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Bomb Pops, the Kansas City invention that defined American summers and patriotic nostalgia

By Mackenzie Martin - 6/25/2026, 9:00 AM - 3,460 words

Faulty reasoning signals

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<i>For more stories like this one, subscribe to </i><a href="https://www.kcur.org/a-peoples-history-of-kansas-city" class="Link" target="_blank" ><i>A People's History of Kansas City</i></a><i> on </i><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-peoples-history-of-kansas-city/id1497165479" class="Link" target="_blank" ><i>Apple Podcasts</i></a><i>, </i><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0KfG7qlvetwL9ptu0goIsV?

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<p>Found at nearly every ice cream truck and public pool snack bar in America, the red-white-and-blue Bomb Pop <i>defines</i> summertime.

The culprit of millions of stained tongues, melting down thousands of sticky hands.</p><p>These sweet, thirst-quenching treats call back to the simple days of childhood: Fourth of July fireworks, cannonballs in the pool, staying up late because there’s no school tomorrow.</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<p>Jim Heeter remembers trying his very first Bomb Pop around 1957, as a kid growing up in Pierce City, Missouri.

“ I was actually a big Bomb Pop fan,” Heeter says.</p><p>Heeter loved the way each stacked section was its own vibrant shade of red, white and blue.

Its three distinct flavors: cherry, lime, and blue raspberry, in that order.

And then there was the shape: huge, pointed at the top, with fins.</p><p>“Fins like a rocket,” Heeter says.

“Not like a bomb, like a rocket.”</p><p>Invented in Kansas City in the middle of the Cold War, the Bomb Pop has become a curious icon of American patriotism, especially as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary this year.</p><p>But its launch into pop culture wasn’t entirely sweet — a reflection of the country’s nuclear arms race and fight for military supremacy.</p><p>And, to some parents, a symbol of everything wrong about America.</p><div class="Enh" data-align-right>

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<img class="Image" alt="Doc Abernethy eats a Bomb Pop at Merritt Foods in Kansas City in 1982." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a10dde0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3013x3500+0+0/resize/1760x2044!

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<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">Southland Corporation</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">Doc Abernethy eats a Bomb Pop at Merritt Foods in Kansas City in 1982.</figcaption>

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<p>The experience turned Merritt into a go-getter and risk-taker.

After all, when you’ve fought in an actual war, how dangerous can a business plan really be?

</p><p>After the war, Merritt made a big pivot into an entirely different business: Ice cream.</p><h2 class=""><b>Golden age of the Good Humor man</b></h2><p>Doc Abernethy soon joined Merritt at the Southern Ice Cream company in Memphis.

Together, they produced premium pints of ice cream, tart cartons of sherbert, and the crowd-favorite Bananza Bar. </p><p>“It was half of a banana dropped into ice milk ice cream,” Rick remembers.

“And I'm telling you what, that was the greatest tasting ice cream bar you ever ate.”</p><p>Doc told a reporter he ate 32 Bananza Bars his first day on the job. </p><p>After World War II was a good time to enter the ice cream business.

Early in the century, most people were buying their ice cream from street vendors, or at their local soda fountain.

Then the home refrigerator in the 1930s <a href="https://www.whirlpool.com/blog/kitchen/history-of-the-refrigerator.html" class="Link" target="_blank" >opened the freezer door</a> to cartons of ice cream that families could keep at home.</p><p>By the middle of the century, U.S. ice cream consumption reached an astonishing 537 million gallons a year, according to Laura B.

Weiss, author of “<a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/ice-cream" class="Link" target="_blank" >Ice Cream, A Global History</a>.”</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<img class="Image" alt="The Good Humor man comes to a trailer camp for torpedo plant workers in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1941 during World War II." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/73f40bf/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1024x791+0+0/resize/1760x1360!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2c%2F67%2Fe1c5aa174fd0bdd4082177ad9002%2Fservice-pnp-fsa-8b15000-8b15000-8b15037v-1.jpg 2x" width="880" height="680" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/18aff1a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1024x791+0+0/resize/880x680!

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<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">The Library of Congress</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">The Good Humor ice cream truck comes to a trailer camp for torpedo plant workers in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1941 during World War II.</figcaption>

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<p>“The Baby Boomers came along, and that enormously mushroomed the audience for ice cream,” she says.</p><p>Soon, there were more varieties than ever on the market.

The 1950s saw ice cream bars, novelties and popsicles increasingly vying for consumers’ attention.

