Bad Humor Truck

This truck serves 31 flavors of TERROR AND CHAOS!

"SUCK my POPSICLE!"

— Decal on Skids'/Mudflap's ice-cream truck mode in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen

Ah, the ice cream truck. That all-American, summertime staple of childhood.

But what's this? The truck's driver is a Child Hater who's doing this as a front to sell drugs. Or maybe he's a child molester who can't keep his Mr. Softie in his pants. Or he's an uncaptured Serial Killer who's stashing the bodies away between the fudge pops and the Creamsicles. Worst of all, maybe he won't stop to sell the protagonists some ice cream. And his truck is either an Alleged Car (either played straight or exaggerated), redesigned from a paddy wagon or a discarded military vehicle, or looks as if it was featured on an episode of Pimp My Ride (Truth in Television: there really was an episode of Pimp My Ride in which an ice cream truck driver calls upon Xzibit and his ride-pimping crew to make his ride a cool one). And that happy, tinkly music somehow only adds to the creepiness.

For some reason, ice-cream truck drivers in fiction are hardly ever as wholesome as one might expect.

Sub-Trope of Creepy Stalker Van and Sweets of Temptation. May overlap with Monster Clown. The trope is named after the Good Humor ice cream company. Compare Sinister Car.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In one of the Red Rock Cider ads, Detective Drebin is manning an undercover police unit, cunningly disguised as an ice cream van called MR POLICEY.
  Customer: Give me a couple of cones.
  [Lt. Drebin hands him two traffic cones].

Anime & Manga

• In Fullmetal Alchemist, the "Funny Bear" ice cream truck shows up in Central to hand out ammunition, mortars, and other materials. The enemy forces radio each other to watch out for the ice cream truck, so Mustang's team repaints it as the "Funny Bear" hot dog truck.
• In the short story "Ice Cream Bus" from Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga Collection, the bus looks normal, and the driver is a typical handsome Bishōnen, but it lures children away and slowly transforms them into ice cream, which/who they eat as they transform into ice cream.

Comic Books

• In the Batman comics, Mr. Freeze has hijacked an ice cream truck on at least one occasion. Though he stole it mainly to survive, as he can only live in cold temperatures.
  • It's also used sometimes by The Joker.
  • The Batman '66 story "Mr. Freeze Breaks the Ice"/"Batman Doesn't Play Nice" has Mr. Freeze pose as an ice cream man to sell the citizens of Gotham devices called you-coolers during a heat wave as a front to manipulate the people into helping him freeze over Gotham City.
• The Books of Magic: Near the end of Peter Gross's run on the 1994 ongoing, the demon Barbatos dresses as an ice cream man and drives an ice cream truck.
• One of the minor villains from Chew had the ability to make ice cream, that would give anyone who ate it fatal brain freeze (meaning that it would literally encase said person's head in a block of ice). Naturally, he stole an ice cream truck in order to sell his ice cream to the unsuspecting civilians.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (IDW):
  • In issue #178, the Blue Ninjas launch an assault on Broca Beach. The head Blue Ninja masterminds the operation from a heavily armed ice cream truck that he uses to mow down Cobra forces.
  • Firefly detonates the home of Wade Collins while driving an ice cream truck in issue #215.
• Ice Cream Man follows a reality warping ice cream man who drives around in his truck spreading misery wherever he goes.
• In Secret Six, the villainous (albeit protagonist) Ragdoll once stole an ice cream truck for the gang to escape in. This van is full of not creamy treats, but dangerous mercenaries. And creamy treats.
  Bane: Scandal, you are allowed one ice-cream of your choice.
• Billy Kincaid, an early Spawn villain, is a pedophile and Serial Killer who uses an ice cream truck to get closer to children, whom he then kidnaps and murders. When he catches him, Spawn is shown as having brutally murdered Kincaid by stabbing him to death with Popsicle sticks and the other end of an ice cream scoop. As well as a whole two-stick popsicle.

Film — Animated

• Eetu ja Konna: One scene shows the American government agents trying to capture the titular characters riding a surveillance truck poorly disguised as an ice cream truck.
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie: Offers a variation, with Dr. Applecheek stealing an ice cream cart to be part of The Chase.

