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Phantazzi, Newjoy, Manda &
Deep South
- the Simon family legacy
In 1928, a World War I veteran and jobless Max Simon (pronounced See-mon)
began making ice cream in a garage at the Appleby Hotel
in Invercargill,
where he was boarding with his sister.
This grew into a successful business, operating as Phantazzi
Ice Cream.
Max's 'factory' was only 15 feet by 8 feet in area. Ice
cream mix was prepared in a jacketed copper, used for both
heating
and cooling. There was no refrigeration, so he had to use
ice and salt in
a hand-operated churn, packing the
ice cream into
tin
cans,
and storing in ice and salt for sale the following day.
Later he would take
it
in the Model T Ford that he purchased for £14 to store
in a freezer at Miller's Bakery.
His success may have been too much for one of the other
local manufacturers. Max was building a new factory around
1934 when he was approached
by Dunedin's
Crystal
Ice Cream,
who are said to have threatened to put him out of business
if he didn't sell
up to them.
Around 1935, Phantazzi
built a new factory,
and in 1936, there
was evidence of the company's expansion northwards when Phantazzi
Ice
Cream
Dunedin
Ltd was registered,
as a coolstore and
distribution centre.
Max eventually sold
the business to Southland
Ice Cream Co. Ltd.,
and the factory was
closed
down, later to be
re-commissioned and
used by Sunkist Ice
Cream.
Max moved his family to Dunedin in 1939, where he established
a new ice cream business, Newjoy Ice Cream Ltd.
He bought a site,
built a house and set up operations in an old brush
factory next door at 381 Cumberland St., not far from the
Cadbury factory.
The
Newjoy factory , 381 Cumberland St. Brian and Max
Simon with delivery vehicles.
-
The Frostee Digest, NZICMA archives.
The
Newjoy factory and delivery fleet.The delivery
vans were
Bedford and Bradford
makes, not
refrigerated. Refrigerated truck at
right.
-
Simon
family collection, via Shona McCahon.
The family lived right beside the factory, and Max's son Brian
Simon remembers having to shut
the window when small leaks from the old Lipman ammonia compressor
filtered into he and his
brother's bedroom.
The factory had two beautifully-made, glass-lined steel 200
gallon vats that Max had purchased from the U.S., with
counterbalanced lids. These were used for making up the mix,
and heating it up to pasteurisation temperature. Milk, milk
powder, sugar, Glyceryl Monostearate (GMS, emulsifier), and
gelatine (stabiliser) were added and mixed together with
an agitator. As it was heated up, blocks of butter were added.
Brian
and Max making up a batch in one of Newjoy's glass-lined
mix vats, ca. 1960.
Homogeniser nearest
camera.
-
The Frostee Digest, NZICMA archives.
The heated mix was pumped to a Weir homogeniser, then cooled
through a pipe heat exchanger, then further cooled in a
circulating pipe arrangement in a cooling vat.
Mix was held overnight for churning the next day.
The operation had two continuous Vogt freezer churns,
fed by batches of mix; freezing the liquid mix, and with
stainless
blades
scraping
frozen
mix off the inside cooling surface of the barrel of the churn,
and
whipping
air in,
to an overrun of 140%.
Newjoy purchased their continuous churns around 1948,
and Winston Gourley from Apex Ice Cream in Christchurch came
down to show the team how to run them.
They also had a cutting
and wrapping machine, and a carton-filling machine.
The flavour range was quite limited - vanilla of course,
and raspberry ripple, orange ripple, chocolate ripple, and
occasionally passionfruit
ripple. Flava-Tru flavour essences were sometimes used, and
these, with associated colour powders were added
prior to churning.
The boys helped pack "sixpenny blocks" (later "sevenpenny
blocks"!) in the factory, adding lids and attaching
wooden spoons.
Bulk (scooping) ice cream was packed into 2 1/2, 3 and 5
gallon (tin) cans.
The ice cream blocks were packed tightly into wooden boxes
lined with corrugated cardboard, and sometimes
in canvas
bags, for sending by
(un-refrigerated) rail as far as Invercargill and Oamaru.
Cartridges containing frozen
brine
were sometimes used to supplement the insulation.
When he turned 17 (in 1951), Brian left school to work full-time
for the family business, and with his drivers licence, and
later HT licence, helped out with
deliveries.
