First Annual Outshine Popsicle Summit

Fran Magazine: Issue #149 ft. Brad Efford

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Housekeeping

Did everyone make their silly little New York War Crimes lists? I made mine and immediately regretted it.

I opted for Tree of Life over Hidden Life at the last second, and I think putting The Souvenir: Part II in here also kind of implicitly adds The Souvenir. I surprised myself by opting for Mr. Turner over Happy-Go-Lucky or Another Year when it comes to this century’s Leighs, but I think Turner is mostly a feat of, like, production design a la Topsy-Turvy. Which, speaking of: I’m back on Devised & Designed to talk Topsy-Turvy with Ian Moran. Best movie ever?? They should have released it in 2000 so I could put it on my damn list.

One year mono-versary

Real Fran Magazineheads know that this time last year, something very strange started to happen to me where one of my glands got huge out of nowhere and I thought I was dying of something but it turned out to be mononucleosis. I was sick for about a month, maybe longer, and still occasionally suffer from bouts of fatigue. Sometimes when I am walking to the grocery store, I’m like, “do I have TRAUMA from getting MONO?” and it’s like haha, no, but… also maybe a little. It fucking sucked!

If there was one upside to getting mono, it’s that I started buying Outshine popsicles regularly and now they are basically always in our home. At some point between then and now, friend and writer and reader

brad efford

and I started comparing notes about the various Outshine flavors. We shopped at the same grocery store, knew when the sales were, and frequently talked popsicle shop. Given the heat and the sun and stickiness of this week, it felt like the perfect time to do what I’m calling

THE FIRST ANNUAL OUTSHINE POPSICLE SUMMIT

By the way — we are not getting paid by Outshine to do this. But we are open to sponsorships or free popsicles. Or merch???

What follows is the conversation Brad and I had over Google docs about popsicles and summer and sweet treats and flavors. A bit about Brad below, and then you’ll get to the juice of the matter.

Brad is Fran’s neighbor. He is the former author of Montage, a defunct Substack he converted into an irregular email called Minutes. You can sign up to receive Minutes emails here. Brad also runs the movie journal wig-wag, which is always accepting pitches.

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i fucking love science

Fran Magazine: Brad, when is the first time you remember having an Outshine popsicle?

Brad: I am 90% sure it was just last year, on the recommendation of Fran Magazine’s landmark adult mononucleosis series. I had definitely seen the iconic bright green boxes in my local Walgreenses and grocers for longer than I can remember, and I subtly assumed they were “organic” or “upscale” popsicles (see also: expensive). I only moved to New York last June from the famously perfect weathered Bay Area, and when you wrote about the balming nature of an Outshine in Fran Mag we were suffering through a summer so miserably hot, and I was so unused to it, that a popsicle seemed like it was the answer to more or less everything. I’m an adult, I thought. Why shouldn’t I have the nice popsicles? I got my first box — mango — and haven’t looked back since. I felt just like this real customer fan from Wisconsin whom Outshine quotes on their official website, literally icecream.com:

Have you always been Outshine pilled, Fran? Did you also have this weird perception for some reason that they were popsicles for fancy people? Did you know the Outshine motto is “To live boldly, to laugh loudly, to shine brightly”?

I can actually remember the first time I had Outshine popsicles, which was in 2022 after I had an endoscopy. Everyone told me my throat might get sore — it did, but barely — so I sent my roommate out to grab popsicles and that’s what he got. So I’ve always associated them with some degree of being ill and wanting to feel better. Outshine popsicles: they’re medicine. They can use that slogan if they want, though their live, laugh, love modification is charming. I have a background in the frozen dessert industry, but I’d more often get pints of ice cream or ice cream sandwiches. At some point, between Summer of Mono and now, it dawned on me that the perk to having popsicles in the house is that you can have them any time of day. It’s sort of less elegant to grab the pint of ice cream out of the freezer at 2pm, but having a popsicle is fine. I don’t make the rules.

