Industrial ice creams that you ate as a child and your children can still eat 2026

When we were little, a question that was never missing in the group of friends was: "What brand is the ice cream stand in your town (or beach resort, failing that?"). That little portable stand, four walls that appeared only three months a year, and that made you so happy during many vacation afternoons. So much so that, without you knowing it at the time, it would mark you for life because it would be the direct cause of your addiction to a specific industrial ice cream.

Nowadays the panorama has changed, there are fundamentally two brands, maximum three, that have absorbed most of the legendary brands such as Avidesa, La Menorquina or Miko - others such as Royne still exist but have little presence compared to other brands - but fortunately some of their legacy does remain more than two decades later: their most famous creations, with the original name included.

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We are not talking about the old-fashioned frozen chocolates that are still there even though they have insisted on making them very complicated, in the style of the Donettes, nor about the famous chocolate and cream bars that we all call by the commercial name (in Spanish) of the most famous, “la contesa”, or about the blocks of ice cream that they sent us to buy with their corresponding cookies while the adults ate the fruit at summer meals - they didn't know anything, how cool it was! -. All of them are also still there to the joy of their fans.

But in these lines we wanted to rescue the individual ice creams from that time, the end of the last century, that the little ones can still have today. Many originally belong to the aforementioned brands, absorbed today by other larger ones that were already among us at that time, even if only, as is the case of Camy, with a name that it no longer maintains.

In total, we have kept eight that as soon as you see them, your brain will return its flavor to your palate even if you haven't tasted it for 20 years or more, and we have saved two to pay tribute to two ice creams that no longer exist but that were part of the childhood of millions of Spaniards. There are more that are now history, but these two were the most bizarre and innovative of the time. Unfortunately (or fortunately for those extra kilos, depending on how you look at it), the little ones will be left wanting to try the latter... and also the grown-ups in the house.

Dracula

Cola, vanilla and strawberry in the same lolly. You either loved him or you hated him. There was no other option possible with Dracula. And most opted for the first because it became a cult ice cream. Proof of this is that it continues to be made as it was sold then.

Mikopencil

Don't tell us that just reading his name doesn't bother you. It is the most emblematic ice cream of the Miko brand, which is now history. A hard tip of chocolate topped a block of vanilla. It couldn't be simpler, but the fun of having to draw it out as if you were sharpening a pencil kept you entertained for a long time.

Calippo

Strawberry or lemon lime. None of those flavors that are sold now, yes, they are the same concept, but they don't make you travel back to childhood like the other two. The beauty of their success, as in the case of Mikolápiz the fact of having to remove it, is that they were poles without a stick. They always got so sticky that you could get stuck to anything if you didn't wash your hands, but they were so fun to eat and so refreshing too. They still are, in fact.

Colajet

Maybe you never ate it in your life, but you have its image burned into your head. Its spaceship shape is unmistakable, as is its strange mix of flavors, which still seem incompatible today: lemon, cola and a tip of chocolate coating. What a fantasy!

Frigopie

Although its brother Frigodedo has not survived to this day - it was stopped being made in the early 90s - this very creamy strawberry ice cream has, which was so striking due to its foot shape that there was no child who did not always point it out as one of the favorite options. It had everything except strawberry, but it was addictive, and that is why it remains a very current classic that even has its homemade version.

Phantasmikos

Small popsicles with various fruit flavors, although we already know what these things have when it comes to fruit... The fact is that they are refreshing and have the grace of their size, smaller than usual, so that the little ones tend to catch the attention of them. They set the tone in this sense for other later ice creams that also opted for small size.

Twister

Now a super version is sold with which we imagine you will even get more stains than with the original, that frozen whirlwind of colors that you had to suck as the melted drops fell. So he had a brother that you may remember, the Twister choc, who no longer exists.

sandy pop

Our small tribute to La Menorquina, a Balearic ice cream brand that today belongs to another ice cream group famous for having Andrés Iniesta as its image, is to remember Sandy Pop, that ice cream shaped like a slice of watermelon that all those who vacationed in the Levantine area will have very present in their memories. Then they made Batman and Ninja Turtle ice creams, among others, but the watermelon one is iconic, and you can still eat it.

Mikoboy

Of the two ice creams of the time that are history, being able to choose many, one is the Mikoboy. Because? Because we have never seen an ice cream so ugly, unappetizing, so bizarre in the end, that triumphed like this one from Miko. It was shaped like a child's face that looked like Pinocchio, complete with hat, and its nose, instead of being wood, was a kind of chewing gum. Hard to understand how it tasted so good to us…

Winner taco

The second missing ice cream that we rescued is this one from Frigo, surely the predecessor of all those complicated ice cream sandwiches, halfway with the ice cream bonbon, which they like so much. The Winner was shaped like a Mexican taco, hence its name, and its topping was a cookie with a vanilla interior topped with rows of liquid caramel. As if this were not enough, a chocolate coating with almonds put the cherry on top of a bomb that was spectacular.