Ice Cream Day at Magoo's

 If ever a character uttered a phrase that a creative entrepreneur could imagine as an ice cream flavor, it was UPA's Mr. Magoo. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that a little hidden ice cream shop in Rockland should be named after the bumbling near-sighted tycoon.  

In many ways, Magoo's Ice Cream offers what you'd expect, hard and soft serve, frappes, slush and a wide array of specialty sundaes, all four scoops in size. Their creativity shines forth with the razzles, using ice cream in an array of colorful ways. 

What impressed Maria and I was the sheer variety of flavors; 25 hard serves and a whopping 34 soft serve, beating out even Baskin-Robbins's famed 31 flavors in this department. 

For me, it was Peanut Butter Cup, though there were a number of choices that would have satisfied my addiction to peanut butter. One curiosity: Few would doubt the companies have a much tighter grasp on their trademarks and copyrighted characters here in the United States in comparison to the rest of the world. In my personal experience, Latin America in particular makes liberal use of heavily protected intellectual property Stateside. In a drive up a remote mountain town in Costa Rica I saw a school house mural adorned with Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey and a host of Disney faces, many more were found throughout San Jose. In a visit to Nairobi years later I remember Mickey and Minnie painted on the side of a city bus. No company, big or small could get away with that here. In an embarrassing, though, in all fairness, understandable instance, the Walt Disney Company forced three day care centers (Very Important Babies, Good Godmother's Daycare and Temple Messianique) in Hallandale, Florida to paint over murals featuring its iconic cast in 1989. 

Here in Cape Cod, Wimpy's Seafood Cafe has a subtle depiction of Popeye's burger loving chum, but the famed Wimpy's restaurant, which started in Illinois in 1934 has abandoned references to its namesake since leaving its home country, establishing headquarters in Johannesburg and limiting its operations to South Africa and the United Kingdom. Popeye's, for a while, made use of the balloon-biceped sailor in its restaurants, but his likeness is now mostly seen in Puerto Rico's locations.

No matter, Magoo is here to stay at Magoo's Ice Cream, and much welcome he is!



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