I had a love/hate relationship with popsicles as a kid — I hated being sticky, and eating a popsicle often involved feeling sticky. In college, however, I went through a phase of trying to make decadent popsicles with a good friend — ones with layers and yogurt and quirky flavors. They tasted good, but I’ve always felt that homemade popsicles are not really worth the effort. It’s only in the past few years I’ve come to consider what makes a popsicle good: it transcends taste, I think, and goes into something textural and experiential. What is it that makes a popsicle good and why do you think Outshine meets that standard?

Two quick points here that I can’t just leave behind, and that coincidentally I think dovetail into the attributes of a great popsicle. The first is that a great popsicle is an all-day, anytime food, and I would argue one that’s appropriate for all seasons — though popsicles are famously best in hot weather due to being ice, a great popsicle will give you the same thrill in the pit of winter or the nip of an autumn evening. Your standard popsicle will hit the spot on a sweltering summer day, but pull out an Outshine holed up in your apartment at 11:30 am on February 3rd and you’re not going to feel crazy. You’re going to be thrilled you get to eat an Outshine: a fruity, non GMO treat.

The second is that being sticky fucking sucks; even as a kid you felt it, and I did too. I avoided ice cream cones as a kid because they were always melting down my hand — I was exclusively cup with spoon, please, until I got old enough to realize you just have to eat the thing and it won’t melt. Why do kids eat so slowly? There’s a sturdiness to the inherent structure of a great popsicle, though, that keeps it from melting quickly; a great popsicle lasts as long as you need it to. There are a couple of Outshines that are juicier than the others — pomegranate, grape, sometimes tangerine — but by and large, likely because they’re made with better (realer) ingredients, they don’t cause a sticky fist below the stick. And the juicier ones are packed with flavor specifically because of their juiciness, so imo the trade-off is worth it. You just gotta slurp.

Beyond this, you’ll find that I love a creamy popsicle more than an icy one — when I discovered Melonas on my first day in New York last year, I felt like I was meeting a new best friend. When I was a kid, if we ever had popsicles at home they were undoubtedly the long plastic bags of ice doused in colored syrup; depending on where you live, these are called freeze pops, Fla-Vor-Ice, Otter Pops, etc. I always wanted the pinks and greens. I liked that as it melted the juice stayed in the bag until I was done with the ice and ready to tilt the bag back to drink it down. I can’t picture doing this now, other than in the name of sick nostalgia. Those are barely popsicles; they cut the roof of your mouth, they’re too hard to break apart, they melt too quickly, and most importantly they’re very clearly just long ice cubes dipped in syrup. Outshine, which makes great popsicles, would never. Real fruit, long lasting, strong flavor, silky options — it’s all there.

When you were a kid, what kind of frozen treats were you downing? And now, when it’s not an Outshine, what do you go for? Any evolution in your taste there over the years?

I had a pretty voracious sweet tooth as a kid (and kind of now, also) so few treats were off-limits. My go-to ice cream truck order was the Great White Shark popsicle, which is lemon, before eventually graduating to the strawberry cheesecake bars (they sold these at my high school, which took away some of the magic of them being in the truck). Given my years of experience in the ice cream industry, I’ll still almost always opt for ice cream when given the choice. The greatest evolutionary update to my dessert-seeking process is that I’ve discovered something horrible in my older age, which is that if I eat ice cream too close to bedtime, I wake up with a headache. Does this happen to anyone else? #MedicalMystery Treats from my childhood I’d be eager to revisit include Italian ice — I miss Miko’s in Chicago — and push pops, which are sherbet? I recently learned the difference between sherbet and ice cream or sorbet, and it’s that sherbet is made with egg whites. Sorbet is dairy and egg-free, typically, and ice cream either has egg yolks or some kind of chemical protein to make it stretchy. The more you know! I think sherbet is worthy of a comeback.

Like you, I prefer the creamier popsicles — a Melona bar is heaven — rather than the juicy ones. The pomegranate and watermelon Outshines are a little too juice-forward. The most notable thing about those ones is that they are really hard to bite. I try not to bite a popsicle if I can avoid it; that is a horrible sensory experience for me but sometimes it’s a necessity. Creamier popsicles make it easier to kind of, like, break off chunks in your mouth with the horrible feeling of sinking your teeth into literal ice.

