Brand: Frozfruit
Agency: Mintz & Hoke (Avon, Connecticut)
Creative Director: Chuck Borghese

Frozfruits are such a New York staple -- is there a Korean deli or bodega anywhere in the city that doesn't stock them? -- that it's a wonder they never scored their own Seinfeld homage, à la the black-and-white cookie. At least the humble frozen treat now has its own New York-only outdoor advertising campaign, plastered on 85 city buses, 200 subway platforms, and countless street posters. All the ads work off punch-line visuals: a surgeon mid-procedure, a bridegroom at the altar, and a lover mid-coitus, each holding a Frozfruit. Tag line: that kind of good. The light comedy feels right for the brand -- we're basically talking about upscale Popsicles -- though the lovemaking bit falters with its over-the-top passion (are we to think of the Frozfruit as a . . . marital aid?). Until now, the height of New Jersey-based Frozfruit's pretension was helping to sponsor the annual East Hampton Sandcastle Contest, so it's refreshing to see that the brand's first high-gloss campaign is goofy instead of Häagen-Dazs snooty. And though the product is all-natural and, in many flavors, fat-free, the ads simply cut to the chase: We New Yorkers want our little luxuries, and we want them now. So what could be more New York than obsessive-compulsive types' risking divorce and malpractice suits to indulge themselves?

Related:

• Archive: “Gotham: Life in the New City”
• Articles by Simon Dumenco
• Table of Contents: Jul 10, 2000 issue of New York | Subscribe!