This Ben & Jerry's Flavor Was Only Available During The 1987 Stock Market Crash
No joke: There is an ice cream flavor graveyard behind Ben & Jerry's factory headquarters in Waterbury, Vermont. According to Insider, the physical cemetery is an offshoot of the original digital graveyard that was featured on Ben & Jerry's website, and today is home to 40 gravestones marking the discontinuation (or "deaths") of now-retired flavors. Each tombstone features a mini epitaph celebrating the lives of the "dearly de-pinted" (via Ben & Jerry's website).
Ben & Jerry's has come up with some classic and wildly popular flavors, such as Cherry Garcia, Phish Food, Chunky Monkey, and Half Baked. The creative duo is constantly coming up with new, innovative flavors, but not every flavor makes the cut or is successful in the market. Ben & Jerry's Flavor Guru Eric Fredette wrote about the phenomenon in a press release.
"Ben & Jerry's is known for outrageous, chunky, funky flavors," Fredette stated (via Insider). "But experimentation comes with risk, not everybody likes our edgier ideas. Like everything else, ice cream flavors have a beginning and an end."
Free ice cream scoops were served during the defeat of Wall Street
If there's one flavor in Ben & Jerry's flavor graveyard with an interesting history, it's the one called Economic Crunch, a vanilla ice cream with chocolate covered almonds, pecans, and walnuts. Economic Crunch's tombstone is marked simply "1987" as the flavor was only served that year during the stock market crash. In fact, shortly after the stock market crashed that year, Ben & Jerry sent a truck to Wall Street where they handed out scoops of Economic Crunch to distraught bankers and investors in an attempt to cheer them up, well, cheer them up as much as they could under the circumstances. The scoopers were diligent; the truck was illegally parked, and the NYPD was on them to move it. Instead of leaving, they simply drove around the block, returning only to park in the same spot and get right back to serving ice cream (via Mental Floss).
According to Ben & Jerry's website, Economic Crunch's tombstone has an epitaph that reads:
"A delightful mash
This flavor we remember
For the stock market crash
On the sixth of November"
Sounds like the scoops of Economic Crunch were a welcome treat on a not-so-sweet day.