Not long after that, Newjoy
purchased the South Island's first refrigerated truck, a brand new 8 tonne Foden:
Brian
with
Newjoy's first Foden refrigerated ice cream truck, early 1950s.
-
Simon
family collection, via Shona McCahon.
Whites Light Metal Industries in Auckland built the insulated body, installed
the refrigeration unit, and
drove
it down to Dunedin. After they received this, Newjoy began distributing for Birdseye,
freighting
frozen
foods
from Birdseye's Christchurch operation to its Dunedin coolstore. They also did
some distribution of ice blocks for Royal Ice Cream.
Newjoy
Ice Cream refrigerated truck at summer show, Dunedin, circa 1950s.
-
Simon
family collection, via Shona McCahon.
Newjoy stakes a particular claim to fame in the history of ice cream in this
country.
It may have been the first company to make all-time Kiwi favourite, Hokey
Pokey
ice
cream.
In
an
interview
with
Radio
NZ,
Brian
Simon recalls
making
the
first
Hokey
Pokey
ice
cream
at Newjoy in 1953, using broken Crunchie
Bar pieces from the local Cadbury Fry Hudson factory (at 00:15:45):
Newjoy
Ice Cream sign outside dairy, Half Moon Bay, Stewart Island, October 1956.
Brian
hand-painted this
sign while on his honeymoon!
-
Simon
family collection, via Shona McCahon.
Newjoy also had 40 ice cream moulds and a brine tank for making ice blocks,
stick
novelties
and chocolate bombs
- each mould with 24 specially-shaped cavities. It was a very manual process,
filling
the
moulds, freezing them firstly
in
calcium chloride brine,
then
in
the
blast
freezer,
at -30 degrees C.
When they were frozen hard, the moulds were dipped in hot
water
to
loosen and remove
the
shaped products,
some also needing to be dipped in hot chocolate and re-frozen, before
wrapping
each
one
individually
by
hand in paper bags.
 Newjoy
Ice Cream menu board, Tyrell & Holmes, 1958
-
D. R. Murray, Built In Dunedin
Joysticks were a long choc-coated ice cream in a cardboard packet.
Jaffa
Beauts
were
orange-flavoured
ice
cream
"bombs"
dipped
in
chocolate,
sold in couplet cones. Robin Hoods were similar to Jaffa Beauts, but made with
vanilla
ice cream,.
Brian
remembers
some
of
the
staff:
Kees
Hocks,
Dennis
Croker,
George
Chittock
(can wash),
Bert Campbell (foreman), Spencer
Dyer (office and salesman),
George
Hanley (driver and later Invercargill depot manager),
Jim
and
May
Leader (and their daughter).
Newjoy
Vanilla Ice Cream pint carton, around 1960.
-
Simon
family collection, via Shona McCahon.
Newjoy
Neapolitan ice cream carton,
1 pint, around 1960.
- ourheritage.ac.nz.
By 1960, Newjoy operated five refrigerated trucks and several delivery vans,
distributing throughout Otago and Southland.
In 1961,
Max
decided
he
had
"had
enough",
and
sold
the Newjoy business to Crystal Ice Cream. Bill Haigh took over the operation,
and Brian continued to work for the business for a while. The
factory
was
eventually closed down,
and most
of the equipment ended up in the Crystal Ice Cream factory,
in
King Edward Rd, which was later sold to Tip Top.
The
Cumberland St factory site is now a New World supermarket.
Brian and Jeanette (and their two young children, Linda and
Barbara) went farming at Mokotua near Invercargill for three
years, but finding
the
life too
quiet,
Brian sold up and bought a house back in Dunedin, with the
intention of moving back up and starting a new ice cream
business. Meanwhile
he found an old laundry in Leet St., Invercargill, and decided
to convert that into an ice cream factory.
So Manda Ice Cream was born.
They started without a blast freezer,
so ice cream was
churned and packed off into 'sevenpenny blocks', quarts,
pints, 1/2-gallon, 2 1/2 gallon and 3 gallon cardboard packs,
which were immediately
loaded
into
a
small,
second-hand
refrigerated
van for transport
to
Invercargill
Milk
Supply for
freezing and storage.
The business started to boom, and they bought the land
either side for expansion, and built their own freezers.
Then they
purchased 5 acres in Rockdale Road to build an even bigger
factory,
taking
only ten weeks from starting the earthworks to producing
ice cream, and losing only one day's production in the change
of premises.
