Last week I was in a supermarket in Mexico and spotted a cartoon
yeti depiction on an ice cream freezer box. I didn't have my camera on me, figuring I could easily google the guy later and see what he was all about. Sadly, there isn't much online that I could find. Wish I'd snapped a pic while I had the chance. This must be what it feels like to glimpse the real
yeti out in the wild. He is elusive as always.
The above is the only image of the character I could find. Let me know if you have others - I'll post them.
In my researches, I discovered this
yeti's name was apparently "Hooky". I say "was' because he is no more. The company Nestlé created him to help sell specific ice cream treats... to just Mexico... and only, apparently, during the year 2007. Weird! Was the advertising campaign a total bomb or something?
After that, they took down Hooky's website (which I can't view in the
Wayback Machine because it was all flash-based) and now appear to disavow all knowledge that he ever existed. His site just redirects to the general Mexico Nestlé site.
It is a conspiracy! Hooky is alive! And out there still!
The only mention I could find about Hooky and his ice cream were in Mexican marketing news sites (
here and
here), each discussing the advertising campaign itself when it initially started.
Translating from the Spanish, I learned that Hooky was trying to get kids excited about rather bizarre-sounding ice cream treats:
(Begin Bad Translation): "Makanazo is an ice cream flavor stuffed cake of jelly and congealed strawberry, and Loko Finger offers, besides the traditional flavor of lemon, the flavor watermelon, combined together with a very innovating form to eat it: on a little stick with a trowel that turns." (End Bad Translation)Maybe that was why the whole thing was canned after only one year - no kid actually wanted to eat the things. I also learned that such ice cream monstrosities live alongside Hooky the boy-
yeti in a land called "The Great Blue Freezer".
What is the popularity of
yeti among the children of Mexico, does anyone know? Could he have been a poor choice of mascot to endorse the ice cream?
Now I wish I'd looked in the freezer box at the supermarket. Would there have been a "Loko Finger" in there still, with its innovating form of eating? Perhaps a wrapper with Hooky's visage to take through customs on the way home? I so lost my chance at being the first ever cryptogastronomist.
