Alcoholic Popsicles Are Trolling Swedish Booze Laws

What better way to get your summer started than by giving into two seasonal indulgences at the same time: ice cream and booze? And why not throw some festival music in there, too?

An ice cream company allowing youngsters to do just that is facing staunch opposition in Sweden, where it has already sold 1.5 million popsicles in one year. N1CE Company is using sleek branding and famous DJs to market what it calls "frozen cocktails."

The phallic ice pops contain five percent alcohol, and the flavours include mojito, piña colada, strawberry daiquiri, and margarita. And if social media posts are any indication, the frozen cocktails are aimed squarely at a fedora-wearing, MDMA glowstick-waving demographic. Sounds like no big deal, right?

But this eagerness to get summer festival-goers buzzing off of frozen booze has raised public health concerns in the Scandinavian nation, according to Sputnik News, as the company appears to have navigated Sweden's tough alcohol legislation as cleverly as it has social media.

Cause' moments are simply better when shared. Tag your festival partner(s)-in-crime! ? #N1CE #frozencocktails #festival

A photo posted by N1CE Company (@n1cecompany) on May 4, 2016 at 8:19am PDT

Because N1CE is ice cream-based, it is technically classified as a food product in Sweden and not an alcohol product, meaning that, unlike liquid booze, it can be sold in grocery stores. The country is notoriously tough on alcohol sales, with some of the highest prices in Europe and the State maintaining a rigid monopoly on alcohol sales since 1905.

But 1905 is soooo not lit, and, inevitably, youth-driven companies will take advantage of archaic alcohol laws. "The legislation is not adapted to the fact that alcohol can be served in forms other than as a beverage. We certainly see it as a problem, because marketing may hit children and young people," Kristina Wallin, a lawyer at the Swedish Consumer Agency, told Swedish news agency SVT.

Still, the reality is that you would have to eat a lot of five percent booze popsicles to get any kind of buzz going, and the ensuing brainfreeze could not possibly be as bad as the other stuff being passed around at summer EDM festivals.