KEY POINTS:
The floral bikini Colyn Devereux-Kay wore in the first Tip Top Trumpet television commercial (see 'more pictures' above) is modest by today's standards, but the skimpiness of the swimsuit raised a few eyebrows when the ad first aired.
It was 1963 when Mrs Devereux-Kay and model Maysie Bestall-Cohen lazed beside a then-fashionable kidney-shaped pool as the first in a long list of people to promote the icecream.
Others include NZ Idol host Dominic Bowden and supermodel Rachel Hunter, who bit into a Trumpet on the small screen, fresh-faced in a yellow convertible VW before hitting the world's runways.
Mrs Devereux-Kay recalled her experience as she joined Tip Top in its 70th birthday celebrations yesterday.
"It was a nice, sunny day," she said, her two-piece "slightly breezier" than that worn by Mrs Bestall-Cohen.
The bikinis were still "quite new" at the time, she said, particularly on television, and the ad caused something of a splash.
The director had just one request: "He said, 'girls, you need to go and put more stuffing in the top part of your swimsuits'," said Mrs Devereux-Kay. They dutifully went for the tissue box.
Mrs Devereux-Kay put to rest the suggestion real icecreams weren't used during the filming.
"They were vanilla with chocolate and the nuts," she said. "They gave us a new one to bite into for each take - it must have been around six or seven."
Eating so many didn't put Mrs Devereux-Kay off the icecream: she still enjoys one most Sundays on the return trip from her family's holiday home.
Tip Top was registered in 1936 when businessmen Len Malaghan and Albert Hayman expanded their chain of milk bars.
Its first single serve novelty icecream was the Eskimo Pie, launched in the early 1950s.