It was the golden age of the Good Humor man driving down the street in his <a href="https://www.goodhumor.com/us/en/blog-landing/nostalgic-ice-cream-truck-history.html" class="Link" target="_blank" >signature white truck</a>.</p><p>By 1970, Weiss found packaged ice cream accounted for almost a third of U.S. ice cream sales.</p><p>One of the most popular novelties back then was America’s first chocolate-covered ice cream bar: the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/weird-short-history-eskimo-pie-corporation-180961840/" class="Link" target="_blank" >Eskimo Pie</a>, which has since been renamed Edy’s Pie.

Invented in Ohio around 1920, Eskimo Pies got their chocolate coating from Kansas City’s <a href="https://www.russellstover.com/?

srsltid=AfmBOooJk83L_A7g2K-1SJgGE2IBYeMvvtDoxIeM3ogHqtLQP_emOAHf" class="Link" target="_blank" >Russell Stover chocolates</a>.</p><p>It was such a hit that a year later, Good Humor replicated the treat with their very own version: the Klondike bar.</p><h2 class=""><b>The invention of the Bomb Pop </b></h2><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<img class="Image" alt="10-year-old Corey Baker buys a Bomb Pop in Columbus, Georgia, in 1980." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e4d3f58/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1763x1570+0+0/resize/1760x1568!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F34%2F5d%2F124e37f345daac66e30e0f067b83%2Fthe-columbus-ledger-1980-07-01-3.jpg 2x" width="880" height="784" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7c16f3c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1763x1570+0+0/resize/880x784!

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<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">The Columbus Ledger</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">10-year-old Corey Baker buys a Bomb Pop in Columbus, Georgia, in 1980. </figcaption>

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</figure>

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<p>But Memphis was a hot market for cold treats.

So in the early 1950s, Merritt and Doc decided to open a new ice cream company in Kansas City, Missouri.

They called themselves the James S.

Merritt Company (later Merritt Foods).</p><p>But this time, to compete against all the dairies already operating in Kansas City, they decided to ditch the ice cream tubs.

Instead, Merritt and Doc went all in on the biggest, weirdest, and most exotic ice cream bars, novelties, and popsicles they could think of.</p><p>In order to find out what the customers wanted, Doc went straight to his target demographic: kids.</p><p>According to Rick, Doc would go to a sixth grade class with pictures of various popsicles he had dreamed up, in various colors and shapes, and say, “Now tell me, which one do you like?”

</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F96%2F16%2F42ece71047e685dca420b55de187%2Fjpeg-image-4bbb-b28b-5f-0.jpeg 2x"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

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<img class="Image" alt="We don’t know when the red, white, and blue Bomb Pops first arrived, because there were so many other flavors at first." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/84d11f2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3481x2098+0+0/resize/1760x1060!

/quality/90/?

url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F96%2F16%2F42ece71047e685dca420b55de187%2Fjpeg-image-4bbb-b28b-5f-0.jpeg 2x" width="880" height="530" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b5f0a0a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3481x2098+0+0/resize/880x530!

/quality/90/?

url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F96%2F16%2F42ece71047e685dca420b55de187%2Fjpeg-image-4bbb-b28b-5f-0.jpeg">

<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">Courtesy of Rick Abernethy</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">We don’t know when the red, white, and blue Bomb Pops first arrived, because there were so many other flavors at first.</figcaption>

</div>

</figure>

</div>

<p>In <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/658804955/" class="Link" target="_blank" >1958</a>, the Kansas City Star reported that Merritt wanted to add notches to leftover popsicle sticks so that kids could use them to build stuff, like Lincoln Logs.

That was one of the many focus groups Patricia Lear and her brother participated in as a child.</p><p>“The way the Bomb Pop happened is, we'd be sitting around in the den watching television, and everybody would be given some clay,” she says.

“We'd be sitting there trying different shapes.

‘What do you think of this?’

‘What do you think of that?’”

</p><p>The Bomb Pop was born in July 1955, right in the middle of the Cold War, an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union marked by constant threats of nuclear attack.</p><p>It was a weird time to be a kid.

You’d be in school and then all of sudden have to run a drill, learning to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=zMnKNHNfznE" class="Link" target="_blank" >duck and cover</a> under your desk in case a nuclear bomb went off.

(Because your desk would totally protect you.)</p><p>Out of this fight over military dominance formed the Space Race, the quest to conquer the moon and prove which country was the most technologically advanced.

For Americans, the space program gave them something to be proud of, and a reason to look up at the stars with delight.</p><p>Rick says Doc Abernethy, ever the salesman, leaned into that positive association with their new missile-shaped popsicle: “Like Doc said, we just rode that one.

