Ice Pops: The Importance of Being Eye-Catching

Nathalie Jordi

There are tons of things about our business that I lament us not having adequate time to plunge headlong into developing: an inventory system I can run on my iPhone, an automated payroll system that accounts for our highly irregular hours and staff, a more eco-friendly and attractive packaging solution ... the list is a million miles long and growing every day. But I must say, the thing that goads me most unrelentingly is what to me represents the biggest of our many missed opportunities: our shop's incredibly banal freezer display case.

Initially, we were hoping to have real pops on display behind the glass, but that dream quickly died after the lights at the top of our freezer kept melting them all down. So we whipped up a batch of wax pops and popped those in the case. It looks okay, but ...

Okay, hear me out. Envision a world in which our freezer served as the stage for a fantastical diorama similar to the Washington Post's extremely awesome annual Easter-time Marshmallow Peeps Diorama Contest. (Highlights from this year: "Where the Wild Peeps Are," and "White House Party Peepers." Seriously, check it out.) I mean, the thing is five feet by one foot by one foot, basically a few times the size of the shoeboxes with which we all made dioramas in elementary school. I have visions of scenes like "Ice Pops at the Beach" or "Ice Pops Hit the Disco."

Joel jokes that the scenes should be true to life at People's Pops, a retrospective of summer 2010. Yeah boy. I can see it already. How about "Nat Getting Hit By A Car," "Dave Nearly Getting Mugged While Van Shopping In Harlem," "The Rhubarb Delivery Is Too Heavy To Get Off The Truck And Has To Return Upstate To The Farm," or "The Fire Sprinkler In Our Freezer Explodes, Flooding The Entire Kitchen."

Maybe depicting these scenes in miniature could bring us one step closer to being able to laugh at them. Is this art therapy?

Of course, we have no money to pay for a pop-themed diorama, and no time to do it ourselves either. But I always thought it could be a fun project for an art school professor to give to his or her class, where everyone would get a month in the spotlight or whatever. Aren't some people out there studying visual merchandising or window dressing and looking for experience, for something to put on their résumés? Or it could be a fun thing for an artist with too much time on their hands to quickly get a ton of exposure. A lot of people walk past our freezer case, and what's a better example of public art than a sculpture in a pop shop?

So, people ... who out there can make my dreams come true?

Seriously—email us at people[at]peoplespops.com if you have any ideas!