The scoop on Snelgrove's

If you think Jell-O is the Utah dessert, think again.

How often do you eat Jell-O?

How often do you eat ice cream?

It's ice cream, hands down. And now, the company many see as the Emperor of Ice Cream — Snelgrove's — is being licked up, if you will, by the Dreyer's ice cream brand. The brand "Snelgrove," Dreyer's says, is linked with a fading generation. And after 79 years, the brand is being retired to make way for the new breed of ice cream aficionados.

And since founder Laird Snelgrove himself has passed on, the name change is simply progress. That old saying about moving ahead or dying applies.

Still, as with most elegies, the passing of Snelgrove's is not about despair, but about sweet memories. The company's history, after all, was as rich as its product. Charles Rich Snelgrove got things up and going in 1929. His early ice cream parlors were classic in style and decor. They felt and looked the way ice cream parlors were supposed to feel and look. They became not only places to eat, but places for families to share their lives, places for shy young men to take a girl for a cone. Snelgrove's was never just about ice cream, but about growing up, coming of age and the people who shared our lives. Eventually, Snelgrove's ice cream would find its way into New Mexico, Idaho, Montana and Colorado, but it never really left Utah.

To preserve such a history, Dreyer's will honor Laird Snelgrove with a scholarship in his name to Brigham Young University. It's a nice gesture. Dreyer's knows that Utahns and Snelgrove ice cream have shared a life. The company has not gone about the change lightly.

As for that big double-cone, we only hope it will be around and visible for years to come — an icon to a sweet treat from an era of sweet dreams that now have become sweet memories.