The ICEE Bear
Every now and then I’ll see a mascot out on the street hawking some business. In April, I see tax prep services, one using a Statue of Liberty mascot and another using the visage of Uncle Sam. I have seen people dressed as tacos, chickens, pigs, robots and spark plugs. My teenage son dressed in a smiling sun costume for a company that sold orange juice. The costume had no arms and his job was just to dance around and look happy. When he came home, I asked him how it went.
“People kept coming up behind me and kicking me in the butt,” he whined. “I felt stupid. I’m never doing that again.”
I felt bad for him. That’s when I decided to tell him the story of when I spent an afternoon as the ICEE Bear.
I was young. About 19 or 20. I was also between jobs which either meant I had just ended a bar gig or broken up with a girlfriend who was paying my bills. My friend, Mike, said he had a gig for me. It was the grand opening of a 7/11 store in Los Lunes, a town of about 2500 people some 20 miles south of Albuquerque. The first convenience store in Los Lunes was a big deal. They were pulling out all the stops on this first weekend of summer, erecting a mini amusement park in the vacant lot next door with rides, games of chance and even a pony ride. The Oscar Meyer Wienermobile was on hand to give out free hot dogs and someone from the Phillip Morris company was handing out packs of cigarettes. I thought I was going to be there to play music. Boy, was I wrong.
My job was to don the ICEE Bear costume. The ICEE Bear was a goofy polar bear dressed in a sweater emblazoned with a capitol “I.” I stood 5’10”, but the costume would make the character over 6 feet tall. ICEE was a slush that came in two flavors, cherry and blue raspberry and the 7/11 had a brand-new ICEE machine. As the character I would be handing out free samples like the weeny and cigarette guys. Mike was getting $50 and I would get exactly half that.
Mike had picked up the costume from the ICEE company in Albuquerque, and we threw it into the back of his car and headed south. After we arrived, we carried the costume trunk into the back office where Mike helped me get into the outfit. It smelled like sweat and I nearly gagged putting the headpiece on. Fortunately, there was a screen covered port where the bear’s mouth was that I could see and breathe through. Mike told me he’d be back at the end of the day and dragged the trunk back out to the car to make room in the office. I went out to the floor where I was met by the store manager.
“So, here’s the deal,” the manager said as he led me to the ICEE machine. “These little cups here? These are the sample cups. Don’t use any of the other cups for giveaway. We’ve counted them and that’s how we keep track of how many ICEE’s we’ve given away. The company wants to know that because we are getting a credit for this stuff.”
He blew smoke into my pie hole.
“I can’t stress this enough. USE ONLY THE SAMPLE CUPS.”
“Yes sir,” I said, my voice echoing in the oversized costume head.
“And don’t give out any samples unless someone asks for them. We don’t want to go bankrupt on the first day of the grand opening. And be nice. If the kids want to shake your paw, play with you or punch you in your bear nuts, I don’t care. Be nice.”
I nodded my comically large head.
While the store had already been open for a couple of weeks, this was the official grand opening. The carnival next door opened its gates at 10 that morning and some people decided to come in to load up on free stuff before heading over to the rides. I put on my best goofy bear voice and began waving to the people as they wandered throughout the store. A kid came up to me and pulled on my sweater. My first customer.
“Could I have a ICEE?” He rubbed a little snot from his nose.
“Hey little guy,” I intoned. What flavor?”
“Cherry!” he said excitedly.
“Hey, you little shit!” his mother shouted from behind. “Say please!”
“Please,” the little guy said, now chastised.
“Here you go,” I said and patted him on the head. “And don’t worry about your mom. She’s just cranky.”
He smiled and ran for the door waving his free ICEE in the air and heading toward the carnival with his mother shouting after him. This was going to be a breeze.
As the day wore on, people came into the air-conditioned store to get out of the summer heat. I was handing out so many ICEEs that they had to refill the machine several times which took 15-20 minutes before it was ready to dispense more. This gave me time to go into the back office and take my head off. During one of those breaks, I accidentally walked in on a young woman pulling on a slinky black velvet dress. I apologized and turned my cartoon back to her.
“It’s alright. I’m done,” she said.
I turned around. She was pulling a sash over shoulders that said Black Velvet Whiskey in script.
“So, what’s your deal?” I asked.
She struck a pose.
“I’m the Black Velvet girl,” she said tossing her head.
