Cookie Puss

An Original Cookie Puss cake 2008

A personalized Cookie Puss with the message "Happy Birthday Bibby" on it

Cookie Puss is an ice cream cake character created by Carvel in the 1970s as an expansion of its line of freshly made products sold only in its stores, along with Hug-Me Bear and Fudgie the Whale. According to Carvel lore, Cookie Puss is a space alien (his original name was "Celestial Person" and his initials, "C.P.", later came to stand for "Cookie Puss") who was born on planet Birthday. In his television commercials, Cookie Puss has the ability to fly, though he requires a saucer-shaped spacecraft for interplanetary travel. During the 1980s Cookie Puss was repurposed to serve as a cake for St Patrick's Day, dubbed "Cookie O'Puss".

In Media

Cookie Puss was a frequent topic used for comic effect on The Howard Stern Show.^[1] Typically, the cast of the show would torment Fred Norris for having purchased Cookie Puss as a gift for his mother on Mother's Day. Howard Stern would use voice enhancements to impersonate the voice of Cookie Puss from the Carvel commercials, often excusing his inappropriate comments because he could "speak his mind, now that Tom Carvel is dead." These bits are still heard in Sirius Radio replays to this day.

Cookie Puss was the focus of the Beastie Boys song "Cooky Puss".^[2]

Cookie Puss's appearance

Since its introduction in 1972, the Cookie Puss design developed by Carvel corporate chef Andrew Bianchi has evolved into the version we know today. The initial design introduced the general pear shape of the cake, but all ornamentation was frosting applied by the stores. The first effort to achieve a consistent look was a face printed on a large cookie wafer using edible inks. A group of franchisees led by Liam Gray of Schenectady, NY rallied against the corporate requirement for stores to purchase the pre-printed wafers. Mr. Gray created a new variation using items already stocked in Carvel shops - sugar cones and Flying Saucer ice cream sandwiches. The other franchisees in the (now defunct) North East Carvel Franchisee Group followed suit, and by May 1974, the Carvel corporation had adopted this as the official design of the Cookie Puss product.^[3]

See also

• Fudgie the Whale
• Carvel
• Ice cream

External links

• Carvel.com

Notes

1. ^ Howard Stern and Cookie Puss
2. ^ Beastie Boys - Cooky Puss
3. ^ NY Times article on the history of Carvel