The Original Dippin' Dots Were Cow Feed

Ah Dippin' Dots: Ice cream of the future. Those pricey little frozen balls you used to pick up at the water park don't actually have their origin at an ice cream parlor or a World's Fair. They were invented by a biologist named Curtis Jones who first developed the freezing technique during experiments intended to create animal feed. After successfully freezing some grass pellets who decided to try out the technique on another one of his great loves: ice cream. The one problem? Jones' new creation needed to be kept at such a cold temperature that grocery stores couldn't handle them. Fortunately the Six Flags and minor league baseball stadiums of America stepped in to help. Now, how exactly Dippin' Dots managed to remain "the ice cream of the future" for three decades—that's still unexplained. But check out the full history in the video up above from Great Big Story and Katie Quinn.