Two police officers in the Keller, Texas, United States area secured an ice cream fridge in a supermarket. This happened after the spread of a viral video of a customer licking the ice cream at the supermarket as reported by Fox 4 News, July 5, 2019.
"The only Blue Bell ice cream that will be licked at Keller during the weekend is the ice cream that you have bought," wrote the Keller Police in his upload on Facebook.
The Keller police also included photos of two police officers named Corporal Clark and Officer Bryans who were seen standing guard in front of an ice cream fridge at the supermarket.
Meanwhile, on July 4, 2019, Walmart supermarket branch of Corpus Christi, Texas, USA uploaded a photo of an employee armed with a water gun guarding the ice cream fridge at the supermarket. But the upload was later deleted by Walmart.
This was done in response to the Blue Bell challenge video that had viral on June 29, 2019, where an unnamed woman licked a Blue Bell vanilla ice cream in a supermarket in Lufkin, Texas, USA.
In the video, this woman takes a box of ice cream, opens the lid, licks the top of the ice cream and returns the ice cream box that has been licked onto the shelf.
The video, which was watched by 12 million people on Twitter social media, provoked a shocked reaction from netizens and triggered an investigation from the Lufkin police force. The woman, who came from San Antonio, Texas, USA, was finally detained by police on charges of contaminating Blue Bell ice cream.
This video also became a viral phenomenon titled #cecreamchallenge, which challenged others to follow the woman and join in licking the ice cream sold in supermarkets without being bought.
The followers of the phenomenon themselves began to deal with the law. As reported by the New York Times on July 8, 2019, an unemployed man named Lenise Lloyd Martin III was detained in Louisiana, USA after trying to do the same.
Martin was arrested on charges of damaging the product before buying and uploading a crime for publicity, which is prohibited by law in the state of Louisiana.
This phenomenon also made the Blue Bell ice cream producers immediately look for licked ice cream and attract Blue Bell ice cream with similar taste from the Walmart Lufkin branch.