Manda grew significantly, with several trucks and depots
in Central Otago and Dunedin.
 Collectible
Manda sticker, 1970s.
-
Steve Williams.
One of Manda's most popular products from the '70s was
Kiwifruit Ripple ice cream, a very true-to-natural flavour,
and with Kiwifruit quite new to the market, probably ahead
of its time. Making it meant staff had the unenviable job
of
peeling
frozen
kiwifruit
by hand,
and
one
remembers coming up with a method of dunking them in
hot water to loosen the skins, just like tomatoes.
Around 1978, in what was surely a unique diversification
for an ice cream business, Brian built an Olympic-size ice
skating
rink
next
door to
utilise
his surplus winter refrigeration!
In 1978, Manda
amalgamated with local bakery Millar Lange, and the Simon
family sold their shares soon after.
In 1982 Millar Lange
sold out to Goodman Fielder, who at that time owned
Tip Top, and some of the equipment, including Manda's Italian
10-lane Derby
novelty
machine, was moved up to Auckland.
In the late '80s, United Dairy Foods (makers of New American
brand ice cream) took over and re-commissioned the old Rockdale
Rd Manda factory. They
also
appear to have
acquired the Manda brand, perhaps when Millar Lange sold
to Goodman Fielder, and continued to produce Manda products
from this factory, and their Tokomaru operation.
 Manda
Ice Cream 2 litre label, late 1980s.
-
Owen Norton collection.
We don't know when the Manda brand was finally discontinued, but United Dairy
Foods'
ice
cream
operations
were
sold
to
Tip
Top
in 1997, so it is likely that Manda disappeared around that time.
After quitting their Manda shares in 1978, the Simons set
up a coolstore business, called Deep South. After a while,
Brian's son Paul
suggested that they get back into the ice cream business,
this time, just in a small way.
So in 1979, Deep South Ice Cream started
up, intially with an old second-hand Creamery Package Manufacturing
Company
churn bought from Bruce Hastie (Blue Moon Ice Cream), in
Havelock North. Later these were replaced with two reconditioned
Vogt churns
from
Martin
Bros.,
Louisiana.
Deep
South Rockdale Rd Invercargill factory interior, undated. Homogeniser
at left, blue
ice
cream churn (with horizontal stainless barrel visible), flavour
tank nearer camera,
staff
filling ice cream into cardboard bulk packs, freezer
door at rear.
-
Simon
family collection, via Shona McCahon.
It wasn't long before the business became more than "in a
small way", and eventually it overtook Manda in size.
Deep South opened a brand new export-accredited factory in
Hornby, Christchurch in September 1999, the only manufacturer
at that time, besides Tip Top,
to operate two factories.
If any proof of Brian's ice cream-making ability was needed, it was certainly
provided with the establishment of the
New
Zealand Ice Cream Awards in 1998. By 2007, Deep
South
had won
the
Best
In
Category
for
Standard
Vanilla
Ice
Cream
at
the
Awards six years running, and a further two Best in Category's
for Premium Vanilla Ice Cream.
 Deep
South Vanilla.
Quite an achievement, as vanilla is the most difficult of flavours to score
well with, there being no other flavours, colours or textures to hide defects.
In 2007 Invercargill-based sheep milk processor Blue River Dairies took a shareholding
in the business, and
the
company
became
Deep
South
Ice
Cream (2007)
Ltd.
 Deep
South Hokey Pokey 2
litre, 2008.
In December
2010
the
Simons
sold
Deep
South
to
Christchurch
business
consultants
Mike
Killick and
Alex
Hopkins.
In 2013 the Rockdale Rd Invercargill factory was closed down, with
the loss of 11 jobs, to consolidate production at Deep South's Christchurch
plant.
Although the end of an era, it still wasn't the end of the Simon story.
In 2015 Brian returned to the ice cream business at 79 years of age,
cranking up the churns at the Rockdale Rd plant for
Christchurch-based
company
Dairyworks.
Brian is currently on-site advisor to Dairyworks which in January started producing
ice cream in Invercargill and is now pumping out 3000 2-litre containers a day.
The
ice cream is sold around the South Island, with plans to expand
nationwide.
Jeanette
and Brian Simon with
Dairyworks 2 litre pack, Southland Times, 16 May 2015
- Credit: Southland Times, John Hawkins, Fairfax NZ
References and related sites:
Deep South Ice Cream
www.deepsouthicecream.co.nz
NZ Ice Cream Manufacturers Assn. archives, and "Frostee Digest" journals,
1943-1972.
