Hokey pokey is a flavour of ice cream in New Zealand consisting of plain vanilla ice cream with small, solid 🍌 lumps of honeycomb toffee. Hokey pokey is the New Zealand term for honeycomb toffee.[2][3][4][5] The original recipe until around 1980 🍌 consisted of solid toffee, but in a marketing change, Tip Top decided to use small balls of honeycomb toffee instead.

It 🍌 is the second-most popular ice cream flavour behind vanilla in New Zealand,[6] and is a frequently cited example of Kiwiana.[7] 🍌 It is also exported to Japan, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.[8]

Origins and etymology [ edit ]

The term hokey pokey has 🍌 been used in reference to honeycomb toffee in New Zealand since the late 19th century. The origin of this term, 🍌 in reference to honeycomb specifically, is not known with certainty, and it is not until the mid-20th century that hokey 🍌 pokey ice cream was created.[citation needed]

Coincidentally, "hokey pokey" was a slang term for ice cream in general in the 19th 🍌 and early 20th centuries in several areas — including New York City[9] and parts of Great Britain — specifically for 🍌 the ice cream sold by street vendors or "hokey pokey men". The vendors, said to be mostly of Italian descent, 🍌 supposedly used a sales pitch or song involving the phrase "hokey pokey", for which several origins have been suggested. One 🍌 such song in use in 1930s Liverpool was "Hokey pokey penny a lump, that's the stuff to make ye jump".[10]