2026 looks certain to be a record year for ice cream sales in the UK. But among all the different delights enjoyed this summer, I’d like to focus on just one: the Mars Bar Ice Cream. Because in its own small way, the Mars Bar Ice Cream changed the world.
Food scientists had always considered it impossible to make. In order to keep the ice cream cold, they argued, the chocolate and caramel would have to be tooth-breakingly hard. And that was the end of the matter.
Except it wasn’t.
Thanks to the ingenuity of a British inventor named Dan Jacoby, the “experts” were proved spectacularly wrong.
Jacoby has often been portrayed as some sort of eccentric Willy Wonka figure, conducting mad experiments in his kitchen but that’s only half-true.
He was a quietly determined food technologist, employed by Mars in Research & Development, who became obsessed with creating a Mars Bar Ice Cream. Nobody would let him pursue his obsession at work so instead, he pursued it at home.
Jacoby wanted his invention enrobed in real milk chocolate, not that thin, brittle faux-chocolate that coated the common choc ice. He also needed the caramel to sit happily on the ice cream in the same way that the caramel sat on the nougat of an ordinary Mars Bar. He carried out these home experiments over many years, carefully manipulating the delicate consistencies and behaviour of chocolate, caramel and ice cream until one day, got them all to behave together perfectly.
On sampling his final and triumphant concoction, Jacoby’s bosses had no choice but to admit he was right and then devise a whole new manufacturing process to bring the Mars Bar Ice Cream to the people.
Launched in 1989, it was an instant sensation. As were the Snickers and Bounty Ice Creams with which Dan Jacoby later repeated the magic.
Though the importance of the Mars Bar ice cream goes way beyond being a brilliant invention and a delectable confection. Before it appeared, newsagents’ ice cream freezers and their contents were supplied by either Walls or Lyons Maid. If Walls supplied the freezer, the shop could only sell Walls Ice Cream, and Lyons Maid enforced the same policy.
Mars Bar Ice Creams weren’t made by either of them but all shops, regardless of their allegiance, wanted them them in their freezers, so at a stroke, Mars Bar Ice Creams broke the Walls/Lyons Maid duopoly.
Even more significantly, it was the first example of a household brand very famous for producing one thing in one sector, suddenly producing something quite different in another. Before long, we had Aero Mousse, Tesco credit cards and British Gas supplying electricity.
So many brands have since “extended” that we no longer notice, though the ultimate example would be Amazon. Not too long ago, they were just an online bookstore but they're now - among other things - a multi-billion dollar movie studio, about to produce the new James Bond film.
But without the persistence of Dan Jacoby, would have had the omnipotence of Jeff Bezos? Who knows?
But while the summer remains glorious, I’m going to enjoy a Mars Bar Ice Cream in honour of its late, great inventor and what he inadvertently achieved.
Apparently you can get them on Amazon.
And you can pay with a Tesco credit card.