Film — Live-Action

• A Mister Whippy van also appears in 28 Weeks Later. The trope is teasingly hinted at and then averted.
  • It should be noted that Mr. Whippy is a real company, that operates in the UK as well as Australia and New Zealand.
• The beginning of Act of Valor has the Chechen terrorist Abu Shabal driving what looks like an ice cream truck in the Philippines to a school. Said ice cream truck turns out to be a suicide car bomb, which kills the US Ambassador, his son, and several Filipino schoolchildren.
• The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, features the Bad Humor Man (Steve Whitmire), who is the Trope Namer.
• After Hours: the only vehicle amongst the raging, lynch-happy crowd of SoHo New Yorkers chasing after Paul Hackett is Gail's "Mister Softee" truck, driven by what is probably the craziest member of the whole group (she's the one who made said angry lynching crowd hunt Hackett, after all, in an act of Disproportionate Retribution).
• Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) has a scene in which a violent street gang drives menacingly back and forth past a parked ice cream truck. After they've apparently moved on, a little girl comes up and buys a cone while her father is using a phone booth up the street. After she leaves, the gang ambushes the driver and knocks him unconscious; meanwhile, the little girl, unaware of all this and discovering that she was given the wrong flavor, returns to the truck... and gets shot and killed point-blank.
  • Not to mention that the ice cream vendor keeps a sizable revolver stashed in his cab. Presumably for self-defense, but you never know...
• In Borat, Borat and Azamat acquire an ice cream truck for transportation, and after some thought they also acquire an animal to guard the truck. So naturally there is a scene where a bunch of kids run up expecting ice cream, and instead find a black bear.
• In Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy, a radio personality is shaken from his post-breakup funk when he gets in the middle of a mob-grade territory war between rival ice-cream vendors (based on the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars — see 'Real Life').
• In Friday, Smokey owes weed money to the drug dealer Big Worm, who uses an ice cream truck as a cover-up. Big Worm takes one customer boy's money without giving his order saying he's closed and is incredibly rude to the kids in general.
  Big Worm: Whatchu want!?
  Kid: Whatcha got?
  Big Worm: Boy, what the fuck you want!?
  Kid: [sheepishly hangs head] ...Gimme some chili Fritos.
• Mr. Snowcone, in Freaks (2018), seems like a textbook case, hanging around outside of the house and showing an abnormal interest in Chloe. Henry encourages this myth, telling Chloe that ice cream trucks have freezers full of chopped-up little children. Early in the film, Mr. Snowcone does lure Chloe into his truck and drives off with her. He's her grandfather, and is trying to enlist her in the war against humanity.
• The two killers in Ghostland drive around in one.
• Detective Thorne's informant in Hellraiser: Inferno is a sleazy ex-con ice cream man who has covered the inside of his truck with pornographic images.
• Help!: The Eastern death cult tails Ringo in a "Yippee! It's Mister Whippy!" ice-cream van. As thugs exit from the truck, one is eating a cone.
• Ice Cream Man, a horror film starring Clint Howard as a killer ice cream man.
  • And there's also Mr. Ice Cream Man.
• The Iceman. "Mr Freezy" Pronge is a hitman who gets his nickname from this trope, including using the freezer to store bodies to confuse the time of death.
• Dr. Claw's henchmen Brick and McKible drive an ice-cream delivery truck in Inspector Gadget 2. Oddly enough, its trunk is large enough to accommodate Claw's escape jet.
• In Killjoy, the titular Monster Clown uses an ice cream truck that acts as a gateway to an Abandoned Warehouse.
• The heroes of Killer Klowns from Outer Space are "helped" by two idiots who "work" by driving an ice-cream truck.
• Kruel: Willie Cool drives an ice cream truck around town that looks quite clean and professional... he also abducted Elliot, and later Jo (after killing her boyfriend) and takes them into the woods so he can have them as his "family".
• Psychotic clown Javier in The Last Circus drives one.
• There's one in Legion. The truck's completely normal. The driver, however...
• Max Keeble's Big Move featured one of the antagonists as a rather maniacal ice cream driver who would love to torture the protagonist while on his newspaper route. He even modified his truck to have an ice cream cannon (at least in the opening dream sequence). His undying hatred of Max Keeble is because Max reported his Jerkass behavior to his superiors.
• The Stephen King-directed Maximum Overdrive includes a blood-smeared ice cream truck among the killer machines that menace its human characters. It can be seen patrolling the suburbs, and later getting its just desserts near the end.
• In Nice Dreams, Cheech and Chong have an ice cream truck named "Happy Herb's Nice Dreams". Take the words, "Ice Creams" and add an "N" in front and make "Creams" into "Dreams". Naturally, they sell marijuana from the truck, along with ice cream. How "wholesome" this is depends on your views.
• Once Bitten: Mark has an after-school job as an ice-cream truck driver—but when he's bitten by the centuries-old Countess, his partial transformation into a vampire terrifies all the children away from him.
• Prom Night III: The Last Kiss has Mary Lou Maloney appear as an ice cream vendor to a teacher, whom she kills with a pair of cones and an electric mixer.
• In Snapshot (1979), Angela gets stalked by her ex-boyfriend Daryl using an ice cream truck.
• The eponymous character in Some Guy Who Kills People works at an ice cream parlor.
• An ice cream truck is home to an illegal gun dealer in Southland Tales.
• Skids and Mudflap of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen take this trope one step further, as they actually are the ice cream truck (both of them). While they are Autobots (i.e., good guys), this doesn't stop them from being decidedly child-unfriendly, from yelling profanity-laced death threats through their bullhorn to posting offensive decals on their sides^note i.e. SUCK MY POPSICLE. It is, however, played for laughs.
• In Trees Lounge, Loser Protagonist Tommy is given the opportunity to drive his beloved Uncle Al's ice cream truck after the latter has a heart attack while making his rounds. However, the surly, slovenly drunkard Tommy fails to make a good impression with the neighborhood kids, who miss Uncle Al's friendly demeanor, and it's only after Tommy's teenage acquaintance Debbie drops in to assist on his rounds that business picks back up again. Unfortunately, this leads to a very inappropriate situation between Tommy and Debbie later on, and after hearing of this Debbie's enraged father takes a baseball bat to the truck, converting it into The Alleged Car.