If you wanna call a rocket, it's a rocket.”</p><p>But if you ask Patricia Lear, there’s nothing celestial about it: “The Bomb Pop is literally a bomb because my dad dropped bombs in the war.”</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<source type="image/webp" width="880"

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F09%2Fe11530754a96b7910364527342bf%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-11-04-08-pm.png 2x"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F09%2Fe11530754a96b7910364527342bf%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-11-04-08-pm.png"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

<img class="Image" alt="While Bomb Pops weren’t invented as a nod to the space race, Merritt Foods eventually embraced the assumption in its marketing." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0ca34de/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1538x1022+0+0/resize/1760x1170!

/quality/90/?

url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F09%2Fe11530754a96b7910364527342bf%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-11-04-08-pm.png 2x" width="880" height="585" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ca64d18/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1538x1022+0+0/resize/880x585!

/quality/90/?

url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F09%2Fe11530754a96b7910364527342bf%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-11-04-08-pm.png">

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">While Bomb Pops weren’t invented as a nod to the space race, Merritt Foods eventually embraced the assumption in its marketing.</figcaption>

</div>

</figure>

</div>

<p>The popsicles’ signature fins may just seem like a flourish, but they actually sped up the entire process, Rick says, because they allowed the popsicles to freeze faster.</p><p>Interesting, though, not even Rick knows exactly when that famous trifecta of red, white and blue arrived.

Because Bomb Pops had <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/334523786/" class="Link" target="_blank" >so many other flavors</a>, too: Spice Bombs.

Super Star Bombs.

Candy Bombs.

Bingo Bombs.

Bubble Gum Bombs.

Crunch Bombs.

Fruity Patooty Bombs.

Cowabunga Bombs.</p><p>And, directly on the nose here, Acme Missile Bombs, which was a nod to Looney Tunes and the unreliable manufacturer behind Wile E.

Coyote’s gadgets, anvils, and TNT.

(You know, the ones that always seemed to blow up in his face.)</p><p>By 1970, Merritt Foods was killing it.

The Kansas City Star reported that their product output multiplied by more than 12 times <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/675520678/" class="Link" target="_blank" >over the course of a decade</a>.</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc2%2Feb%2Faad1d2544f2084970f658b87ba37%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-10-54-18-pm.png"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

<img class="Image" alt="Rick Abernethy, the son of Bomb Pop co-founder Doc Abernethy, holds up a Bomb Pop pillow at his home in Kansas City." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/5a1854f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1870x1150+0+0/resize/1760x1082!

/quality/90/?

url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc2%2Feb%2Faad1d2544f2084970f658b87ba37%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-10-54-18-pm.png 2x" width="880" height="541" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3854628/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1870x1150+0+0/resize/880x541!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc2%2Feb%2Faad1d2544f2084970f658b87ba37%2Fscreenshot-2026-06-22-at-10-54-18-pm.png">

<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">Mackenzie Martin, KCUR 89.3</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">Rick Abernethy, the son of Bomb Pop co-founder Doc Abernethy, holds up a Bomb Pop pillow at his home in Kansas City.</figcaption>

</div>

</figure>

</div>

<p>“The red, white, and blue Bomb Pop was the biggest thing to hit the market in the past 10 years,” an ice cream distributor told the Tampa Times in <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/334523786/" class="Link" target="_blank" >1980</a>.

“Kids went crazy over them and they started a flood of different novelties.”</p><p>In 1981, Merritt Foods was acquired by Southland Corporation, the parent company of 7-Eleven — meaning their novelties ended up in convenience stores across the country</p><p>On its way to deep-freeze dessert dominance, though, Bomb Pops acquired a few enemies.</p><h2 class=""><b>Equating ice cream and war</b></h2><p>Images of war became inescapable during U.S. involvement in Vietnam — beamed into home televisions from journalists abroad.

And it infiltrated other aspects of life, too, even if you were just a kid.</p><p>Action figures like G.I Joe were everywhere, along with explosives-centric children’s games — and parents developed very strong feelings about this trend of violent media and entertainment.</p><p>The Bomb Pop, that seemingly innocuous popsicle, didn’t escape the scrutiny.</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<source type="image/webp" width="880"

height="624" srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/34c9148/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3500x2481+0+0/resize/1760x1248!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F80%2F48%2Fc1d81e5f41d0a294a539472df16f%2Fimg-7fae9507707d-1.jpeg 2x"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F80%2F48%2Fc1d81e5f41d0a294a539472df16f%2Fimg-7fae9507707d-1.jpeg"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

<img class="Image" alt="The Acme Missile Bomb Pop packaging." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/812323f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3500x2481+0+0/resize/1760x1248!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F80%2F48%2Fc1d81e5f41d0a294a539472df16f%2Fimg-7fae9507707d-1.jpeg 2x" width="880" height="624" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/559303b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3500x2481+0+0/resize/880x624!

