Farrells Ice Cream Parlor -- (Author) Skunkdude
Farrells Ice Cream Parlor -- (Author) Skunkdude
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Author: Skunkdude
Timestamp: Aug 14, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Content: When I was about nine or ten, 1970, I was invited by a friend and his family to go to Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor on Hawthorne Blvd in Torrance, California. They served huge banana splits and had many promotional events involving kids. On the day I went, there was a "newsletter" with the menu. It showed a picture of two girls, older than me at that time, wearing diapers and a t-shirt at the restaurant, eating banana splits. The storyline to the photo said that anybody coming to Farrell's in a diaper and a t-shirt would receive a free banana split. They encouraged kids to bring their friends and join in the fun.
Does anybody else remember seeing promotions like this encouraging kids to wear diapers in public?
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Author: Skunkdude
Timestamp: Aug 15, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Content:
sbmccue said:
I wrote about a visit to Farrell's in my first AB novel, The Candy Stripers. I have many fond memories of their locations out where I grew up. Unfortunately, I never saw the 'newsletter' you described ... if I had, I would have been a more frequent visitor!
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I would love for someone to happen to have this newsletter and post a copy to the Internet. If someone should have connections to the Hawthorne Blvd location during the early 70s, they may be able to get into old records and find it.
There was a subculture of adults who were fascinated by grade school and high school kids wearing diapers. I saw it at UCLA hospital when I was a patient there, one of my Boy Scout counselors kept talking about how diapers made great rags, there was a movie made about that time called "The Baby" which was heavily promoted and aired on local television, Fruit of the Loom was advertising "Happy Underwear" commercials with kids jumping around in their underwear in slow motion, there was a Gumby cartoon where Gumby went into a machine that made him turn into a baby wearing diapers, and I could swear I saw regular programming with single frame flashes of kids wearing diapers (sublminal advertising) on the local TV stations. The Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor promotion was just one of many examples.
Several kids that I knew, including myself, were interested in wearing diapers. About that time, we went to two of my mom's high school girlfriends' houses. One friend had two boys, and the oldest boy was just sitting there wearing a diaper, watching TV when we visited. The other friend had two girls, and the youngest one was also wearing a diaper when we went over to visit. Both mothers were supporting their kids wearing diapers for fun.
My parents invited other friends over to watch The Baby when it premiered on TV around that time. It was an odd feeling to be lying there on the floor watching TV and seeing a grown young man being kept in diapers, which was precisely what I had wished for myself. But I didn't say anything about it then.
On a block around from where I lived, there was a lady who had both of her sons in diapers, and they were my age. A girl that babysat for them happened to stop by my house while riding bikes and was telling me about it. The boys regularly played outside while wearing their diapers. Looking back, I wish I had the courage to ask her to be my babysitter.