At Singapore's Museum of Ice Cream, You'll Find Plenty of IG Spots — But Little Else
There's one caveat to Singapore's newly-opened Museum of Ice Cream that its founders want you to know: It's not actually a museum — at least not in the traditional sense of the word.
You're not going to learn anything staggering about the sweet treat here, save, perhaps, the number of flinty puns that they can make out of celebrity names ("Gurmint Singh"), or some fun-facts that could just as easily be found through a cursory Google search ("Which ice cream flavour was invented first? Chocolate or vanilla?")
At it's core, the Singaporean outpost of the MOIC is little more than a pretty backdrop to snap photos in — if you can manage to edge out all the other people doing the same thing.
It's hard not to feel jaded about a place that costs up to S$42 to enter, especially when its promotional materials say it is bound to "reawaken your inner child." Actual children might have a good time here, since they're presumably unconcerned with angles and admission fees and the spectre of commercialisation.
There's a smallish inflatable castle in one of the exhibits (though the ceiling is so low it's unlikely you can do a 'flip', as the promo suggests), a remade Dragon Playground (the iconic dragon replaced with the MOIC's unicorn mascot), and, of course, the "largest Museum of Ice Cream Sprinkle Pool ever created", where you can frolic in a pit of oversized plastic pellets.
Perhaps the MOIC's one redeeming quality is the fact that it offers several ice cream stations along the way, each offering unique flavours to fit the exhibit's theme.
The first is a rather commercial tie-in with Häagen-Dazs (beach flavours, like a boozy piña colada), the second, a pastiche of a 1950's American diner (vanilla and/or apple pie flavoured soft serve), and last, a Singapore-exclusive set up with treats from The Ice Cream & Cookie Co (lychee bandung and taro milk tea.)
There's a distinctly hollow cast to the entire Museum; but that tends to be the case when the entire concept is to funnel people through one artificial exhibit after the other.
Everything culminates in the expected gift shop, where you can buy a MOIC-branded tote for S$30, a 'sprinkle' notebook for S$16, or one of the brand's tie-in products with companies like Kydra Active (a sports bra for S$55, yoga leggings for S$85) and Artisan of Sense (an admittedly well-scented candle, S$33.)
But the Museum makes no pretence of what it is. In 2019, co-founder Maryellis Bunn even said she regretted calling the company a 'museum' in the first place.
"We have visitors come to us all the time like they’re expecting a history lesson," said Bunn, now 29. "But that’s not what we are about.”
"At the end of the day," she continued, "people have to decide whether they want to sit on the couch scrolling through their phones and watching TV, or getting out and actually experiencing something."
If that experience involves waiting in line to pose with a plastic sculpture of a potong ice cream, we'll pass.