Literature

• In the novel The Clairvoyant Countess by Dorothy Gilman there is a significant ice cream truck company run by a very scary bad guy.
• There's a Wallace Stevens poem called "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" that's sort of hard to interpret, but the first stanza is definitely talking about an ice cream man, and the second is definitely talking about a dead body. Whether the first is the cause of the second can't be determined, but it's all rather creepy. Critics seem to favor the theory that it's about the wake of the old lady who's lying dead in the second stanza. In which case, the partying in the first stanza might be seen as either life-affirming or callous.
  • Stephen King is apparently a big fan of this poem, by the way; it's quoted in his 'Salem's Lot as well as in Kingdom Hospital.
• Subverted in an Encyclopedia Brown story, where a clown who drove an ice cream truck disappeared along with a young boy and was accused of kidnapping him. Turned out they'd both been kidnapped.
• Speaking of Stephen King, while it's not exactly an ice cream truck a couple of his short stories("Morning Deliveries (Milkman No. 1)" and "Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman No. 2)") deal with a psychopathic milkman who plants poisonous spiders in his milk box, hands out all-purpose cream laced with highly corrosive acid and cartons of poisoned drinks, and was implied to have planted a bomb in one of his packages, which went off sometime prior to the events of the story. All the stuff he needs is in his milk truck.
  • The title character of Mr. Mercedes drives this as well, though apart from spying on the protagonist, he doesn't do anything too horrible while behind the wheel because it would be too easy to trace things back to him.
• Gahan Wilson wrote a short story called "Mr. Ice Cold", about the titular ice cream man who loves to give sweet treats to all of the children in the neighborhood. The story, which is told in the second person, has one child noticing that Mr. Ice Cold opens various doors in his truck to produce all of the cones and popsicles that kids order—but one door never opens up. Spurred by curiosity, the child can't resist sneaking a quick peek when Mr. Ice Cold is distracted... and discovers that it's full of the frozen corpses of other children. Mr. Ice Cold declares "Those are for me", and the story ends with the terrified child hearing the truck's jingle late one autumn night, knowing that they're going to be taken next.
• A variation on this is seen in the Philip K. Dick short story, "The Pre-Persons". 20 Minutes into the Future, abortion is not only legal, but children up to the age of twelve can be "aborted". Parents must get a license (known as a D-card, for "desirability") if they can afford one — or the kid gets picked up by the abortion truck, taken to the pound, and euthanized. Parents can also turn kids in if they don't want them anymore. The abortion truck cruises neighborhoods looking for "strays", playing tinkly ice-cream-truck music to lure them out.

