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I once asked a gently bar keeper for such a panel, he gave me one from the year 1997, with prices still given in Lire. It is fantastic. Gelati Algida. Every ice cream manufacturer made those signs, they all were rectangular and had more or less the same dimensions. So often, Bars exposed a line up of such panels to show their great choice of Gelati.

The panels were made of thin iron sheet, on which the colorful ice firework was printed on. Also because of price inflation, those panels were changed every year. The basic Gelato, the "Ghiacciolo" was available in different colors, though the color hadn't any great impact on the flavour. It was simple water ice. Prices were Lire 50 in the 1970ies, usually rising by 50 Lire a year.

Because the panels got rusty quickly, and the colors washed out in sunlight, a well educated child could immediately discover whether oder not the panel was actual and hence the prices of the Gelati still valid..

Nowadays the panels are made of even cheaper plastic or plasticized cartoon,  of course every company has its own shape and size reflecting CI issues and such. One uglier than another. A part the fact that the traditional ice cream manufacturers were absorbed by the usual multinational food companies lacking any soul for what their managers do. So, nowadays you buy internationalized "Magnum" ice everywhere around the world, even in Italy. Design-food at a price three times more expensive of what a "localized" ice cream would cost. The localized ice creams that have mostly gone away, those with their simple but charming tastes.

In the case of the above "Algida" sign, the company of course is no longer an independent italian ice manufacturer. In fact, the company behind this brand is Unilever. They still keep the name in italy because it is widely associated with ice cream there... The logo icon however is already globalized, it is the so called Heartbrand, which is being used in all countries Unilever possesses ice cream distrubution lines (Langnese, Good Humor, Frisko and so on.). Of course, the most prominentely displayed ice cream on the display is...you guessed it...Magnum.

In 2007, one of the two italian Algida production sites has been shut down, leaving 200 unemployed. In the same time, Unilever set up new production lines in Veszprém (Hungary), where labour force seemed to be rather cheap. NB: The logo shows a heart.

Ressources:

-Algida in the italian Wikipedia
-Weblog of Algida's laid off Cagliari workfoce
-Weblog pipolo.it: Gelati Algida, storia di dolci freshezze

(It's funny what one discovers while writing a simple holiday foto description...)