Three ice pops on sticks, each with a slice of fruit set into the ice. The outlines are thick and the areas are wide open, which makes this an easy sheet for small hands, for an unsteady hand, or for anyone who wants to finish something in one sitting. The fruit is drawn loosely on purpose: one is a round citrus slice, one is a teardrop cut with a pale core ringed by seeds, and one is a round slice with seeds radiating from the middle. Whether they end up as orange and kiwi, lemon and mango, or something invented is left entirely to whoever picks up the pencils. Download the A4 PDF and print it — no registration.
🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Which flavour of ice pop did you go for as a child?
Do you remember an ice-pop seller coming down the street in summer?
What summer treat comes to mind first?
Did you ever find a winning mark on the stick, good for a free one?
Where does the ice pop come from — and why is “Popsicle” a capital letter?
The frozen-syrup-on-a-stick is usually credited to Frank Epperson in California around 1905, who is said to have left a glass of flavoured soda water outdoors overnight with the stirring stick still standing in it. He patented the idea in 1924 and first sold it as the Epsicle. That last word is worth a note for readers outside North America: Popsicle is a registered brand name that became the everyday word in the United States and Canada, while British English says ice lolly, and Japanese says アイスキャンデー (aisu kyandē) or アイスバー (aisu bā). Japan took to them in the Taisho era, in the 1920s, and for decades afterwards they were sold from handcarts and bicycles going street to street through the summer — a sound that a great many people in Japan still file under childhood.
What kinds are sold in Japan?
Broadly three families: fruit-juice pops, milk-based bars, and bars built on sweetened azuki bean — a dessert flavour that surprises most first-time visitors and that has no real equivalent in Western freezer cabinets. The best-known single product is Gari-Gari Kun (Akagi Nyugyo, launched 1981), a soda-flavoured pop the maker reports selling by the hundreds of millions of sticks a year. In 2016 its price rose from 60 to 70 yen and the company ran a televised advertisement apologising for it; the apology made national news, which is a fair measure of how attached people are to it. Sticks are part of the fun too — some are marked as winners, redeemable at the shop for another pop, which is why the phrase turns up in so many childhood memories.
How do you colour a piece of fruit that is frozen inside ice?
The whole trick is that the fruit is under something. Colour the slice first and at full strength — the segments of the citrus, the ring of seeds, the pale core — then lay a light, even wash of the pop’s own colour across the entire panel, fruit included. That single overlay is what makes the slice read as suspended inside the ice rather than stuck on the front. Leave one narrow strip of white paper down one side of each pop, and a small highlight where the light would catch: untouched paper does more for the look of ice than any shade of blue. The sticks want a warm pale wood tone, a little darker where they disappear into the ice. And if you want a frosted edge, stop short of the outline and leave a hair of white all the way round.
