Superman Ice Cream – Our Stories

Oregon! Growing up, the very concept of Oregon would have been completely foreign to me but for one special computer-based experience almost as nostalgic as Superman Ice Cream itself. The state and the game are so interconnected in my mind, I actually referred to a list of wagon-related idioms to craft the title of this post.

Honestly, I couldn’t even pronounce the word Oregon correctly for most of my life – I had never met anyone from there. Kids tend to say things the way their parents say things. So it was Or-a-gon. Ending like polygon, paragon, or loosely rhyming with pteranadon.

I was only made aware of this lead a few days ago, when a staff writer at a paper in North Dakota made a thoughtful mention to the Ice Cream of Steel in a piece about the on-set of spring time. Following up on that Google Alert (the lifeblood of this publication other than you, dear reader), I wrote him and he reported to me that, in fact, North Dakotans don’t know no Superman Ice Cream. But he fondly recalled it from living in other places.

He said he first tried Superman Ice Cream in West Virginia. That made sense to me. Since this is a blog about obscure subject matter, it might be appropriate to mention that West Virginia–for those of you who have never heard of it–is a suburb of Pittsburgh and also a place people from Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina tend to drive through.

I’ve seen Superman Ice Cream in many of these places, so it would be logical to conclude it is also in West Virginia somewhere (maybe at a slot house or a gas station next to the deer jerky).

But then he wrote that he had also seen it in his last home state of Oregon. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a revelation that strikes at one of the cardinal premises of the Superman Ice Cream legend. It might even be a heretical statement to some, since nobody outside of a certain part of the country is supposed to know about Superman Ice Cream.

But this gentleman was correct, and I have the first of what I hope will be many pieces of evidence to prove it.

Who would have thought that at the end of the Oregon Trail, after all those rivers forded, broken axles and bouts of typhoid, we would find Superman Ice Cream? Truly, it was worth the struggle.

So here’s the catch. There’s a donut shop called Sesame Donuts in Southwest Portland. A reviewer on Yelp said they also sold ice cream, and even had Superman Ice Cream under the moniker “Sooper Hero”.

A quick search yields that Perry’s Ice Cream of New York has their own flavor called “Super Hero” which promises to “rescue your taste buds from the dull and boring with cherry bubblegum, lemon and blue raspberry ice cream.” So, as much as this sounds awful familiar, this all presents questions about what is and isn’t legitimately part of the Superman Ice Cream canon. But we’ll handle that another day.

After a call to the store, we know this much:

Sesame Donuts does sell ice cream. They do have an ice cream flavor called “Sooper Hero”. It is blue…and yellow…and red.

It may not be a smoking gun, but it’s darn close. The only way to prove the true nature of Sooper Hero is for one of you or one of me (meaning me) to go there. And that’s what I’m gonna do!

It won’t happen today or tomorrow, but I am responsible for traveling to this place called Portland for this thing called work. And when I do it, I am going to Sesame Donuts (which is open 24/7) and I will try this alleged Superman Ice Cream for all on the web to see.

This is not a joke. This is a mission. Over and out.