The History of Ice Cream in New Zealand

By Chris Newey

1961 - 1970


Tip Top Corner

In 1960, the Wellington and Auckland Tip Top ice cream businesses merged to form a new company, General Foods Corporation (New Zealand), with Len Malaghan as Managing Director.

Tip Top Half-Gallon can lid, 1960s.
- jake1987.

In 1962, Tip Top Ice Cream Company built what was at the time the Southern Hemisphere's largest and most advanced ice cream factory, costing NZ$700,000.

Tip Top Mt Wellington, Auckland factory grand opening, 21 November 1962.
- FMCG.


Prime Minister Keith Holyoake (right) with iceblock
- Tip Top archives.

Prime Minister Keith Holyoake attended the opening ceremony. The Tip Top factory included staff houses and 20 acres of farm land overlooking Auckland’s Southern motorway.

Over time, the Tip Top factory became a New Zealand landmark, known to generations as ‘Tip Top Corner’.

1964 - Tip Top launched the Tip Top Trumpet, a much more sophisticated novelty than anything we had seen before.

Tip Top Trumpet POS advertising, 1964 (detail)
- Michael Yalland.

Legend: The First Trumpet TV advert

Tip Top launched the Trumpet, its version of a European cornetto-style, waffle-coned ice cream sundae with nuts and chocolate. The original Trumpet sold for 1 shilling (1/-), and came with an extensive advertising campaign, including one of our very early TV advertisements, live-action and based on a popular musical of the day. 21 years before that famous "VW Beetle" ad, the very first Trumpet TV advert starred another soon-to-be-famous Kiwi. More about the very first Tip Top Trumpet TV ad ...

The face of the 1964 Tip Top Trumpet TV ad would soon be very familiar.

Legend: Manda

Brian Simon grew up in the ice cream business, working in his father's Newjoy Ice Cream factory in Dunedin, full-time from the age of 17, the start of a life-time in the industry. After his father sold up, he spent a few years farming, but finding the life "too quiet", in 1963, he purchased an old laundry in Leet St. Invercargill, converting it into an ice cream factory. The business started to boom, and they bought the land either side for expansion, and built their own freezers. Then they purchased 5 acres in Rockdale Road to build an even bigger factory. Manda ice cream became a legend throughout the South - who remembers their Kiwifruit Ripple? More about Manda ...

Manda Vanilla ice cream 3 pint label, 1960s. - Simon family collection.

Coker & Mills delivery fleet, Blenheim, 1964
- Frostee Digest.

Gaytime Ice Cream advertisement (manufactured by Perfection Ice Cream Co.)
From a New Zealand Opera Company programme, 1967
- Darian Zam.

Legend: Gaytime

The Gaytime brand appeared in 1964, thought to have been a collaborative marketing effort by several regional manufacturers to establish a nationwide presence to compete with Tip Top in the supermarkets and in novelties. Perfection Ice Cream in Christchurch, Frozen Products Ltd in Wellington and Eldora and Cream Craft in Auckland produced Gaytime, possibly others. The Gaytime Goldmine stick novelty was launched in 1964, with a catchy radio jingle sung by New Zealand's "Queen of the Mods," 1960s popstar Dinah Lee. By 1965, both Perfection and Eldora had been taken over by General Foods Corporation (Tip Top), who continued to produce the Gaytime Goldmine and later the Tip Top Gaytime (biscuit-coated, chocolate-enrobed ice cream on a stick). The Gaytime ice cream brand was kept alive by Tip Top until 1972 and the name survives as a brand of ice cream cone.

Gaytime novely wrappers. - WaikatoMuseum

Legend: Mr Whippy

Mr Whippy was founded in the UK in 1958, inspired by the American operation "Mr Softee". Mr Whippy franchises operated pink and cream trucks roaming the streets with speakers playing the Greensleeves tune. Early in 1964, having had success in Australia, a master franchise was set up in New Zealand, Soft Serve Products Ltd. 24 pink and cream Austin FGK30 ice cream trucks were constructed in the UK and shipped to New Zealand in time for the summer of 1964. Each truck cost £4000. Mr Whippy ice cream trucks were a huge success and the fleet quickly grew to 50 company-run trucks by the end of the 1960s. In the early 1980s, the Mr Whippy master franchise was taken over by General Foods (Tip Top). A new orange and white colour scheme was adopted and the Isuzu Elf had become the standard Mr Whippy truck. In the early 2000s, Tip Top sold Mr Whippy to Peter Woodhams, who held the Waikato Mr Whippy franchise at the time as well. Peter and his son Chris ran the business for around five years. The Woodhams in turn sold Mr Whippy to the Graham family in 2006. - Mr Whippy.

Mr Whippy truck, Christchurch, 1960s. - Mr Whippy. Mr Whippy advertisement, 1967. Cones 5c and 10c, Fruit Sundae 15c. - Press.

October 1964 - "The Press" reported the arrival of a North Island ice cream brand in Christchurch, Peter Pan of Waipukurau. Peter Pan pint blocks were priced at 1s 6d at some chain stores, "compared with the 2s 3d a pint block charged for the other brands of ice-cream in Christchurch, including Perfection, Apex and Tip-Top (all owned by the General Foods Corporation (N.Z.), Ltd.), and Frosty Jack, another North Island company". As well as its purchases of Apex and Perfection, the article reported the Corporation's recent acquisition of Crystal Ice Cream Company, Ltd., Dunedin, and its subsidiaries, Rices Ice Cream, Ltd., Southland Ice Cream Company, Ltd., and Newjoy Icecream, Ltd.

1966 - Multinational Unilever, already well established in New Zealand with its Birds Eye Frozen Foods operation, purchased two ice cream factories from Fropax (N.Z.) Ltd (Vestey Group, vegetable and meat processors, Blue Star Line shipping) - the Frosty Jack factory in Palmerston North, and the Meadow Gold factory in Papatoetoe, Auckland.

The Wall's ice cream brand was launched, with national distribution of take-home ice cream, and a full range of stick and cone novelties (Woppa, Splice, Lickity Stix, Nutty Choca, Torpedo, Tornado).

Wall's bulk ice cream filling, Palmerston North, January 1968. Elmar Studios.
- Manawatu Heritage - Ian Matheson City Archives

1968 - Tip Top opened its new South Island ice cream factory in Christchurch, on Blenheim Road.

Treats on Sticks

The marketing of novelties, along with take-home ice cream, required more imaginative presentation, shapes, flavours, packaging, labelling, and of course, names.

1957 - The annual conference of the NZICMA notes "phenomenal growth in the ice lolly trade".

In the 60s, a profusion of stick novelties appeared, with product innovation and marketing efforts spurred on by the licensing of characters and imagery from popular cartoons, movies and television programmes.

Apex Ice Cream Co. (Christchurch) point-of-sale marketing material, 1960s
- Owen Norton collection, via Shona McCahon.



Seven-lane Gram stick novelty machine, Tip Top Mt Wellington factory, 1964.
Still from the documentary film, "All About Ice Cream", Robert Steele Productions.
- Nga Taonga Sound & Vision



Gram stick novelty machine, Wall's, Palmerston North, January 1968. Elmar Studios.
- Manawatu Heritage - Ian Matheson City Archives


Wall's King Kong frozen stick novelty television commercial, 1968
- Nga Taonga Sound & Vision.

Tip Top Moggy Man animated TV advertisement, 1970
- Archives NZ

Tip Top TT2 Moonraider poster, late 1960s
- Tip Top archives.

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