The question is: Is there a market for vintage astronaut ice-cream?
Many years ago, let’s round it out at 30 years ago, my Father presented me with a gift from the Anaheim Space Museum. A packet of bona fide freeze-dried Astronaut Ice-Cream.
How can you tell it’s genuine? For starters, well, it’s so old it doesn’t have a barcode. It doesn’t even have a Use-by or Best Before date. All that’s known is that it’s 3/4oz of freeze-dried temptation and delicious neapolitan flavour.
Inside the packet you can feel a block of something that resembles ‘Crunchies’ version of honeycomb. It’s in one piece but suffered some crumbling over the years.
So what’s the value of this vintage freeze-dried tempter? Is the value in the eating it now? Selling it? Or saving it for another future date? This is the thing about potential, it’s not known until it’s realised.
If it’s opened and eaten, the wonderment of knowing its taste, texture, flavour and aroma will be realised in an instant. But it could go in a number of ways. What if the optimal flavour was way back in 1984?
It could now be rancid and disgusting, ‘corked’ if you will. At least you could say you ate 30 year old astronaut ice-cream.
What if, like fine wine, the flavour has improved with maturity?
Is it optimal now, will it improve, will it deteriorate?
With these unknowns, perhaps the best potential is on the open market; after all you could be pretty sure 30-year-old freeze dried ice-cream is scarce.
Taking into account economics of scarcity, one would suggest that the value of Astronaut Ice-cream is only going to increase, seasonally adjusted for summer of course. Realistically, how many packets that are this old could still be out there? How many people could resist eating ice-cream for that long?
Visit any supermarket and you’ll see half an aisle of refrigeration dedicated to ice-cream. It’s popular! Everyone surely has brilliant memories of summer holidays and ice-cream eating experiences. A lot of kids even dream of being astronauts. What kid (or adult) wouldn’t want to imagine being an astronaut eating ice-cream then? Picture yourself in the cockpit of the shuttle hoeing into an ice-cream with your buddies. Anyone noticed that commercial airliners today now often end the meal with a mini ice-cream. They get it!
So maybe the best idea is to save it. Rather than eating 30-year-old ice-cream, it’ll be 50-year-old ice-cream?
Then again, how would you best serve freeze-dried ice-cream; from the freezer?
What would you do? Eat? Sell? Save? Destroy?
Please take a moment to share.