Live-Action TV

• In a segment of 1000 Ways to Die, a drug dealer named Salvador uses an ice cream truck as a front to distribute drugs, but after escaping from an attempted holdup by a meth addict, Salvador takes a turn too fast, and the truck’s freezers suffer a freon leak that poisons him. Oh, and the truck crashes. The segment is named "Rocky Roadkill," and its nickname: "Ice Fiend Man."
• The villains of Ace Lightning use Duff Kent's ice cream truck to get around. They even use it to stalk and kidnap the protagonist.
• One of the specials for The Adventures of Pete & Pete, "What We Did On Our Summer Vacation", revolved around Mr. Tastee, an otherwise-amiable ice-cream man who always wore a mask in the shape of a grinning soft-serve cone and was hinted to have a shady past (it's implied he's local eccentric rich lady Mrs. van de Vere's ex-husband Leonard). In fact, the episode implies that the entire ice cream man profession, with its wandering routes and bright, happy masks, is actually an informal brotherhood for those seeking to escape and/or forget.
• Not involving an ice cream vendor per se, but in Season 2 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, disgraced lawyer Geoffrey Hoytsman — former boss of Sophia Perez, onetime girlfriend of Detective Jake Peralta, who busted him for cocaine use — kidnaps Peralta and keeps him in an ice cream truck.
  • Although Hoytsman mentions he got the truck from a former client whom he defended for, in his words, "a strangle-and-mangle".
• Subverted in one episode of Charmed (1998) featuring an ice cream truck that puts kids into a hypnotic trance with its music, then sucks them into a Pocket Dimension where a shadowy being called the Nothing devours them. Turns out that the ice cream man is a good guy, while the children are demons.
• The Drew Carey Show has an old ice cream truck being used to distribute Buzz Beer. Disappointing when kids find out they don't have any ice cream, and rude when they keep getting asked, but not actively evil.
• Freddy Krueger in Freddy's Nightmares had one for luring in kids stored in his power plant base.
• A Get Smart episode has a KAOS agent driving an ice-cream truck — he abducts Hymie the robot by asking him to reach way inside for a fudgesicle, then shoving him in. Hymie's first words when he's released — "Here's your fudgesicle."
• In an episode of Happy Days, Fonzie quits his vehicle-repair job and must find a new way to make a living. He tries driving an ice cream truck, but he hates it because "Whenever I got it up to speed, some kid started chasin' after me wavin' a dime!"
• The Hub series The Haunting Hour has the episode "Catching Cold." Marty, a Big Eater boy who loves ice cream especially, discovers a mysterious ice cream truck called "Kreamy Kold" that drives around his neighborhood at night playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" in a minor key. After being gifted a cone on his doorstep, he discovers that Kreamy Kold's treats are so incredibly delicious that all other ice cream tastes bad in comparison. Marty gradually becomes more and more obsessed with Kreamy Kold (in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of drug addiction), to the point where he lays out a spike strip just to catch the truck. When he finally does, though, he discovers that the vehicle needs a human soul to fuel it—a fact he learns from Jimmy Jeffries, the last kid in his neighborhood who got hooked on Kreamy Kold thirty years ago, and who has since grown into a fat, insane man who's been sealed inside the truck for all that time. The episode ends with Jimmy finally getting to leave and screaming "IT'S ALL YOU CAN EAT!" as a terrified Marty is locked inside the Kreamy Kold truck, which drives off into the night with its new captive...
• Charlie's uncle Jack from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is all but stated to be a child molester. He shows up to a school chess tournament driving an ice-cream truck in the episode "Frank vs. Russia," from which he spies on the kids.
• The short-lived '80s sitcom Jennifer Slept Here starred Ann Jillian as the title character, an old movie actress who had been run over by an ice cream truck and haunts her former home as a ghost.
• An episode of The King of Queens has Doug buy an ice cream truck only to be stalked by another truck driven by an unseen driver with snakeskin boots who tries to kill him at every opportunity. Eventually Doug sells the truck back to the original owner at a loss. We then see the owner talking to another prospective buyer while the camera zooms in on his boots...
• Law & Order:
  • In the original show, the pedophile celebrity in "Smoke" has an assistant drive an ice cream truck to playgrounds; he hides inside to scout out potential "playmates".
  • In an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent the victim of the week is living in an ice cream truck, and using it as a base to sell bootleg DVDs.
• Yet another drug-dealing ice cream truck in "Find Your Happy Place" episode of Life. Crews' take-down isn't perfectly smooth:
  Perp: [from gurney] You didn't say three! You didn't even get to three! You shot me on two! You didn't get to three....
  Reese He's right, you know — you didn't get to three.
  Crews: I rounded up.
• In the second episode of the original Life On Mars, Sam Tyler drives a witness incognito in an ice cream truck, hoping to spot a suspect. Some little girls run up asking for ice cream, only to be confronted by Gene Hunt scoffing down a cone and Flipping the Bird, causing the girls to break down in tears.
• One episode of Malcolm in the Middle featured a cranky, sadistic ice cream man who refused to sell any ice cream to the kids despite all of them being stuck for hours on a blocked road in the desert... yet let the kids watch him eat an ice cream bar inside the refrigerated truck.
• The Masters of Horror episode "We All Scream for Ice Cream" is about a demonic, undead clown who works in an ice cream truck. His method is to sell ice cream to children, who then cause their parents to melt into a colored mess not unlike that of melted ice cream as soon as they bite into it.
• The M.I. High episode "Animal Spies" had a SKUL agent basing himself out of an ice cream truck.
• The NCIS episode "Judge, Jury..." involves Team Gibbs bringing a killer to trial — a killer who, twenty years earlier, poisoned several children with treats from his truck, one of whom died. Unfortunately, the killer gets Off on a Technicality — and then falls victim to a Vigilante Execution.
• Shameless (UK): the Maguires use an ice cream van as a front for dealing drugs and give Frank a job on it. ("If someone asks for a smartie... give them a pill. If someone asks for a polo... give them a pill.") Backfires somewhat when Frank takes some himself and ends up giving pills to an old woman who wanted some actual smarties.
• The Tales from the Crypt episode "People Who Live in Brass Hearses" features an ex-con trying to get revenge on an ice cream truck driver who, unbeknownst to the ex-con and his brother, is actually a pair of Conjoined Twins joined at the back. By the end, one twin has been murdered, and the other continues to drive around in the truck with his dead, decaying twin still attached.
• One of the grotesque characters devised by Peter Kay for his mockumentary series That Peter Kay Thing was an ice-cream man in Chorley, Lancashire, who is clearly in the wrong job and clearly hates children. The show focused on his failing business, and his eventual desperate resort to using the ice cream van as a front to sell untaxed, illegally imported, booze, cigarettes, and video porn cassettes. This works until one day, the police turn up and raid the van.
• Tosh.0: In this music video, Tosh plays an ice cream truck driver who drives recklessly even before he starts drinking.
• A Touch of Frost: Detective Inspector Frost once caught someone using an ice cream van as a front for dealing drugs while investigating a totally unrelated case, tipped off by the fact a legitimate ice cream vendor he was questioning as a possible witness was angry about the new guy undercutting him. The ice-cream man returns the favour by stopping the perpetrator of the other case Jack is working from escaping the cops by ramming their stolen car with his van.
• In Van-Pires, an innocent-looking ice cream truck is actually an evil vampire vehicle. Er, It Makes Sense in Context.