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</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">The Acme Missile Bomb Pop packaging. </figcaption>

</div>

</figure>

</div>

<p>Another person spending a lot of time thinking about Bomb Pops in the 1970s was Steve Chinn.

Now a 79-year-old retired lawyer in Kansas City, at the time he was a law school student.

During the summers he wasn’t in class, Chinn filled orders at the Merritt Foods factory in Kansas City’s East Bottoms.</p><p>The factory was kept ice cold, according to Rick Abernathy: “It's gotta be 60 degrees below zero in front of the blowers and about 20 degrees below zero, generally around the rest of the cooler.”</p><p>Despite that, Chinn enjoyed working at the factory.

He got free Bomb Pops that he could bring home to his kids, and it was the kind of job that gave Chinn a lot of time to think and reflect — particularly about the time he recently spent in the Army, fighting in Vietnam.</p><p>“My parents were Republicans, and so I went over there thinking that this was a patriotic thing for me to be doing, you know?”

Chinn says.</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<img class="Image" alt="Rows of tri-colored Bomb Pops are ready for wrapping after being shaped in a Gram machine in 1980 in Kansas City." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/5e978ae/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2739+0+0/resize/1760x1606!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F4b%2Fc6%2Fda40e018419fad4618346c90d71c%2F7-06192013-30000447a.jpeg 2x" width="880" height="803" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f141aa4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2739+0+0/resize/880x803!

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<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">The Kansas City Star | KCStarPhotos.org</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">Rows of tri-colored Bomb Pops are ready for wrapping after being shaped in a Gram machine in 1980 in Kansas City.

</figcaption>

</div>

</figure>

</div>

<p>Once he returned from overseas, though, and found himself picking up box after box of patriotic popsicles shaped like weapons, Chinn started to see his role in a different light.</p><p>“I just knew that we were there under false pretenses.

I realized that,” Chinn now says.

“It wasn't probably until I got back that I really was able to process intellectually what was going on.”</p><p>Merritt, the Army veteran who gets credit for the shape of the Bomb Pop, thought a lot about Vietnam, too.</p><p>“He wanted to talk to me about the Vietnam War 'cause I was in college,” Lear remembers.

“But I had nothing intelligent to say other than obviously it's bad, you know, we shouldn't be there.”</p><p>In <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/1192901239/" class="Link" target="_blank" >1972</a>, Doc Abernethy told a reporter he had personally received around 30 letters from “Moms for Peace” and other advocacy groups complaining about the Bomb Pop.</p><p>Merritt died back in <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/675661346/" class="Link" target="_blank" >1970</a>, so he wasn’t around to defend his product, but Doc maintained that the Bomb Pop was just a popsicle to them — not a political statement.

Doc <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/1192901239/" class="Link" target="_blank" >told</a> the same reporter that at Merritt Foods, they “think of them as bombs for peace, not war.”</p><h2 class=""><b>An everlasting symbol of American summer</b></h2><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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<img class="Image" alt="Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez share a Bomb Pop in July 2023 ahead of Swift’s Kansas City stop on The Eras Tour.

“See you tonight Kansas Cityyy” read the caption." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0fd94b5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/574x380+0+0/resize/1760x1166!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fdb%2F06%2Fe4bb9ef640d8a750fe15c94729d9%2Fscreenshot-2023-07-07-at-3-08-14-pm-64a862a831f99.jpeg 2x" width="880" height="583" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/828997b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/574x380+0+0/resize/880x583!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fdb%2F06%2Fe4bb9ef640d8a750fe15c94729d9%2Fscreenshot-2023-07-07-at-3-08-14-pm-64a862a831f99.jpeg">

<div class="Figure-credit-container"><div class="Figure-credit">Taylor Swift, Instagram</div>

</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez share a Bomb Pop in July 2023 ahead of Swift’s Kansas City stop on The Eras Tour.

“See you tonight Kansas Cityyy” read the caption. </figcaption>

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<p>The Bomb Pop survived the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, and today, it’s far outgrown its Kansas City roots. <a href="https://nationaldaycalendar.com/celebrations/national-bomb-pop-day-last-thursday-in-june" class="Link" target="_blank" >National Bomb Pop Day</a> comes around every year on the last Thursday in June, reinforcing its associations with fireworks and Independence Day.</p><p>The Original Bomb Pop is now made by <a href="https://bombpop.com/product/original-bomb-pop" class="Link" target="_blank" >Wells Enterprises</a>, a family-owned ice cream manufacturer out of Le Mars, Iowa.

