Peace, Love and Ice Cream Trivia Quiz

Answer: Wavy Gravy

Wavy Gravy was an emcee at the original Woodstock music festival and a member of the Hog Farm, an activist commune for politics and music. They provided free food for the Woodstock concert goers. Ben & Jerry's approached Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney) in the 1990s to name a flavor after him. It lasted from 1993 to 2001 before being sent to the Flavor Graveyard; it was brought back for a reprise in Scoop Shops (B&J's name for their ice cream shops) in 2005 by a fan vote. Certain flavors are only available in the Scoop Shops.

The introduction to this quiz was correct, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started "Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream" (now officially Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc.) in a former gasoline/petrol station in Burlington, Vermont in May, 1978. They had learned how to make ice cream by taking a correspondence course from Penn State University, for a cost of $5.00. Even back then, that was a very inexpensive course fee.

There really is a Flavor Graveyard at B&J's factory in Waterbury, Vermont. There are gravestones for many of the bygone flavors with a little gravestone poem on each one. The original gravestones were made of resin but are being replaced with real granite stones.

Answer: Cool Britannia

Ben & Jerry's has long relied on puns to name their ice creams but they do have a (very) few flavors that don't need to be explained: vanilla, peanut butter cup and strawberry, for example. In 1994 Ben & Jerry's decided to take their ice cream to Great Britain. Cool Britannia was introduced in 1995 but alas! in 1998 the company decided it wasn't cool enough and retired it.

In its first year, Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop in Burlington, Vermont was a big hit with both the local college students and Burlington residents. Ben and Jerry reasoned that if an ice cream shop could survive a Vermont winter it just might be a success so they had a "Free Cone Day" on their first anniversary, giving a free ice cream cone to all comers, a tradition that continues to this day.

Answer: Ethan Almond

Ethan Allen was the leader of the Vermont militia, the Green Mountain Boys, in the American Revolution. In a tip of the hat to him, Ben & Jerry's concocted Ethan Almond, a 1988 special, Scoop Shop only, flavor to commemorate the opening of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum in Burlington, Vt. in 1987.

In their desire to bring their social convictions to a business, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield paid their employees a much higher wage than was the norm for entry-level employees in Vermont at the time, used only Vermont milk, bought other ingredients from Fair Trade suppliers (meaning the suppliers paid their employees a fair wage) and gave a portion of their profits to causes they believed in. It paid back in unexpected ways; in 1988, Ben and Jerry were named "U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year". They went to the White House in Washington, D.C. to receive the award. As Jerry said afterwards: "We win [sic] this national award which was so ironic when you think about it, because - Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. handing us this award for being people that were completely opposed to everything they stood for."

Answer: Vermonty Python

For both American and European fans of the Monty Python troupe, Vermonty Python joined the Ben & Jerry's ranks in 2006 but became one of the "dearly depinted" in 2008. The fudge chunks really were in the shape of cows.

As Ben & Jerry's grew, working capital became an issue and so, in 1984, the duo initiated a public stock offering, to Vermont residents only, at $10.50 per share (with a minimum purchase of 12 shares). It raised over $750,000; one in every 100 Vermont households bought shares in Ben & Jerry's. A well-educated guess is that most people bought the shares, not with the hopes of making money, but to support a business that had become as much a part of the Vermont landscape as the black and white Holstein cows used in its advertising.

Answer: Fossil Fuel

Fossil Fuel evoked its name, including little fudge dinosaurs mixed in. From its 2005 introduction it seemed to be a love-or-hate flavor. In 2010 the haters finally won and it joined others in the Flavor Graveyard.

In 1987, two Grateful Dead fans from Maine suggested that Ben & Jerry's make a flavor in honor of the band. So was born Cherry Garcia, named after Jerry Garcia, the Dead's frontman. Except Jerry was not amused by pints of "cherry ice cream with cherries and fudge flakes" bearing a similarity to his name so he threatened to sue. This was quite a spectator sport for those of us living in the region; we expected to see a hippie fistfight! But things were smoothed over and a deal was brokered in which Jerry got royalty payments for the use of his name and B&J's got what would become their best selling flavor and the first ice cream named after a rock star. The guitar-playing cow on some of the pint containers of the flavor is pretty cool, too.