Music

• From "The Winker's Album (Misprint)" by Ivor Biggun:
  Mr Fellatio, the ice cream man
  Goes jingle jangle int' ice cream van
  Mr Fellatio... all the children say... "Hell-o!"
  To Mr Fellatio, the ice... cream... maaaaan.
• The music video for "Loco" by Coal Chamber features an evil ice cream man. Throughout the video, he subjects the band to a "A Clockwork Orange" style torture via a child's viewfinder toy. This same ice cream man also appears on the album's artwork.
• In the 1940s, the Kay Kaiser Orchestra recorded a song called "The Bad Humor Man".
• Tom Lehrer:
  • Although this one doesn't operate out of a truck, "My Hometown" includes a sinister (if cheerful) ice cream vendor:
    I remember Dan, the druggist on the corner, 'e
    Was never mean or ornery,
    He was swell.
    He killed his mother-in-law and ground her up real well,
    And sprinkled just a bit
    Over each banana split.
  • See also "The Old Dope Peddler", who is presented as a Friend to All Children while selling drugs to them in a similar fashion to an ice cream salesman.
• In the storybook that goes along with the Melanie Martinez Concept Album Cry Baby, Cry Baby is kidnapped by a wolf who is also an ice cream man (in the song "Tag, You're It"). Who she later kills ("Milk and Cookies").
• Professor Elemental's "Animal Ice Cream", about selling your favorite ice cream mixed with bits of your favorite animal, from the back of a stolen ice cream truck.
• The Rutles' song "Doubleback Alley" has a line about "the funny man in the ice cream van who talked so queer..."
• The song "Ice Cream Man", by Sloppy Seconds, is about an ice cream man who disregards the speed limit whenever he drives, has his truck play Mötley Crüe due to hating the standard ice cream truck music, admits to the children being scared of him and implies that he had just been released from prison (while not explaining what he did that resulted in his incarceration in the first place).
• Strapping Young Lad's secret song from their album Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, "Satan's Ice Cream Truck" about Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The song was actualized into a real demonic ice cream truck by a fan of the band from Minnesota. The truck is referred to as Hell General. General because it is made from an AM General postal truck and Hell because of where it supposedly comes from.
• Steve Taylor's "I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good" is about an ice cream truck driver who bombs an abortion clinic not because he's necessarily opposed to abortion but because "if we run out of youngsters, I'll be out of a job." Contrary to some misunderstandings, Taylor does not support this point of view, and was intending to mock and vilify it ("Ain't nothing wrong with this country that a few plastic explosives won't cure!")