I think it might be time to reveal our top three and bottom three Outshine flavors. I feel obligated to write that we are NOT being paid by Outshine to do this but we are OPEN to being paid by Outshine to do something like this in the future. Let’s list both our top / bottom threes and see where we may overlap.

Fran:

• Top three: Coconut, Tropical Punch, Raspberry (Honorable mention: Cherry Limeade)

• Bottom three: Pomegranate, Watermelon, Mango with Tajin

Brad:

• Top three: Coconut, Tropical Punch, Grape (HM: Pomegranate)

• Bottom three: Lime, Tangerine, Watermelon

Obviously, coconut and tropical punch are the tops. I wager it’s because creamy coconut is the best flavor and tropical punch is very creamy coconut-forward; it doesn’t hurt to throw a little mango and passionfruit in there. Like when have mango and passionfruit ever hurt anyone, you know? The other coconut spin-off is pina colada, which is good for a bit but then the pineapple wears me down — this is what lands lime and tangerine at the bottom of my list, too: the tart flavors get too tart for me and by the end of the popsicle I’m fully tired of eating it.

That being said, I don’t think there’s a single Outshine flavor I wouldn’t buy again. They all have their place and time for me, even watermelon, which we both put down in the bottom for similar reasons, I’m sure (juicy but a little flavorless — these are the exact reasons why I dislike real watermelon too, for the record). I will be in the grocery store at some point this summer and feel the urge for a tangerine Outshine, I guarantee you, or even a mango with Tajin, which Lena loves and I feel right in the middle on (great if I’m in the mood for it but only then, and I’m not frequently in the mood). I guess the last thing I should mention is GRAPE — the great grape, an amazing popsicle that leaves all the other fruit flavors in its dust. That being said, raspberry is one of the handful I still haven’t tried — so who knows what’s on my horizon…

Raspberry wound up in my top grouping because there is little more classic to me than a “red popsicle.” Raspberry, tangerine, grape = these were all the staples of my mono summer, and unlike other things from that period that I cannot bear to consume (Momofuku ramen still makes me nauseous after a month of it), those flavors are evergreen. They’re like the best part of a sick day, and feel representative of a time I wouldn’t want to replicate but am happy to reminisce on in fits and spurts. A grape-flavored ANYTHING — Celsius, Skittle, whatever — is heaven on earth to me. I obviously love REAL grapes (Tessa Strain voice “it’s grape time”), which I imagine the Outshine pop MOSTLY is, but even a fake grape anything will win me over.

Like you, I go for less juicy flavors — the watermelon and the pomegranate both quite literally hurt my teeth, so that kinda knocks them out. I think I owe Mango with Tajin another shot, but is this a safe space to admit I’m not crazy about Tajin? Given everything I do like to eat, it ought to be a slam dunk, but for whatever reason, Tajin never really hits. Maybe it’s an acid thing? I obviously want to like that one.

Wait — that gives me an idea — tomato Outshine? Michelada? I guess popsicles have to work for children too, but I sorta think I’m onto something. What kind of Outshine bar are you inventing if you had the flavor lab resources I’m imagining they have?

I don’t think Outshines have to work for children — they run 8-10 bucks at most stores, and there is a pina colada flavor, so I’ve kind of come full circle on them being fancy popsicles for adults.

Lena and I were discussing new flavors they should invent while we were sweltering in line today to early vote for Zohran, which I mention partly because some of these ideas are hers: cold brew, tiramisu (coffee and vanilla), Thai iced tea (!!! this is my favorite), banana, blackberry, plum, margarita (the lime already covers this, mostly, but they should make a lime Outshine infused with tequila…), pear, and not to be overly bespoke but I feel like they could really crack an avocado flavor. Smooth, creamy, mild… there’s something there.

I’m trying to figure out where the line is between wacky and adventurous — tomato feels wacky (too earthy?), but Michelada I’d try. Lena said root beer, but that sounds gross to me, a famous root beer flavored candy disliker. I think no matter what, though, one thing is clear: Outshine should hire us while the getting’s still good. Let’s get the fine folks at icecream.com on the phone; these ideas aren’t going to just sit around forever with nowhere to go.

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What are your popsicles of choice this summer? How do you beat the heat?