Machines are difficult to clean yet poop emoji soft-serve is all the rage in Tokyo

It was our most popular blog post for years.

Baskin Robbins decided to offer free soft serve ice cream to expectant mothers on May 21, 2008, in California, Chicago, New York, Nashville, and El Paso, Texas. It was apparently the beginning of a national roll-out of soft serve ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

I have no idea why they targeted expectant moms, or why they recruited a pregnant D-list celebrity like Tori Spelling as spokesthingy.

Problem is, soft serve ice cream is on the Australian list of foods pregnant women should avoid. Sanitation with the equipment appears to be an on-going problem.

In 2015, a year after a giant recall of Snoqualmie ice cream tied to Listeria, a third illness was blamed on the bug after it apparently lingered in a machine used to make milkshakes for hospital patients.

Yet in Japan, Poop emoji soft-serve is here to haunt your dreams.

A cafe in Tokyo’s fashionable Harajuku neighborhood is hawking soft-serve that looks like the poop emoji, complete with googly eyes and a toilet-shaped bowl.

Yummy.

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About Douglas Powell

A former professor of food safety and the publisher of barfblog.com, Powell is passionate about food, has five daughters, and is an OK goaltender in pickup hockey. Download Doug’s CV here. Dr. Douglas Powell editor, barfblog.com retired professor, food safety 3/289 Annerley Rd Annerley, Queensland 4103 dpowell29@gmail.com 61478222221 I am based in Brisbane, Australia, 15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time