The original name of Christian Kent Nelson’s chocolate-covered ice-cream bar was I-Scream-Bar.
Nelson, an Iowa schoolteacher and confectioner, developed a bar that combined ice cream with a chocolate coating. He initially called it the I-Scream-Bar and patented the manufacturing process in 1921. The product was later marketed under the name Eskimo Pie by Nelson and chocolate manufacturer Russell Stover.
The bar became one of the earliest widely distributed chocolate-coated ice-cream products. Its success came from solving a practical problem: chocolate coatings often cracked or separated from frozen ice cream. Nelson’s process used a specially formulated coating that could adhere to the cold bar.
The later commercial name became controversial because “Eskimo” is widely considered an outdated term for Arctic Indigenous peoples. In 2020, the brand was renamed Edy’s Pie in the United States. The bar’s technical history and its changing name are therefore distinct parts of the story.