And it comes in more than a dozen tricolored flavors, including Nerds and Shrek<i>.</i></p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F81%2F93%2F8034eebb41b68319cd2eccf05b38%2Fjpeg-image-451c-8142-e6-0.jpeg"data-size="fallbackImageSizeMobile"

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F81%2F93%2F8034eebb41b68319cd2eccf05b38%2Fjpeg-image-451c-8142-e6-0.jpeg 2x"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

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<img class="Image" alt="Doc Abernethy’s sketch-in-progress of the Batman novelty ice cream bar." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1f0c65e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2625x3500+0+0/resize/1760x2346!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F81%2F93%2F8034eebb41b68319cd2eccf05b38%2Fjpeg-image-451c-8142-e6-0.jpeg 2x" width="880" height="1173" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b5b90f0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2625x3500+0+0/resize/880x1173!

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</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">Doc Abernethy’s sketch-in-progress of the Batman novelty ice cream bar.</figcaption>

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<p>On top of that, you’ve got your Bomb Pop imitators, like “<a href="https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Assorted-Flavor-Freedom-Ice-Pops-19-8-fl-oz-12-Count-Frozen/312747905" class="Link" target="_blank" >Freedom Pops</a>” from Walmart and “<a href="https://www.popsicle.com/us/en/p/popsicle-firecracker.html/00077567274427" class="Link" target="_blank" >Firecracker</a>” Ice Pops from Popsicle.</p><p>Bomb Pops stopped being manufactured in Kansas City in 1991, when Southland Corporation closed down its Merritt Foods subsidiary.</p><p>Doc Abernethy, however, lived the rest of his life in Kansas City.

He died in <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/682875030/" class="Link" target="_blank" >1994</a> at age 73.</p><p>“He was the life of the party,” Rick recalls.

“I remember at his funeral — I think we had eight inches of snow and you couldn't get into the funeral home.

I mean, there were so many people there.”</p><p>That checks out: What’s trudging through a little ice to honor one of the most prolific ice cream inventors of all time?

</p><p>Doc’s frozen treat portfolio was stacked with so much more than just the Bomb Pop.

He was constantly sketching out ideas.</p><p>We can thank him for the Dole Frozen Dessert Bars, in addition to novelties in the shape of the Pink Panther and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

There was also the slightly unconventional “Froze Toes,” a pink foot-shaped ice cream bar with a bubble gum ball on the big toe.

Plus the U.F.O., the “unidentified frozen object.”</p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe0%2F84%2Fe3b28067493486b8f38592021a5f%2Fimg-732d9744ff1a-1.jpeg"data-size="fallbackImageSizeMobile"

<source type="image/webp" width="880"

height="702" srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/26633ae/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3500x2794+0+0/resize/1760x1404!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe0%2F84%2Fe3b28067493486b8f38592021a5f%2Fimg-732d9744ff1a-1.jpeg 2x"data-size="fallbackImageSize"

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<img class="Image" alt="Merritt Foods workers eat a Pink Panther novelty ice cream bar with THE Pink Panther in Kansas City." srcset="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6ea18f1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3500x2794+0+0/resize/1760x1404!

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url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe0%2F84%2Fe3b28067493486b8f38592021a5f%2Fimg-732d9744ff1a-1.jpeg 2x" width="880" height="702" loading="lazy" src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/26633ae/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3500x2794+0+0/resize/880x702!

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</div><figcaption class="Figure-caption">Merritt Foods workers eat a Pink Panther novelty ice cream bar with THE Pink Panther in Kansas City.</figcaption>

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<p>No matter what Doc or Merritt invented though, Lear admits they never came up with anything stickier than the Bomb Pop.</p><p>“What struck me is when it hit big, 10 years ago or 15 years ago, I would say, when I started seeing it in Gap ads, in Fendi ads, in Neiman Marcus ads.

When it hit as this giant, symbol of Americana summer,” Lear says.

“That just blew my mind.

I was thinking my dad wouldn't believe how big this thing's gotten.”</p><p>“I kinda feel when I see them all over the place, ‘This is my dad,’ you know.

Reaching out to me and making sure I know he's still there, he's still around me.”</p><p><i>This episode of </i><a href="https://www.kcur.org/a-peoples-history-of-kansas-city" class="Link" target="_blank" ><i>A People's History of Kansas City</i></a><i> was reported, produced, and mixed by Mackenzie Martin with editing by Suzanne Hogan and Gabe Rosenberg.</i></p><div class="Enh" data-align-center>

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