During our last visit to The Slatington Marketplace, I found this item and it immediately brought back a memory that I hadn't thought about in years. It's one of those three-sided cardboard stands that are often sitting next to the salt and pepper shaker on the tables at a diner or restaurant. This one is an advertisement for a whipped fruit drink called Lickity Whip.
There were three different flavors pictured on this tabletop display: Strawberry Colada, Pina Colada, and Orange Cream. I'm not sure if there were any other flavors or any other products in the Lickity Whip line because I could find no record of this brand name online. I even checked the United States Patent and Trademark Office website because the logo has the little ™ symbol next to it, but I wasn't able to find any results even when looking through the cancelled or abandoned registered trademarks. Nevertheless, I am positive that this was a real product because I remember exactly where I had them.
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| Standard Speaker - Hazleton, PA (July 12, 1987) |
When I was a kid, the Laurel Mall in Hazleton, PA had a pizza parlor called Two Guys From Italy. This article from the Standard Speaker had the only picture I could find of the restaurant, and it's far from ideal. It was written about a dispute between the restaurant's owners and mall management. The restaurant had come to an agreement on an extension to lease their spot in the Laurel Mall, but the mall management had second thoughts and decided to give that spot to a different restaurant called Dino's Pizza. When Two Guys From Italy refused to close their doors, Laurel Mall management erected a giant wall around the front of the entrance with a sign on it informing shoppers that this would soon be a Dino's Pizza establishment.
I'm hoping to find better pictures of Two Guys From Italy because the place had a very cool vibe. It had a brick storefront with a glass door to enter the restaurant, and an arched pick-up window where you could grab your pizza from the main concourse of the mall without having to go inside. I believe that the inside of the restaurant had a bar, but I can't be sure about that. I am sure that they had a large dining room with tables and booths, and that this Lickity Whip standee was sitting on each of them.
My grandfather and I stopped here to grab a slice of pizza from time to time when I was a kid. Coconut was one of my favorite flavors, and I asked him if I could have a Pina Colada when I first noticed the picture on the table during one of our visits. I remember that he checked with the waitress to make sure that they had a non-alcoholic version. She confirmed that it was just a fruit drink and that it didn't come with alcohol, and it became my beverage of choice every time we stopped at Two Guys From Italy ever since. It been well over thirty years since I last had one, but I think that it reminded me at the time of an Orange Julius, only made with pineapple and coconut instead of oranges. They did have an Orange Cream flavor that I'm guessing was the Lickity Split version of an Orange Julius, and they had a Strawberry Colada too, but I never had either of those.
