Ice Cream Journal’s 17-month history.

Of course, we owe it all to you – our readers. Thanks for making March such a successful month and thanks for all of your comments on various entries. We love hearing from you, so keep those comments coming!

Speaking of comments, below are nine of our 10 winners of the one-month supply of Turkey Hill ice cream we gave away to randomly selected comments during the Flavor Tournament.

Holly K. from Rockville, MD
Sherry S. from Montgomery, PA
Mary F. from Williamsport, PA
Heidi B. from Jamestown, NY
Loretta C. from Minoa, NY
Christina M. from Somerdale, NJ
Anne K. from Macungie, PA
Charles K. from Frederick, MD
Maureen B. from Westville, NJ

Congrats to all. We’re still waiting to hear back from the tenth winner. We’re also waiting to hear from the winner of the grand prize – the ONE YEAR supply of ice cream. It’s funny (sort of). This is the third time we’ve given away a one year supply of ice cream on the Ice Cream Journal and each time the winner has waited a loooong time to claim their prize. Maybe they’re just making room in their freezer!

That’s a Saturday, so your day should be wide open already, right? Hopefully it is, because on May 3rd, Turkey Hill will be hosting its ninth annual Country Classic at the Central Manor Church of God in Washington Boro, right here in Lancaster, PA. If you’re printing directions via MapQuest, the address is 387 Penn Street, Manor Township in Lancaster. 

The Country Classic features sporting events for runners and cyclists, but it also includes lots of fun and games for the whole family. There will be free kids rides, games, costumed characters, music and, of course, the baby derby (featuring the fastest babies around!).

Turkey Hill’s very own Giant Cow will also make an appearance along with plenty of Turkey Hill ice cream and drinks, Hatfield hot dogs, and Herr’s chips. Snacks and drinks will be available by donation with all proceeds benefiting the Lancaster Farmland Trust. The Lancaster Farmland Trust is an organization Turkey Hill is very passionate about because they work hard to preserve beautiful farmland throughout Lancaster County.

More information about the Country Classic can be found on our website. Hope to see you there!

A few months ago we posted something on the Ice Cream Journal about our search for photos for our upcoming 2009 Turkey Hill Calendar. We’re looking for the best pictures you have featuring Turkey Hill ice cream or iced tea.

We’ve received a lot of submissions so far, so we’ve decided to feature some of the best ones here on the Ice Cream Journal. You can submit your snapshots on the photo contest page of our website (the deadline is June 15). The best photos will earn a spot in our 2009 calendar. Remember, your photo MUST INCLUDE ice cream or iced tea. If it also includes a Turkey Hill package or logo, that’s even better…sort of like the one below.

This is an OLD photo, as you can tell from the retro Turkey Hill packaging (back when we first introduced our “Imported from Lancaster County” tagline which you can see right below the lid). That’s baby Jeremy getting ready to dish up some Cookies ‘n Cream. Thanks to Sandra F. of Philadelphia, PA for submitting this picture for our calendar photo contest!

It may seem hard for some sports fans to believe, but in many countries around the world, baseball, football and basketball all pale in comparison to the popularity of soccer (which is actually called “football” in many places). Soccer – the indoor variety – is also popular in Philadelphia, home of the Major Indoor Soccer League’s Philadelphia KiXX.

Turkey Hill is a KiXX sponsor and if you’ve never seen an indoor soccer game, you don’t know what you’re missing. The season is over now (it starts again in October) but this past season witnessed the KiXX and Turkey Hill hosting the first annual Turkey Hill Savor the Flavor Taste-Off Championship. The contest asked KiXX fans to guess the flavors of ice cream while being blindfolded! That’s a competition I think we all would like to enter.

In the end, Isaac from Harleysville, PA won the championship. His prize was a year’s supply of Turkey Hill ice cream and a tour of the Turkey Hill Dairy to see first hand how we make our ice cream. The runner-up was Hannah from Conshohocken, PA. Hannah will also get a tour of the Dairy.

Below is a picture of Isaac and Hannah along with Tom Wright, the Vice President of Marketing from Turkey Hill. Looks like they’re already dressed for their tour of the Dairy!

Being the official ice cream of the Philadelphia Phillies entitles you to all sorts of perks (the Phils are great like that). One of the things Turkey Hill gets with our sponsorship is four tickets to every Phillies home game. That’s 81 games in the greatest ballpark in the Major Leagues. The seats are nice too…right over the Turkey Hill sign in right centerfield overlooking the Phillies bullpen.

But as great as the seats are, we’ve decided to give them away as prizes in this year’s Graham Slam Sweepstakes. Some of you may remember the sweepstakes from last year. It’s pretty simple. Every container of Graham Slam Premium Ice Cream (the official flavor of the Phillies) comes with a sticker and a code. All you need to do is enter the code on our website to be entered for the drawings, which will be held every two weeks through the end of the season.

Like we said, pretty simple. There’s also a grand prize – one winner will receive 15 luxury suite tickets to a Phillies home game in September. The drawings have already started, but we’ve still got 68 winners to choose (each winner gets four tickets), plus our grand prize winner.

Here’s a little detail about the contest that most people don’t know: Every code entered throughout the six-month season is eligible for the grand prize drawing, but only those codes entered during the last two weeks are eligible for the bi-weekly drawings. In other words, we start with a clean slate every two weeks, which means your chances of winning are better.

To recap: Graham Slam Ice Cream can get you to a Phillies game, enter the code found on the sticker on our official Graham Slam Sweepstakes website, enter as often as you’d like and enjoy the season!

It started with 16 flavors, but only one would be named the winner. After four weeks and over 20,000 of your votes, the winner of the first annual Turkey Hill Ultimate Flavor Tournament is…Vanilla Bean! In the final round of the tournament, Vanilla Bean narrowly beat Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin (257 votes to 238 votes) to take the title.

We really couldn’t have asked for a closer final match-up. The race went back and forth all week, with Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup actually leading by just a few votes as late as Friday afternoon. But in the end, it was the ever versatile Vanilla Bean taking home the win. A big congratulations goes out to Vanilla Bean and all of its fans. As for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup, don’t worry. It’ll return next year to make another run for the title.

Speaking of next year, the Ultimate Flavor Tournament will be back, but since it can only feature 16 flavors, we need your help to decide which ones should be included in the Sweet 16 next March. On the right is a series of polls featuring all of the Turkey Hill flavors that weren’t included in this year’s tournament line-up. If there’s any that you’d like to see in next year’s games, now’s your chance to sound off.

Also, as promised, today we’ll be choosing one comment at random from the past four weeks to receive a year’s supply of Turkey Hill ice cream. Ten others will also be chosen to receive a one month supply. We’ll let you know who the winners are as soon as we can. Good luck!