Put “ice pick” into Google News and you won’t believe how many ppl are still using them to hurt each other. Where are all these ice picks coming from? It’s 2008 for chrissake.
They are pretty sturdy, maybe they’re all old ice picks. How many were produced, back in the day?
Google a little more, and you’ll find plenty of brand new ones for sale:
WAG.
Probably people mostly buy them to break ice from the top of their freezer and stuff, rather than to make ice cubes for a drink.
Including some your grandma never dreamed of.
Does anyone remember National Lampoon’s spoof on the murder of Gerald Ford by icepick?
Wow. I want one. Not that I ever encounter magnetically detonated ordnance, but I do need to break ice in style every once in a while.
Just because refrigerators come with ice makers that doesn’t mean people don’t break ice anymore. Ice picks are still common items.
Put down that ice pick, I’ll take my vodka neat.
::Trotsky::
I know until the mid 70s you could commonly find ice picks. I had to ask my mother what they were for. We had an ice pick, though I can’t really ever recall using it.
One thing was that ice picks were commonly given away by companies as free advertising. I could often find ice picks with names of companies on them. I guess it’d be similar to companies giving away pens with names on it today.
Perhaps there is a collectors market out there.
Block ice lasts much longer in a picnic cooler than cubes, and makes it much easier to segregate the food from the ice. It is handy to have an ice pick to break off chunks for mixed drinks. When what you need is an icepick, pretty much anything you improvise is a distant second. I’ll also note that many marinas sell only blocks of ice, no cubes.
You can still commonly find them. Most of the grocery stores that I shop at carry them.
Isn’t that where the coolant runs? I’ve heard of people ruining freezers with ice pics, but I’m not sure if it was at the top, bottom, or sides.
This reminds me of a funny joke on the TV series Magnum PI. It had been established that the nickname of the local mob boss was “Ice Pick”. Magnum didn’t deal with Ice Pick directly; their contact was through his friend Rick. But in one episode, Magnum was meeting him for some reason and needed to persuade him to do something.
Magnum began “Listen, Ice Pick, I need…” and then stopped as he realized a ominous hush had fallen over the room. He turned to Rick and asked “What’s the problem? I thought everyone called him Ice Pick.” Rick answered “Not to his face.”
Yeah, I need this-
:eek:
I’ve definitely punctured a hole in the roof of a freezer with an ice pick, and had the coolant spew out all over me. Sadly, it neither felt particularly bad, nor did I get superpowers.
It was a freezer at my apartment in college, and I was leaving for winter break the next day. Didn’t realize exactly what that spray meant until I got back from break. I can still smell that freezer in my nightmares.
Heh, the first thing that came to mind upon seeing this thread was of a large pick-like weapon made of ice to be used in a homicide and then tossed in, say, a nearby swimming pool or canal. Good riddance, evidence!