The archive · Small Business & Money · Marketing decision · 1956–1960
Mister Softee: a jingle turns ice-cream trucks into a summons that lasts decades
A Philadelphia soft-serve truck business puts an adman's jingle on loudspeakers; the tune becomes its storefront and scales to 600+ trucks.
Mister Softee
What it had to solve
Mister Softee was a young Philadelphia-area company selling soft ice cream from trucks. A moving vehicle cannot hang up a sign or buy a billboard, so the business needed a way to signal its arrival as it cruised through neighborhoods — and an adman's radio jingle became the answer.
How it works
Mister Softee's ice-cream trucks are known less for their paint than for their sound. Around 1960 the young Philadelphia-area company commissioned a jingle from Les Waas, who worked at Grey Advertising, a small Philadelphia agency. Waas wrote the lyrics and an original melody for 'Mister Softee (Jingle and Chimes)' — 'Here comes Mister Softee, the soft ice cream man… S-O-F-T double E, Mister Softee' — and recorded the three-minute version in one take.
The jingle began as radio advertising, but its real career started when company employees looped the melody into a 30-second chime and played it from loudspeakers mounted on the trucks. A cruising truck cannot display a sign, so the music became its announcement: children playing in the street heard the opening notes and knew ice cream was arriving. The lyrics even spelled out the logic: 'Listen for my store on wheels, ding-a-ling down the street.'
The effect lasted decades. The tune grew into a fixture of American summer — loved and loathed, instantly recognizable to anyone within earshot — and competitors adopted it to pull children toward their own trucks. Waas later said Mister Softee sent him a telegram crediting the jingle: without it, the company would have remained a tiny operation with two or three trucks in South Jersey.
Mister Softee was still running on the same sonic formula when Waas died in 2016 at 94. Billboard's obituary reported the company then had more than 600 trucks and over 350 franchise dealers operating in 15 states plus China, and called the jingle the advertising legend's greatest legacy among the more than 970 jingles he wrote.
Why it lands
- A moving store cannot show a sign, but sound reaches everyone within earshot — the jingle announced the truck before it was visible.
- The same loop on every truck made the sound consistent, so each summer of repetition built recognition across the whole franchise.
- The tune was written to be hummed, not just heard, which made it travel by word of mouth and in memory long after the truck left.
- Because Mister Softee owned the melody, its mobile marketing asset could not be outspent by bigger competitors — only imitated.
What it did
The looped jingle became one of America's most recognized sounds of summer, still played from Mister Softee trucks more than half a century later. Billboard reported in 2016 that the company then ran over 600 trucks and 350 franchise dealers across 15 states plus China, and competitors borrowed the tune to lure children out of their homes.
What you can take
When your shop moves through the neighborhood, sound is the storefront: a melody announces arrival before the truck stops, and repeating it on every truck turns a jingle into owned brand equity.
Since then
The 30-second loop stayed on Mister Softee trucks for more than half a century and became a shared cultural reference: the subject of nostalgia articles, parodies and complaints in equal measure. By 2016 the company reported over 600 trucks and more than 350 franchise dealers in 15 states plus China, and the jingle was still its most valuable asset. Waas, who wrote the song around 1960, died in April 2016 at age 94, with obituaries describing 'Jingle and Chimes' as the greatest legacy of a career that produced more than 970 jingles.
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