A dessert and a souvenir: The world of ice cream sundae helmets

May 2024 · 9 minute read

There was a time before Twitter — before everything became addictive ephemeral hot takes quickly forgotten as people moved onto the next scroll — when we would marvel at the expanse of the internet; there were sites dedicated to anything and everything. It was a limitless curiosity shoppe for our imagination, sparking a little bit of wonder, sharing a little bit of knowledge and generally tickling a part of the brain that we didn’t know could be tickled.

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http://elichtenberg.com/ehc/history.html brings back that lost time.

In my search to explore the origins of the sundae helmet — an extremely difficult quest now made impossible by COVID-19 closures and work limits — I stumbled upon Eric Lichtenberg’s site. Or at least one particular page of it, dedicated to the history of ice cream sundae helmets.

Lichetnberg is a graphic designer by day and ice cream sundae helmet aficionado and collector by day and night. It’s an obsession that has brought over 300 helmets into his home, from the standard Seattle Mariners sundae helmet to one featuring the rare 1994-95 Columbus Clippers logo (from when Derek Jeter played on the team). And it all began with a few details on the helmets that a fan enjoying a sundae at a ballpark would never even consider.

“I wanted to know more about why the helmets were marked on the inside,” Lichtenberg explains, on how he became the sundae helmet historian. “When I started collecting minor league helmets, there were different markings and different companies making them. Why were they making them versus the other companies?”

Lichtenberg traced the sundae helmet origin back to Cleveland-based Laich Industries, a company founded in 1965 that, according to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2005, sold the novelty helmets under its “Sports Products” line. This is the part of the story where I tell you that repeated calls and emails to the number and address listed for Laich Industries — which now belongs to a water bottling company called Magnetic Springs – went unanswered. Trying to track down the Walter Laich quoted in articles about the bankruptcy filing led to a series of dead ends.

There is, however, a weird footnote to the Laich branch of this story — it appears Walter Laich was a part-owner of the Cleveland Indians and tried to buy the team in 1984 for $31 million. He then sued the team when they tried to sell it to New Yorker David LeFevre. This came after Donald Trump tried to buy the team for $34 million in 1983 (his bid was rejected over fears that he’d move the team to Tampa). The Indians were eventually sold to Richard E. Jacobs (of Jacobs Field fame) and — where were we? Right. Sundae helmets.

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Ben Hill of MILB.com’s Ben’s Biz Blog knows more about the minor league world than anyone on this planet — he chronicles in-stadium game experiences, has been to every minor league park and is generally a fountain of knowledge. I asked him if there was a definitive history of the sundae helmet, outside of Eric Lichtenberg’s. Ben didn’t know of one. “I wish I did,” he added.

So I’m good with Lichtenberg’s account — that some time in 1970 or 1971, the sundae helmet was introduced to ballparks and ice cream shops. In 1995, they became popular in the minor leagues. The entire history is on his site and it’s actually very compelling. I strongly suggest reading it there. Because this story is no longer about the history of the helmet. It’s about the people who collect them. Two in particular.

Lichtenberg recommended I talk to Paul Caputo (a name Ben Hill also suggested). He’s a Colorado resident who writes for SportsLogos.net, authored a book on the origin of 100 weird minor league team names and, like Lichtenberg, has over 300 helmets in his collection. Caputo’s collecting started in 2014, after buying a commemorative “100 years of Wrigley” sundae helmet at a Cubs game. The native Philadelphian had kept an old Phillies helmet from his childhood on a shelf at home, and something compelled him to bring that Cubs one home with him to complement it.

“If there was a specific moment that started the collection,” Caputo recalls, “it was when I put that Cubs helmet next to my old, old Phillies helmet.” And that’s when he realized, in his own words, “wait a minute, these are pretty cool!”

“People love them,” Jason Smorol, General Manager of the Syracuse Mets, says. Prior to each season, the team orders 10,000 plastic sundae helmets (Smorol says they change the design every year) and either runs out or comes close to running out by the time the 70-game home schedule is through. Smorol points out that the Syracuse Mets also serve poutine and fries in the helmets, but it’s the ice cream that’s the clear star. In fact, the Mets had to recently move their ice cream concession stand from behind home plate to a less cramped setup along the third base line because of the popularity. “The line was huge,” he says.

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And this is even more impressive when you consider the weather in Syracuse, especially in the cruelly cold April and May months, is not kind to ice cream aficionados. “Some people don’t care how cold or warm it is,” Smorol says. “They want their ice cream.”

Ben Hill says that concessions at games have a rhythm to them, one that starts with buying hot dogs and popcorn early, turns to beer in the middle innings, and ends with ice cream, which helps add to the take-home ease of the mini-helmet as fans leave games. “The ice cream lines are the last to go,” he says, “and you can walk out of the ballpark with an ice cream you just got 10 minutes before.”