She was there to give out samples of whiskey to any adult patrons who happened to wander in. In the mid 70’s, it was rare, at least in New Mexico, for a convenience store to sell alcohol. Liquor stores here had drive up windows until 1988, so most alcohol was sold there, but this was a one stop convivence store with gas pumps, food, sundries and alcohol all in one place.
A Black Velvet display was set up not too far from the ICEE machine. Not surprisingly, my attractive, velveted friend was getting much more attention than I was. Most of the families had gone home by mid afternoon and soon it was just me and her in the store with the wiener dude and the tobacco guy having exhausted their supply of freebies. When people would approach her, the woman would smile pleasantly and offer a small paper cup about the size of one of those ketchup cups they give you in a fast-food restaurant filled with whiskey. Most of the samplers were guys wanting more of Miss Black Velvet’s time and after a while she asked if I wanted a sample.
“Sure,” I said. (I was still drinking at the time.)
To accomplish this, I would unzip the costume head, tip it back a bit and shove my paw through the opening and down the alcohol.
Over the course of the next few hours, I must have downed 10 of those little cups, the equivalent of a pint bottle of hard whiskey and I was getting pretty buzzed. Now, when a kid approach me I would lean over them and in a drunken stupor and with slurred speech ask, “Would you like an ICEE?”
One kid ran screaming out the door.
“Mom! Mom! Thie ICEE Bear’s drunk!”
Things, of course, got worse. I was weaving and stumbling and openly flirting with the Black Velvet woman. At one point, I leaned too hard on a potato chip display and nearly knocked it over. Worse still, I was becoming nauseous due to the stale air and heat inside the bear’s head. I was afraid I might throw up in the suit. As the afternoon wore on, the store manager approached the two of us to say that things were slowing down and we might as well wrap up. It had been a very successful day for them, and he wanted the employees to start re-stocking for day two of the grand opening. I comically saluted him and The Black Velvet lady gathered up her little card table, tablecloth, empty whiskey bottles and leftover paper cups and headed back to the office with me stumbling behind.
Once we got into the office, the woman packed her stuff onto a little hand truck and I asked her if she could help me get the head of the costume. She lifted the collar of the suit that hid the plastic zipper holding the head in place and unzipped me. She helped lift the bear head and let out a gasp. Steam rose out of the suit. She asked if I was okay. I felt sick, but much better once the rush of cool air from the air conditioning hit me. I asked if she would help me with the rest of the suit, but the zipper underneath my sweater was stuck. I decided that as long as the head was off, I could wait outside until Mike came back. Just then, the manager came in with our checks.
“Whoa, where you going chief?”
“Uh, my friend is coming back to get me in a little bit. He doesn’t know we ended early, so I was just going to wait out on the curb and get some air.”
“You can’t go out there like that,” he said.
I froze. I thought he knew that I was drunk, but I figured that I could play it off as being stuck in the suit.
“I’m just a little woozy from being in this hot costume all day. The zipper’s stuck, but now that I have the head off, I think I’ll be okay.”
“Nah, nah, nah. That’s not what I’m talking about. You can’t go out there without a head. You’ll freak the little kids out.
“Well, can I wait in here?”
“Nah. I got too much to do,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “The head stays on. Got it? Or no check.”
I glanced over at the Black Velvet woman for support, but she was looking down at the floor uncomfortably. I put the head back on and zipped myself back into that stifling suit. The store manager shoved a check into my paw. He turned and handed a check to the woman.
“Nice job, sweetheart. Real nice. We sold lots of product.”
We both moved out into the parking lot and I found a newspaper machine on the end of the store walkway to plop myself on. The woman asked if I needed a ride somewhere, but I waved her off. My buzz was wearing off and I was able to breathe a little better now that I was sitting down. Mike would be here soon and I’d be able to get out of the suit. I thanked her and waved goodbye as she got into her little yellow Toyota Corolla and drove off.
I sat there looking a bit dejected, waving at the occasional passerby until Mike pulled up.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked.
I stood up and headed toward the car.
“Uh. Long story.”
I handed him the check.
“Mind if I lie down in the back seat until we can get somewhere where I can get this suit off? The manager won’t let me take it off until I am somewhere else.”
“Uh, sure. I guess so,” he said. “Are you drunk?”
I didn’t answer. I climbed into the back seat, rolled the window down on one side and laid onto the seat, my big bear feet hanging out of the window as we drove back to Albuquerque.
The ICEE Bear is the registered trademarked mascot for The ICEE Company, a division of J&J Snack Foods Corp.
Copyright 2026 by Jose Antonio Ponce