Seven years ago, Jonny Trunk entered the house of a hoarder in Stockport that was bursting at the seams with a goldmine of British ephemera from the last half century. “You couldn’t get into the house,” recalls Trunk, who is an avid pop culture collector, as well as a writer, DJ, broadcaster and record-label owner. “It was full of all this stuff he had collected indiscriminately.”
Growing up in an orphanage in Surrey, John Townsend began collecting milk bottle tops and by the 1950s had amassed a huge collection of cigarette and tobacco cards. He then simply continued at full speed. “He never stopped collecting ephemera,” says Trunk. “If it was a printed piece of paper with something on it, he’d have it.” Townsend died in 2016, leaving every inch of his five-bedroom house, as well as the caravan and summerhouse, bursting with fizzy drinks cans, sweet wrappers, crisp packets, cereal boxes, flyers, cigarette cards and countless other items.
Trunk was given access to the collection – some of which featured in his 2020 book, Wrappers Delight – and he has now focused on one particular area from this vast haul for a new book: Fancy an Ice Cream? A Collection of Vintage Ice Lolly Wrappers. He bolstered this with his own personal collection. When Trunk posted some on Instagram in May, the rush of responses suggested there was a book in this. When he then announced one, film director Edgar Wright declared: “This is my dream book!”
Over 96 pages, it’s an eye-popping collection of nostalgia-inducing icy delights from roughly 1970-80. There are familiar names such as Feast, Fab, Mini Milk, Nobbly Bobbly, Cider Lollies and Lemonade Sparkle, alongside long-forgotten designs that were specific to the era, featuring everything from Kevin Keegan football lollies to Star Wars, Dr Who’s Daleks and Fonzie from Happy Days. “Read about my fight against evil on the back of this pack,” reads one cartoon strip for Captain Rainbow’s lemonade and strawberry or banana lolly, complete with a chocolate dip base. One rock’n’roll themed ice lolly bears a wonky image of Elvis and features an Elton John trivia game on the wrapper.
They clearly resonate with people. Trunk, who is 60, also sells prints, of everything from Lord Toffingham toffee ice creams to Lolly Gobble Choc Bomb, and gets requests from as far away as Las Vegas. “Some people now look at them from a design point of view,” he says, “because you’re seeing weird colours that don’t normally come together. And you see graphic styles that are now a bit lost. But it’s probably 75% nostalgia.”
Trunk reckons it taps into a very particular period of childhood for a certain generation. “The peak period for these is around 1972-75,” he says. “That’s when a lot of those classics originated. And it was a grim time, wasn’t it? But summer in England was always a brilliant time and these wrappers are symbolic of that joy. They reflect that throwaway happiness of getting an ice-cream. Because when I was growing up, it was a real treat. We were lucky if we got one. I used to have to beg for 5p to get a Fizz Bang.”
Trunk says it’s something of a miracle that a book like this could even exist, since 1970s ice lolly wrappers are far from durable. “They’re wax paper,” he explains. “And the other thing you’re dealing with, which makes them even more fragile, is they’re wet. So you’ve got wet paper. It’s also something you tear off, so they usually get destroyed.” All of which makes this collection a real one-off. “This stuff is so unbelievably, stupidly rare,” he says. “You’ve got no idea how rare an ice lolly wrapper from 1974 is. It’s ridiculous. Also, a lot of these only came out for a single season.”
Within a niche community, wrappers can exchange hands for £30 to £150 each. However, there is one that has eluded him and he’s now in a perpetual hunt for it: Walls’ Midnight Mint – a brown choc ice wrapper with an owl on it. “I’ve never seen one of those in however many years of collecting this stuff,” he says. “That would be the Holy Grail.”
Given the scarcity of these wrappers and the lack of information about them, tracing down their designers is a problem. “It’s impossible,” says Trunk. “Unless someone comes out of the woodwork after this book and goes, ‘Oh, my mum did the drawing for the Fab lolly.’ None of it is ever credited. These places don’t keep archives. They were in-house designers and it was throwaway. Who was interested? This stuff was never seen as worth documenting properly. It’s such a shame.”
● Fancy an Ice Cream? A Collection of Vintage Ice Lolly Wrappers is out now and available via Trunk Records.