Hill adds that part of the attraction is the sundae helmet’s dual nature, as both vessel and keepsake. “One, you get a dessert,” he explains. “Two, they are very small and portable. It’s an economical choice for the discerning collector. You get a dessert and a souvenir at the same time. You don’t get a hot dog in a take-home container.”

Both Caputo and Lichtenberg have grown their collections by attending games (they’re both big baseball fans) as well as trading with other collectors. They pointed me in the direction of a private Facebook group that trades helmets, shows off collections and helps its members track down hard-to-find pieces. They have purchased multiple sundae helmets on eBay and both have written to minor and major league teams asking for helmets they were hunting. If all of this sounds daunting, there’s very good news — it’s not. The helmet collecting community is incredibly welcoming, they’re easy-to-access, they like to help each other, and — possibly the most important aspect of the ice cream helmet-collecting world  — this is a relatively cheap hobby to get into.

For instance, while in pursuit of a rare orange sundae helmet featuring Mr. Met, Caputo pulled himself out of an auction when the price got too high. “It just got sort of outrageous in the bidding wars,” Caputo says.

The price the seller was asking? About 20 dollars.

“I did once spend $25 on a collection of 20 or so helmets because there was a Red Sox one in there that I wanted,” Caputo said. “That’s probably the biggest expense I’ve ever had just in the pursuit of one helmet.” He ended up trading or giving away the ones he didn’t need.

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When I ask Caputo about pieces he’s had trouble obtaining — the white whales of ice cream sundae helmet collecting — he mentions a Durham Bulls helmet, which was only available in the club level of the stadium; he eventually obtained it in a trade with another collector. And then there’s the (now-renamed) Las Vegas 51s. There are whispers that a sundae helmet featuring the quirky alien logo exists, but Caputo has seen no evidence of it in his searches.

“I heard that they exist,” Caputo says. “I have not been able to find that one.”

Meanwhile, thanks to his talent as a graphic designer, Lichtenberg has made custom pieces for collectors looking for helmets with defunct logos as well as fantasy players who want their team commemorated on a mini-helmet. Before the paper he used to print the logos on was discontinued and temporarily halted his side hobby, Lichtenberg sold about 50 custom helmets a year at $5 a piece — which essentially covers costs of the blank helmet and paper, as Lichtenberg says he does the design work for the fun of it and enjoys helping other collectors “fill the void in their collections.” He could easily make a 51s or all-orange Mets sundae helmet for Caputo, but that defeats the purpose.

“As far as my collection is concerned,” Caputo explains, “I limit it to ones that actually existed in the wild, that once had ice cream in them… or at least were destined for that at some point in their history.”

To call Caputo a helmet sundae purist would be an understatement. He remembers a time he was at a Portland Sea Dogs game and spied a pink ice cream helmet featured as a prize in an area reserved for kids games. He convinced the woman running the games to give him a helmet, he took it to the concessions stand, and dumped a plate of ice cream (they wouldn’t serve it directly into the helmet for health reasons) into his new helmet. “That was my most elaborate in-game hunt for a helmet,” Caputo says.

The future of ice cream helmet collecting looks to be refreshingly pure and accessible, but with an interesting twist. Like Hill says, you get your ice cream, but you also have that helmet from that particular game and that particular memory. “It’s like, ‘here’s a Huntsville Stars helmet and that’s before they went to Biloxi and became the Shuckers,'” Hill says. “The minors are constantly evolving and changing.”

With the 2020 minor league season officially canceled, Smorol jokes that, “we’ve already got our ice cream helmets for next year.” But in 2021, several minor league teams face de-affiliation, and while that’s a loaded topic for a much deeper column, it will create a great deal of scarcity for collectors.

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Caputo says the collectors’ Facebook group made a concerted effort late last year to track down as many of the de-affiliated-related helmets as possible. He says a lot of the teams being de-affiliated don’t have helmets because they’re of the smaller, short-season variety, but plenty others do.

“I think the Chattanooga Lookouts, certainly a team like that, you’re going to make sure that you have that before they go away,” Caputo says.

At some point in the future, maybe the sundae helmets skyrocket in value and become hot ticket items — they have all the elements of collectibles, after all: scarcity, quirkiness, trackable markings, nostalgia, 40 years of history and the ability to grade quality.

For now, though, as sundae helmet collecting remains a fun, quirky, collective effort, Lichtenberg and Caputo — friendly, passing it on to the next generation, and genuinely interested in helping new collectors — serve as the perfect ambassadors for the hobby.

(Top photo: Paul Caputo’s sundae helmet collection; For more insight on souvenir helmets of the non-sundae variety, check out MLB Souvenir Helmets)

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