Summer is here, and with it comes the season for ice cream. During travel in the scorching heat, who can resist those lifelike "cultural creative ice creams" that are perfect for photo ops at scenic spots? From the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Jiming Temple, Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Terracotta Warriors, to Daming Lake—yes, these well-known attractions have long launched their signature ice creams, and even niche travel spots like the Grand Canal Museum have gradually introduced custom ice creams. Speaking of it, cultural creative ice cream has been popular for years. Early internet-famous and breakout hits include Beijing Yuyuantan's "Sakura" ice cream and the Summer Palace's "Ancient Lotus" ice cream, which once drove many tourists to visit just for the ice cream. Then, in 2021, scenic spot cultural creative ice creams hit a boom period, with Nanjing's Xuanwu Gate, Hangzhou's Lady White, and Xi'an's Terracotta Warriors all breaking into the mainstream. This year, the trend of cultural creative ice cream continues. Not long ago, Wuliangye announced the launch of its "Wuliangye Cultural Creative Ice Cream," with the ice cream itself shaped like one of its classic strong-flavored liquor bottles, and the packaging box designed to mimic its liquor gift box. CCTV also recently launched its own cultural creative ice creams, with four designs: "Big Pants" (referring to its headquarters building), TV station, microphone, and little red flower. These are mainly sold at the supermarket in the TV station's campus, attracting long queues of people checking in. At its core, cultural creative ice cream has successfully proven itself in building brand influence. However, from a consumer perspective, it is not entirely well-received. On one hand, the high pricing of cultural creative ice cream is often criticized; on the other hand, scarcity makes things precious, but with scenic spots piling up ice cream offerings, it's easy to cause aesthetic fatigue. Therefore, the sustainability of this "good business" deserves deeper discussion. Phenomenon Currently, how many types of cultural creative ice cream are there on the domestic market? The answer: nearly a thousand. This number is surprising, but don't worry—this is only the work of one design company. Beibeiping, a food-and-play creative company founded in 2017, designs and manufactures over 90% of China's cultural creative ice creams, from the Summer Palace's "Ancient Lotus" to West Lake's "Lady White and Xu Xian," and recently CCTV's four ice creams. Image source: Beibeiping's official Xiaohongshu account Beibeiping's public data shows that between 2019 and 2021, its cultural creative frozen products (mainly cultural creative ice cream) sales grew from about 80,000 sticks to over 10 million, partnering with over 350 scenic spots and units, including several universities like Peking University. Cultural creative ice cream has been popular for five years, and the dual growth in sales data and tourist attention has matured the industry. In other words, from design to production, a complete industrial chain has formed. Simply put, creative design, mold prototyping, and production sales all have mature companies and channels entering the game. For example, New Retail Business Review found that creative companies like "Between Flavors" were established in the past two years. Additionally, ice cream factories have discovered customization opportunities and transformed to enter the market. In June this year, a customer service representative from an ice cream manufacturing OEM in Jiangsu told New Retail Business Review that their factory mainly handles production based on provided designs, including molds and finished products, and that July orders were already full. Design is clearly the most "brain-burning" part of cultural creative ice cream, and it is also the key to whether it is attractive. Zheng Aonan, co-founder of Beibeiping, shared his creative process at the FBIF2023 Food & Beverage Innovation Forum. The most common designs are iconic buildings and cultural relics, such as Leifeng Pagoda and Suzhou's Secret Color Porcelain Lotus Bowl, which are easy to understand. When encountering abstract cultural concepts, like Songcheng Eternal Love, he treats it as a mural design. "Songcheng Eternal Love is a large comprehensive show venue integrating performances, interaction, and dining. Most of its content is drawn from well-known ancient legends and folk culture. Ultimately, I treated it entirely as a mural creation, connecting all scenes to form visual continuity, stylizing mythology-related elements, and completing the spirit the project wanted to express," Zheng explained. Last year, Xi'an's Terracotta Warriors ice cream became popular, also a work by Zheng. To design this ice cream, he visited three or four times to observe the Terracotta Warriors up close. In the end, he removed the facial features from the Terracotta Warriors ice cream because "the effect of eating a person is unimaginable," and added a "thumbs up" gesture on the hand, as "a serious general making an interesting gesture is more vivid." Undoubtedly, for creators, each design is a creative result after countless brain cells are "sacrificed," but from the perspective of ordinary consumers, more and more cultural creative ice creams mostly taste similar, differing only in shape, making it easy to feel aesthetic fatigue. Additionally, another factor influencing consumer decisions is that compared to regular-priced ice cream products, these cultural creative ice creams are always more expensive. Generally speaking, under 20 yuan is already considered "conscientious," and many scenic spots even sell them for around 30 yuan, becoming a variant of the ice cream "assassin." Photo by New Retail Business Review A consumer complained to New Retail Business Review that the cultural creative ice cream currently sold at the Summer Palace is a beast-head shaped product produced by