You've Been Using The Word Popsicle Wrong (But Should You Care?)

If you've ever said "I want a popsicle," you've apparently been a naughty, naughty rule-breaker. But haven't we all said that at some point on a hot summer day? Are we all somehow misinformed, wayward souls who can't get the name of a simple dessert right? According to Unilever, the company that owns Popsicle® (we'll get to that registered trademark in a moment), the answer is yes.

Let's start with a little bit of backstory. The frozen treat on a stick was actually invented by a child, Frank Epperson, but he didn't commercialize his creation until he'd reached adulthood. According to MentalFloss, he originally called his treat the Epsicle, a portmanteau of his surname and icicle. However, his children took to calling it "Pop's Sicle," which eventually became the official name.

Epperson patented his invention in 1924, but according to the National Archives, he quickly sold the rights to a group that established the Popsicle Corporation. This company eventually engaged in a fierce legal battle with the Good Humor brand, which had obtained a similar patent for ice cream bars on sticks (via NPR). The two companies faced off in multiple court cases for decades, but in 1989, the rivalry was put to bed when Unilever purchased the Popsicle Corporation and Good Humor, uniting them under one conglomerate. Per Merriam-Webster, Unilever now holds exclusive rights to the words Popsicle, Creamsicle, Fudgsicle, and Yosicle (yogurt-sicle), and they have some pretty ridiculous rules about how you can use them.

The Popsicle® website has a list of rules dictating how we should treat the "SICLE™ Trademark Family," and they go against everything we thought we knew about our favorite frozen treats. It starts with a standard legal disclaimer explaining that no other company has the right to use trademarked terms, but then it gets weird. Unilever has strict rules about how they want consumers to use their product names. The real shocker here is that Popsicle® isn't a noun, nor is Creamsicle®, Fudgsicle®, or Yosicle®. Their website also says that none of these terms should be used in the plural or possessive forms. But then, what are we supposed to call these frozen delights? The answer is hilariously weird.

According to Unilever, the proper term for the thing we all call a popsicle is "Popsicle® ice pop." We're not sure how you're supposed to pronounce the "®" but they're really strict about putting it in there. The website has examples of how to properly use their product names in a sentence, and we can't help but think they sound unnatural. For example, "It is not correct to say 'I'd like a Popsicle.' It is correct to say 'I'd like a Popsicle® ice pop.'" Also, it's apparently wrong to say "'I love Popsicles.' It's correct to say 'I love Popsicle® ice pops.'" But how serious are these rules, really? If you make your own popsicles, are you going to get in trouble?

At the end of its list of rules, the Popsicle® website leaves us with a painfully bad dad joke: "So now that you know the cold facts, do the cool thing and stay on the right side of the law." But are you really going to get in trouble for saying "I like popsicles"? Probably not. It should come as no surprise that people constantly break Unilever's rules regarding the use of Popsicle®. Heck, even the United States government misuses the term in the National Archives. If you search the internet, you're almost certainly going to find way more examples of people saying "popsicle" than "Popsicle® ice pop". You're only going to get in trouble if you sell your own products under that name.

In 2010, The Atlantic ran a story about a Brooklyn-based company called People's Pops, which made ice pops from locally-grown fruits and had a grand total of three employees. The brand originally launched as People's Popsicles before learning about the Unilever trademark, and while the word "popsicle" was dutifully removed from all branding and the website was renamed, the owners forgot to remove the word from their blog. Unilever subsequently threatened legal action. Lesson learned. If you're selling frozen stuff on a stick, keep the suffix "-sicle" far away from everything you touch. As for the rest of us, there's no reason to believe we'll get in trouble for using "popsicle" as a noun. Who says "ice pop" anyway?