A Cookie Of A Puss

Imagine my surprise yesterday when talking to a Canadian colleague to discover she had never heard of Cookie Puss.

Cookie Puss is a creation of Carvel, the ice cream chain that may or may not still exist, I'm too lazy to google. The name may make me giggle now, but back in the early 1980s when Cookie Puss first came to earth from space (why, WHY was he a space creature?) the name just made me hungry.

Some rather earnest Wikipedia writer (Nicholson Baker?) has this to say about the Puss:

According to Carvel lore, Cookie Puss is a space alien (his original name was "Celestial Person" and his initials, "C.P.", later came to stand for "Cookie Puss") who was born on planet Birthday. In his television commercials, Cookie Puss has the ability to fly, though he requires a saucer-shaped spacecraft for interplanetary travel.

Although the exact design and composition of Cookie Puss has varied over the years and even from store to store, his basic attributes have remained consistent. He is roughly pear-shaped and flat, with an ice cream cone nose and two round, bulging brown eyes made from Carvel Flying Saucers. He sometimes has arms and legs, but these are just icing decorations, not additional parts.

I love any sentence that starts out with "According to Carvel lore...," and especially anything that reminds me of Fudgie The Whale, another lost classic of childhood. The accidentally pervy name, and the phallic nature of his "ice cream cone nose" and "two round bulging brown eyes" are not discussed.

Here's a nice commercial that also advertises Cookie Puss Dolls, surely a collector's item by now:



And best of all? I was reminded of his foreign cousin (even though the Puss came from space, he had an Irish cousin, just like Kirsty MacColl), who would come once a year on St. Patrick's Day - Cookie O'Puss.



God Bless, Ice Cream Puns. Oh, and this is especially for all those internet pervs who land here accidentally after googling the P word.