Shenyang Zhongjie Ice Cream, priced at 18 yuan, finished in a few bites, and with a very average taste. "If it weren't at the scenic spot, I definitely wouldn't be such a fool," the consumer said. Due to these various reasons, cultural creative ice cream ultimately becomes a "one-time check-in item." Despite this, scenic spots and companies are still rushing in. After all, even Hengdian has its own cultural creative ice cream. Industry For scenic spots, the value of cultural creative ice cream is easiest to understand. In the attention economy era, the spontaneous sharing of beautiful photos by millions of social media users is enough to become a huge traffic entry point. Ice cream that is the same as the scenic spot, looks delicious and beautiful, is the easiest to photograph well. Daily consumer goods at scenic spots have always been a major profit source, and ice cream priced at dozens of yuan per stick is an obvious sweet spot. Moreover, the mature design and production chain makes this too easy. Interestingly, these specific products that emerged from scenic spots are, on one hand, criticized by consumers as "gradually becoming monotonous," while on the other hand, more and more companies are discovering a new continent and trying them out. Incomplete statistics show that besides the recent liquor company Wuliangye, catering companies like Haidilao and Yunhaiyao have also launched cultural creative ice creams. Additionally, Wuling Hongguang and Hengshun Vinegar have also dabbled. Of course, compared to large-scale sales at scenic spots, companies making cultural creative ice cream is more of a marketing consideration. Image source: Yunhaiyao's official Xiaohongshu account For example, facing the breakout of "Moutai Ice Cream," competitor Wuliangye also feels an urgent need to find a new move that is closer to young people and easier to become an internet sensation. Looking back, when we focus on cultural creative ice cream itself, it is actually a branch of the "food and play" industry. For instance, the leading company Beibeiping positions itself as a "trendy brand focused on food and play." The concept of food and play is not complicated. As the name suggests, food is fun and interesting, with the most common model being snacks with attached toys. It originated in Japan, and thanks to numerous classic anime and game IPs, Japan's local food and play industry remains very prosperous, with toy company Bandai holding about 40% of the market share year-round. In many anime works, including "Chibi Maruko-chan" and "Detective Conan," the main characters love Kamen Rider, which often appears as a food giveaway. Japan's more famous food and play products also include Lotte's "Surprise" chocolate, where each snack comes with a prank sticker that can be used to tease others. Making food itself directly "delicious and fun" is even more considered food and play. And "delicious and fun" is also the value of cultural creative ice cream, and its commercial potential comes from this. In mid-October last year, listed company Haichang Ocean Park announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Kulami Holdings (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. acquired 100% equity of Beibeiping. Haichang Ocean Park stated that the group values Beibeiping's leading design capabilities and extensive channel layout, which is part of the group's IP new consumption business strategy. What Haichang Ocean Park possesses is the ability to obtain IP cooperation authorizations, including Ultraman, and the resources to export IP content consumption to channels such as scenic spots, theme parks, and commercial real estate. In fact, Beibeiping has long broken through the scenic spot channel restrictions, cooperating with theatrical films, with notable examples being "Doraemon: Nobita's Little Space War" and "The Wandering Earth 2." The Doraemon ice cream was launched through FamilyMart convenience store channels, causing a buying frenzy. Image source: Beibeiping's official Xiaohongshu account "The significance of cultural creative design is more about promoting the relationship between people and culture, narrowing the distance between people and culture," Zheng Aonan said. "Designers should grasp cutting-edge consumer desires to create leading designs." Of course, it's not just Haichang Ocean Park that sees the commercial space of a cultural creative ice cream. The established ice cream company Shenyang Zhongjie Ice Cream is considered a mature old enterprise with well-developed youth-oriented and diversified business development. Besides ice cream, it also has frozen dumplings and other frozen products, and has incubated multiple ice cream matrix brands. Currently, Zhongjie Ice Cream has also partnered with many scenic spots, responsible for the production and development of cultural creative ice creams. The beast-head ice cream at Beijing's Summer Palace is a Zhongjie Ice Cream product. Finally, objectively speaking, despite hitching a ride on the scenic spot bandwagon and cooperating with well-known IPs to broaden imagination, the so-called "cultural creative ice cream" in the food and play track still faces objective constraints of limited consumption channels and scenarios. According to the "2022-2023 China Ice Cream Industry Consumption Trend Monitoring and Case Study Report" released by iiMedia Research, in 2021, the market size of China's ice cream industry reached 160 billion yuan, and it will exceed 200 billion yuan by 2027. But first, in the vast market, Yili, Wall's, Mengniu, and Nestlé remain the "mainstays," holding the majority of market share. Second, from a consumer perspective, taste and price are still the primary considerations. In terms of price, the acceptance rate for 3-10 yuan is 70.9%. Fun and interesting ice cream is ultimately not mainstream enough, always satisfying the need for "novelty," and creativity will eventually dry up. For the broadly defined "cultural creative ice cream," this is the harsh reality.