Newspaper Comics

• The Far Side plays with this several times.
  • I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus!
  • There's another strip with the self-explanatory Liver-And-Onions Truck. And kids are hiding from the truck, implying they'll get the treats whether they like it or not.
  • There's also the "Vaccination Van", and the van's driver is actually hoping that kids mistake him for the usual ice cream truck.
  • Another time, a starving man wandering a desert encounters a hilariously out-of-place ice cream truck, only for the driver to inform him he's sold out.
• Monty tries a job as an ice-cream truck driver, but terrifies kids when he unwittingly wears melted cherry popsicle stains all over his white suit.
• A Pearls Before Swine comic has Pig getting hit by an ice cream truck.
• Gahan Wilson has an ice cream man opening the compartment to reveal a truckful of frozen child corpses. "Wrong door!"

Puppet Shows

• Episode 3085 of Sesame Street has an ice cream company called "Bad Humor", run by grouches. They sell ice cream flavors that appeal exclusively to grouches, such as chocolate pickle and spinach vanilla crunch, and will not stop ringing their bells until someone buys their ice cream.

Stand-Up Comedy

• Tim Minchin did a routine on the jingles of ice cream vans, referring to them as "the mating call of the kiddy fiddler".
  Tim Minchin: Sorry, sorry, that's totally inappropriate. It's awful what I just did there when you think about it; I just made the assumption that having an ice cream van makes you a pedophile. It's awful... It's probably the other way around.
• Eddie Murphy had his own routine about the ice cream man:
  And the ice cream man always drove an extra block! And I know he seen us! He probably had a friend in the truck and was telling him, "Watch how fast I make these little motherfuckers run." Vrooom!

Tabletop Games

• Villains & Vigilantes had an early villain compendium ^note  Opponents Unlimited that included a villain who drives an ice cream truck loaded up with weapons. It's a lure, you see, to kidnap kids so he can sell them to organ harvesters.

Toys

• LEGO
  • "The Tumbler: Joker's Ice Cream Surprise" set features an "Uncle Joker Icecream Surprise" truck. Not only are the popsicles that come with the set a sickly transparent green, but flicking the the giant ice cream cone model on the roof activates a cannon that launches a torpedo out of the back of the truck. Surprise indeed.
  • The titular vehicle in "Ice Cream Truck Police Chase" from LEGO City features all sorts of tools for the city's collection of highly-visible crooks, who in this set are decked out in ice cream cone costumes (interestingly, they invert Pink Girl, Blue Boy.) In addition to providing convenient storage for burglary tools, it also has a hook for smash and grabs, and the cone opens up to reveal a cannon that launches some sort of goop.

Trading Cards

• The 1980s Topps Weird Wheels series, a collection dedicated to creepy and monstrous vehicles, has an evil ice cream truck literally called "Bad Humor Truck".

Video Games

• In the flash game Cream Wolf, the Ice Cream Truck driver is actually a Werewolf who's fattening kids up so that he can bait them back to his place when the full moon arrives and proceed to "Make new flavors" out of them. It's even complete with a creepy jingle at midnight.
• The intro page for the web game Free Icecream features the Player Character and her friend being lured toward a dirty-looking ice cream truck with "Free Icecrem" sloppily painted on the side.
• Grand Theft Auto III has a mission by El Burro called "I Scream, You Scream", which the protagonist must park a Mr. Whoopee ice cream truck with a bomb inside (and the 'jeengle-jeengle music turned on) near a group of rival gang members, then run away and blow it up.
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has a campaign where it turns out the ice cream factory is owned by a nasty old woman who hates children, who only uses ice cream as a front for her cocaine trafficking operations, and the ice cream trucks sell drugs instead. When you actually get the factory and ice cream truck, both of them are horribly glitched and unusable (saving at the factory corrupts your save file), so really it's the factory and truck that are at fault. Taking one of the ice cream trucks to another business you own, a car dealership/chop shop, helps complete the main storyline. "We need you to steal...um....take...we need an ice cream truck, okay?" It's also impossible to sell ice cream to kids, even if you wanted to, considering there are no kids in the game.
  • It's entirely possible to run people over with the truck...but that's possible with all vehicles.
  • Bonus: A secondary mission ends with the player murdering about a dozen mysterious people on the rooftop of the ice cream business based on an intercepted call.
• The mobile game series Ice Scream centers around an evil ice cream man named Rod, who lures children into his van and uses them to make ice cream.
• The Butcher, a boss in My Friend Pedro, chases you in an evil hotdog truck.
• Spite's victory music in the digital version of Sentinels of the Multiverse is a twisted ice cream truck jingle. It's already creepy enough without the cultish chanting added in his Agent of Gloom variant. It's even called Spite's Ice Cream Delivery.
• One of the enemies in ToeJam & Earl is a phantom ice cream truck that randomly appears and disappears and tries to run down our alien heroes.
• Needles Kane from the Twisted Metal series (who in the most recent version, was a regular ice cream man before he turned evil) drives Sweet Tooth, perhaps the most famous video game example of this...except his truck serves up missiles and other assorted armaments. He still hands out tasty kid's treats from it, just be prepared for the explosives and napalm packs in the cones and ice cream sandwiches.
• In Watch_Dogs, several regular ice cream trucks are located and driven around Chicago, while one mission starts with Jordi Chin asking Aiden to use the new IED's to blow up the ice cream truck he hijacked and hid corpses in after a Noodle Incident on the highway.

