Willy Wonka's candy inventions are as erroneously named as they are innovative. Nerds are actually quite popular, Everlasting Gobstoppers dissolve several millennia sooner than forever and Laffy Taffy, in all its uniform ruddiness, can be very austere. In all likelihood, the snozzberries on his lickable wallpaper taste more like kumquats.

Public deceit isn't his worst offense. Oompa Loompas are basically slave labor. Sure Loompaland has its share of hornswogglers and whangdoodles, but that's no justification to smuggle its natives into your vault of a factory and pay them in cacao pods. Maybe his political shortcomings shouldn't negate his culinary genius. Even the clean-cut Beatles were fairly scurrilous in private life, and we still like Abbey Road. We digress.

The Willy Wonka Candy Company has recently released some frozen desserts called Peel-a-Pops. They legitimately look like bananas and are sheathed in an edible husk that can be stripped away in four segments to reveal a soft center of vanilla ice cream. The peel has the consistency and flavor of an actual banana peel, or at least how you'd imagine the texture and taste of a peel -- somewhat gummy and tangy. It has the gelatinous give of the thick skin of some banana-flavored pudding. That sounds unpalatable, but it has a tantalizing je ne sais quoi. The ice cream at the core is everything a soft-serve aficionado could desire: creamy, soft but firm, and with that wonderful, albeit synthetic, vanilla essence. Overall, the spectacle of peeling open your ice cream like a tropical fruit more than rectifies however off putting the act of eating it may be for some people.

Well done, Wonka, you wily wizard.

The pops are available in banana or grape flavor at supermarkets nationally.