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You know it’s coming before you see it thanks to the ice cream truck’s pervasive, niggling, and occasionally blaring music. The songs differ from truck to truck, brand to brand, vendor to vendor, but they all have the same high-pitched, tinny qualities that can somehow make an ice cream truck half-a-mile away sound like it’s right in front of you.

For some, ice cream truck music can be nostalgic, reminding one of childhoods spent playing in the park. For others, it can have an almost pavlovian appeal, enticing one to hand over whatever cash they have to buy a Creamsicle or a Choco-Taco, despite dieting or having just eaten. A harbinger of warm weather, ice cream truck music is also an unofficial indicator that winter is over and that summer, with all of its indulgences and freedoms, is right around the corner.

In some ways, ice cream trucks were the predecessors to modern-day food trucks, replacing sweet, melty confections with actual cooked, fried, and sautéed vittles. Instead of filling their small spaces with freezers, food trucks introduced built-in kitchens and ditched the tell-tale ditties ice cream trucks use to announce their presence. There are no doubt many people who are grateful for that last omission in food trucks’ designs.

Before ice cream truck music became as ubiquitous as it is now, it was seen as a novel approach to improving ice cream sales, with many early vendors using the chiming of bells to lure hungry children curbside. According to Daniel Neely, an ethnomusicologist and author of the book Soft Serve: Charting the Aural Promise of Ice Cream Truck Music, actual tunes weren’t introduced to the business until 1929. An ice cream vendor in California strapped an amplified music box to the roof of his truck, choosing a Polish folk song called “The Farm Pump” to blare on repeat. It worked like a charm, marking the beginning of a long and annoying tradition of playing loud, old-fashioned songs that are generally not protected by copyright to woo children outdoors.

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