Webcomics

• Butch in Chopping Block once tried to do this, only to learn that you should probably turn the music off after you kill the driver.

Web Originals

• Bubs's Baloney Sammich Truck from Homestar Runner is a downplayed example, as none of the locals seem disappointed with his bland offerings. Nor was he disappointed when his attempt at selling them at "the beach" resulted in zero sales. (This was, by the way, before food trucks became a thing.)
• This page at I Can Has Cheeseburger shows a bear poking out of the ice cream truck's window while yelling "You'll get sprinkles and you will like it".
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-490 is an ice cream truck that operates by itself between 2 to 5 AM local time to lure in people with the jingle it produces to the back of the truck. After this event is over, the freezer is observed to be stocked with frozen treats made of human blood and flesh, sold as a "Super Surprise Flavor!"
  • SCP-1386 becomes hostile if potential customers don't appear sufficiently happy and cheerful, and downright violent if they try to get out of paying full price. Otherwise, it's a regular ice cream truck, aside from the fact that it is apparently sapient.
• StickDeath had one video where a man trying to sleep confronts a rude ice cream man who refuses to cease blaring his truck's loud music and flips the guy off in response to his attempts at retribution.
• The web animated short film Who's Hungry? has a cannibalistic serial killer who lures children with his ice cream truck.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: Alien hunter Mr. X and his assistant Jenny work out of a high-tech van disguised as an ice-cream truck. When children attempt to buy ice cream, Mr. X cruelly taunts them by eating what he claims is the last popsicle right in front of them.
• Cars: The first opponent Tormentor (Mater's monster truck wrestler alter ego) had to face in Monster Truck Mater is a modified ice cream monster truck named Ice Screamer.
• Codename: Kids Next Door had an entire organization of ice cream men that were keeping all the ice cream for the adults. Throughout the series, these ice cream men were often used as Mooks for various villains.
• Cow and Chicken: The "I Scream" Man (aka I.B Red Guy) hates both ice cream and kids, and only took the job because he misunderstood the title as "I Scream, Man", because screaming is his hobby. He ends up getting arrested and hauled off to a Bedlam House for his creepy behavior.
• In an episode of Dexter's Laboratory, the ice cream truck always drives away when Dexter comes. After Dexter goes to extreme measures to catch it, he finds out the driver has a grudge against Dexter because he once paid him with a heavy jar of pennies which caused him to trip and break his tooth which in turn made him lose his apartment, his car, his girlfriend and forced him to live under a bridge, effectively causing his entire life to be ruined.
  Ice Cream Man: I can't even eat ice cream anymore because of the pain! All because of you and your stupid pennies!!!
• The Fairly OddParents! has recurring antagonist Mr. Crocker (Timmy Turner's teacher who frequently gives him Fs just because he can and is obsessed with proving the existence of Timmy's fairy godparents) frequently drive a van which is often disguised as an ice cream truck.
• Hinted at on Family Guy; local pedophile Herbert wanted an ice cream truck and is shown driving one in "And Then There Were Fewer". In "Infernal Affairs", after Ernie the Giant Chicken steals his ice cream truck, he screams, "You bastard!".
• When Boog is behind the wheel of the Frosty Bus, there's no chance for Fanboy and Chum Chum to get their Frosty Freezy Freeze.
• In one episode of Generator Rex, the villain Gatlocke has a fleet of vehicles, including an ice cream truck that's been given the Mad Max treatment.
• Deconstructed in Hey Arnold! with an ice cream man named "The Jolly Olly Man" (voiced by Dan Castellaneta, using a voice that sounds like a mix between his normal voice and a bitter, insane take on Arnie Pie [the helicopter news reporter who hates Kent Brockman]) who hated the kids he served. In one episode, he was nearly fired because his attitude was hurting sales. In another episode, he tried charging kids $20 for ice cream during a heatwave; his offer to sell rum raisin for ten dollars resulted in a mob of kids trying to turn over his truck.
• An early episode of Invader Zim featured an ice cream truck that blared ominous-sounding propaganda from its speakers.
