Did you know that in 1949, ice cream was ‘the health food of the nation’?

This ad for Peter’s Ice Cream opens like a film of the Hollywood Golden Era, with a richly bound book opening us to show us its title, The Best Things in Life. There follows a full minute-and-a-half of ice cream-free reflections on the wonder of being human, celebrating our experiences of children, animals, nature and art, and illustrated with film of flowers, sheepdogs, mountains, oceans and sunsets.

Are you ready for the long bow? Here it comes: ‘our sense of taste’ leads us to a children’s party, with various mites in bows and pirate hats tucking in to elaborate ice cream cakes as the voice-over extols Peter’s Ice Cream as ‘nature’s (almost) perfect food … it provides the necessary milk and cream.’ Fortunately, the children who are gobbling down their ‘health food’ are mostly absorbing it by osmosis, as none of them are too good at getting it in their mouths.

The gorgeous production values and lofty philosophical treatise of The Best Things in Life (almost) have us ready to swap out our breakfast oats for a cat-in-a-boot ice cream cake. Mmmm, necessary cream!