By Jelisa Castrodale | FoodAndWine.Com

Troy Warren for CNT #Foodie

The “Whoomp! (There It Is!)” rap group says they knew the nostalgia-inducing ad was going to be something special from the beginning.

The NFL season started over the weekend and Tom Brady is still doing Tom Brady things, Saints quarterback Jameis Winston gave the city of New Orleans five touchdown passes’ worth of temporary happiness, and New York Jets fans are probably already over this entire thing. But the biggest takeaway from Week One is that we’re in for another season of bopping to “French vanilla, rocky road, chocolate, peanut butter, cookie dough” during almost every commercial break between now and early February.

Oh heck yes, Geico’s “Scoop, There It Is” commercial is back, and it still absolutely slaps, from the second Atlanta hip-hop duo Tag Team materializes behind a startled mom’s kitchen island to DC Glenn’s final celebratory shout of “SPRINKLES!” And if you’ve been humming those two bars to yourself since… forever, you’re not the only one. “I do it too,” Tag Team’s Steve Gibson, told Food & Wine. “It sticks in your head. It can be like Groundhog Day for me, like it’s in my head again?”

Glenn and Gibson, whose multi-platinum single “Whoomp! (There It Is)” was reworked for the ad, said that they knew from the start that the commercial had something special. “I knew it was going to be the bomb the whole time. I did,” Glenn said, laughing. “I was trying to find faults with it, and the only problem I could find was that me pointing at the ice cream was a millisecond off. Everything else was straight. It dropped on Christmas Day after everyone had eaten, and my phone has not stopped ringing ever since.”

One of those calls was to ask Tag Team to film a follow-up commercial, and another involved turning those onscreen scoops of ice cream into a real-life dessert. Geico reached out to Mikey Cole, the founder and owner of New York’s Mikey Likes It Ice Cream, to create a flavor that included that list of ingredients that we’ve all long since memorized. The resulting ice cream — which, of course, is called “Scoop! There It Is!” — features a vanilla base, with cookie dough, peanut butter swirl, and chocolate-covered marshmallows mixed in. (You’ll have to add your own sprinkles.)

“In this [new] ad that we’re doing, all the dancers had a pint of the ice cream, and the shot was for them to take a spoonful and eat some,” Glenn said. “I’m telling you, those kids ate that ice cream like a dog that hasn’t been fed in a day and a half. I mean, you could just see it on their faces: they weren’t even looking at the director anymore. He was doing something else, and on camera, they were still eating the ice cream. When the [props] guy said they needed the ice cream back, they were kind of in their emotions about it.”

If you’d like to get your hands on your own pint of “Scoop! There It Is,” you’ll have to dance for it. Geico is hosting a social media dance contest giveaway, and winners will be chosen from all of the entries that are uploaded between Friday, September 17 and Friday, October 1. Those who want to participate need to follow @GEICO on TikTok or Instagram, film themselves dancing to the “Scoop! There It Is” track, and tag @GEICO and #GEICOIceCream in the video caption.

And yes, Tag Team will be watching those entries. “It’s going to be bananas, because I know that everybody’s going to be doing backflips in their Tiktoks or the milk crate challenge while they’re eating ice cream, whatever it is,” Glenn said. “I know it’s going to be overwhelming because people are going to want that ice cream. That’s what we’re hoping for.”

As for the duo themselves, their calendars are getting increasingly busy. “We do a lot of live shows,” Gibson said. “That’s always on the menu.” They’ll also be performing at halftime for some NFL and NBA games, and said they were “campaigning” to be part of the entertainment at February’s Super Bowl.

“All those lessons learned over the last 28 years [since “Whoomp! (There It Is!)” was released] have served us in ways that we could not have imagined,” Glenn added. “We’re not young kids who want to be rock stars anymore. We’re older gentlemen who are trying to create pension plans. That changes what you want in life and the things you want to accomplish. That’s what [the commercial] did more than anything: it opened avenues for us to learn and to create. It’s something even greater than I could’ve ever imagined.”