New Zealand Ice Cream Manufacturers' Association (NZICMA) Oral History Project;
held at NZICMA archives and Alexander Turnbull Library.
- Shona McCahon, Oral historian.
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision
OUR Heritage (Otago University Research Heritage)
http://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz
The Simon family.
The Southland Times.
 Back to
Ice Cream Brands from the Past. |
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Brian
& Jeanette Simon
Jeanette & Brian,
1955
-
Simon
family collection,
via Shona McCahon.
Brian's father Max was an ice cream manufacturer, so Brian grew up with ice cream,
and joined
the
family
business,
Newjoy Ice Cream in Dunedin, at age 15, working there for 10 years.
He then
went farming for a few years and in 1963, with Jeanette, founded the
Manda Ice Cream Company in Invercargill.
In 1979 the family sold the Manda business and factory, and soon afterwards started
up
a
new
Invercargill-based business, Deep South Ice Cream.
Deep South opened a brand
new export-accredited factory in Hornby, Christchurch in September 1999, the
only manufacturer at that time, besides Tip Top,
to operate two plants.
It could be argued that the Simons were the country's best ice cream makers of
their day - under their management, Deep South won the Best In Category for Standard
Vanilla Ice Cream at the New Zealand Ice Cream Awards six years running, and
a
further
two Best in Category's for Premium Vanilla Ice Cream.
Brian was President of the NZ Ice Cream Manufacturers' Association from 1986-1988.
Brian & Jeanette
Simon
In 2003, Brian and Jeanette Simon were awarded Life Membership of the NZICMA
for their long association
and contribution to the industry.
In 2010 the Simons sold Deep South.
Brian is still making ice cream at age 79, recently re-commissioning the old
Rockdale Rd factory, consulting to, and producing ice cream for Christchurch-based
company Dairyworks. |
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Hokey
Pokey Ice Cream
Who invented Hokey Pokey ice cream? There are several stories, and
a lot of speculation.
One story says that Hokey Pokey was first sold as a commercial ice
cream flavour by the Meadow Gold Ice Cream Company of
Papatoetoe in the 1940s. Except that we don't believe the company
existed until the mid-'50s!
Another says that Tip Top Ice Cream Co. (Auckland) was
the first to make it, around the same time, although again, the story
is not well documented, and anyway, sugar rationing raises serious
doubts that a product like this could have been launched during the
war years.
A third story has Peter Pan Ice Cream in Waipukurau
making the first Hokey Pokey ice cream in the mid '50s.
Another strong claim for "invention" of the flavour is
made by ice cream industry legend, Brian Simon.
In an interview with Radio NZ, he recalls making the first Hokey
Pokey ice cream at Dunedin's Newjoy Ice Cream Co. in
1953, using broken Crunchie Bar pieces from the local Cadbury Fry
Hudson factory (at 00:15:45):
This version has some appeal, in particular with respect to the Dunedin
connection:
A handwritten application
for the patent of a recipe, the invention for a confection to
be known as Hokey Pokey, was lodged by William
Hatton, a manufacturing confectioner from Caversham, Dunedin,
at the New Zealand Patent Office on 14 March 1896.
Since 1868, Dunedin had been home to the very successful Hudson biscuit
and confectionery company. Is it possible that Hatton's business,
or his skills, or just his recipe, were acquired by Hudson so that
they could manufacture Hokey Pokey?
By 1930, Hudson became Cadbury Fry Hudson, the company that was making
Crunchie Bars in 1953, when Newjoy started to put them into ice cream.
So there is a remote, romantic possibility that William Hatton, very
indirectly, had a hand in the first Hokey Pokey ice cream!
 Read
more about the Hokey Pokey legend at longwhitekid ...
Whoever invented it, the love affair has gone on for at least 50
years now.
 Where
else in the world would they give an ice cream flavour
its own postage stamp?
As much a part of our summer as pohutukawa, jandals, and L&P,
Hokey Pokey ice cream has become a Kiwi cultural icon.
Crunchy, gooey honey-comb toffee pieces in vanilla ice cream, a taste
experience all of its own.
Much Moore Hokey Pokey Ice Cream, winner of the
special "Best of Hokey Pokey" category
at the 2012 NZ Ice Cream Awards. |
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