  YOU LIKE ICE CWEAM. YOU LIKE ICE CWEAM. YOU LOVE IT. YOU CANNOT RESIST ICE CWEAM. TO RESIST IS HOPELESS. YOUR EXISTENCE IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT ICE CWEAM.
• An episode of Justice League features a man in an ice cream truck prominently, and he does have a dark secret, although this example is more like the Charmed subversion listed above. By the end, we learn he's been driving that truck for 40 years, give or take a few days and is glad to finally escape!
• One episode of Kim Possible set in Florida had Drakken staking out in an ice cream truck with the intent of tapping into the MP3 players of all the teenagers on Spring Break, making them his mind-controlled slaves. (He got the frequency wrong and ended up tapping into the hearing aids of all the retirees living there.)
  • It verges on Cut Lex Luthor a Check when Drakken notes how profitable the ice cream sales are - though still not enough to dissuade him from the mind-control scheme. He is, however, anguished when Shego throws out their entire stock to bait a horde of children into blocking Kim's pursuit.
• Looney Tunes
  • In "Yankee Doodle Bugs", an ice cream truck shows up during the Continental Army's winter encampment at Valley Forge. The irked soldiers promptly shoot it full of holes.
  • Bugs Bunny Nips The Nips has Bugs in an ice cream truck selling ice cream bars loaded with hand grenades to Japanese soldiers.
• In an episode of The Mighty B!, there's one of these: the driver gets pissed off at Bessie because she reports him to his manager (just because he accidentally ran ONE stop sign in ten years of driving the truck).
  • In Bessie's defense, she thought she was calling the actual driver; she didn't know it was the phone number of his manager's office.
• Moral Orel has Mr. Creepler, a pedophile and serial rapist who also happens to be the local ice cream man. By season 3 however, it's stated that he died in prison, though he's left some lasting trauma on one of his victims.
• An ice cream truck in the first episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot refuses to stop for Tuck, so Jenny uses a giant magnet to pull it back.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • The Scooby-Doo Show episode "The Ghost of the Bad Humor Man" featured an armored vehicle painted to act as an ice cream truck driven by wanted criminals.
  • In the Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! episode "High Society Scooby", Agents 1 and 2 drive an ice cream truck to lure Scooby and Shaggy into a trap.
• The Simpsons episode "Bart of Darkness" opens with Springfield suffering a blistering heatwave. An ice cream truck comes down the street with the driver shouting, "Ice cream! Ice cream!" ...but, when the children run up to it, they hear his entire sentence: "I'm all outta ice cream!" And then, right after that comes another, similar truck:
  Truck driver: Chili! Red-hot Texas-style chili! And we got ginger ale; boiling hot Texas-style ginger ale!
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V," Mermaid Man orders a prune ice cream cone with bran sprinkles from a passing truck. Unfortunately, since the truck is driven by the Dirty Bubble, Man-Ray, and his ex-sidekick Barnacle Boy, the ice cream cone in question has a lit fuse, which he fails to notice before he eats it.
  Mermaid Man: Goes right through me every time...
• A common gag in most of the Tex Avery cartoons would show the bad guy apparently holding up an armored car/stagecoach (or whatever was period-appropriate) only for the camera to pull back and show he's actually robbing an ice cream truck.
• The Tom and Jerry movie has one of the villains steal an ice cream cart and use it as his vehicle in the finale. There's even a shot from the cart's point of view of him stalking towards it with an evil grin on his face.
• The T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "Pup Goes the Weasel" has the Weasel drive an ice cream truck as one of his attempts at luring Dudley and Snaptrap out of hiding so he can kill them.
• The Wacky Races (2017) episode "Unraceable" has Dick Dastardly banned from participating in the Wacky Races and forced to try different jobs. One of the jobs he tries is ice cream man, which he gets fired from because he only gives the children broccoli-flavored ice cream and he lets the ice cream cones get covered in dirt before giving them to the children.

Other

• In Glasgow in The '80s, there were turf wars between rival criminal gangs selling drugs and stolen goods out of ice cream vans.

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