Answer: One Sweet Whirled

From 2002 to 2004 the ice cream consisting of caramel and coffee ice creams with marshmallow and caramel swirls and coffee-flavored fudge chips kept everyone awake and some of the profits went to Matthews' favorite anti-global warming charities. Finally Ben & Jerry's decided that it wasn't as flavorful as it might be and so sent it on to the great waffle cone in the sky. I made up the other flavors. Am I getting the hang of this pun-thing?

Ben & Jerry's shows its appreciation of its employees in many ways. One of the perks of working in a Ben & Jerry's factory is being able to take home enough ice cream to send any ice cream-crazed ten year old to bed every night with an aching stomach and brain freeze!

Answer: Turtle Soup

Somehow, Turtle Soup doesn't sound all that appetizing for an ice cream, but from 2006 to 2010 Ben & Jerry's gave it a chance before deciding that its sales were just too slow.

As Ben & Jerry's became successful, they expanded by franchising their Scoop Shops and selling pints of their ice creams to small (Mom and Pop) grocery stores in Vermont and then throughout New England. One day in 1984 they got a call from a distributor in Boston, Massachusetts saying that the vice-president of Haagen-Dazs ice cream had called him and threatened to withhold supplies of Haagen-Dazs if the Boston distributor kept selling Ben & Jerry's products. B&J's found out that Haagen-Dazs was owned by the Pillsbury company. Jerry was dispatched to Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a one-man picket line. Holding up a cardboard sign with the hand-scrawled message "What's the Dough Boy Afraid of?" and implying it was a David versus Goliath battle, Jerry got enough media coverage that Pillsbury was embarrassed into withdrawing the threat.

Answer: The 'Wich

In 2004 The 'Wich was "wicked good" "for quite a spell" (their puns, not mine) but by 2006 it wasn't flying high enough to carry its weight. Now, Ben & Jerry's recommends making your own B&J ice cream sandwich by putting a slice of their ice cream between two cookies. Really, and they have a YouTube video to demonstrate how.

Though known as the quirky little Vermont company adored by its fans, Ben & Jerry's was a publicly-traded company. Over time its stock price fell and in 2000 it found itself being bought-out by Unilever, the European conglomerate. When the sale was announced B&J fans stood with their mouths agape, thinking they'd been sold out. But the Ben & Jerry's board of directors believed they had to consider any offer to buy the company and accepted Unilever's admittedly generous offer. But it was still the rebellious Vermont hippie company: among the agreements of the sale were that Ben & Jerry's would elect its own board of directors without influence from Unilever, it would support any causes it chose and in the event of a disagreement between the two parties resulting in a lawsuit, Unilever would pay the attorneys fees for Ben & Jerry's, even if B&J lost the suit!

Answer: Coffee Heath Bar Crunch

Wanting to convert their entire product line to fair trade and non-genetically modified items, Ben & Jerry's decided in 2014 to discontinue the use of Hershey's Heath Bars and replace them with a non-branded bar. The new flavor was named Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch; there is also a vanilla version. Incidentally, the original toffee chunks were produced by Jerry dropping Heath bars from a ladder.

While Europe has required labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in foodstuffs for some time it is a very contentious issue in the United States. Unilever, the international conglomerate which owns Ben & Jerry's, is very much against labeling. Ben & Jerry's is very much in favor of labeling. Unilever spent $467,000 to help defeat GMO legislation in California. In 2013 the state of Vermont passed a law requiring the labeling of GMO ingredients in foods. Ben & Jerry's, in support of the law, found itself opposing its parent company which wants the law declared unconstitutional. In anticipation of lawsuits the state of Vermont established the "Vermont Food Fight" organization to solicit donations for legal expenses. In a typical response, Ben & Jerry's renamed one of its flavors "Food Fight Fudge Brownie" and promised to donate one dollar from each pint sold to the cause.

Answer: Black and Tan

It was named after a drink mixing ale and stout but Black and Tan also stood for a paramilitary police force of British World War I veterans during the Irish Revolution (The Black and Tans were in force from 1920 to 1922). The name struck a raw nerve with some consumers and so the flavor didn't last two full years before being deactivated.

As the 21st century moves along Ben & Jerry's is still the little company that could. They still follow their own drummer and support causes they believe in. Seven and one-half percent of annual pretax profits goes to the Ben & Jerry's Foundation which gives back to Vermont communities and grass roots organizations interested in social and environmental change. The program is administered by committees of Ben & Jerry's employees. Even their parent company, Unilever with 450 brands to manage, is committed to the foundation with an annual contribution based on Ben & Jerry's sales; in 2013 it amounted to 2.5 million dollars.