Why would kids need special, neon-plastic, overpriced cookie cutters? Regular cookie cutters are not exactly knives, they can easily be used safely by kids. Really, the great way to get kids *actually* excited about things like cooking is teaching them to appropriately use the tools that grown-ups use. Perhaps not your 8" chefs knife, but certainly a cookie cutter.

...Actually, there's a bakery in Brooklyn that already does a variant of the pie-pop idea -- except they take it a step further. A shop called "Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies" makes key lime pies and nothing but -- and they make them in a 4" size. They sell a treat called the "Swingle" -- they take one of those 4" pies, put it on a popsicle stick, then freeze it and dip it in chocolate.

I am aware this sounds completely bizarre, but I subsist on these things on the weekends after I go kayaking on the pier just one block over from Steve's.

my goodness empresscallipygos! those sound absolutely amazing! do you think you could get Steve to open a branch in Iowa? hehe
i just read the pie pop post yesterday and i'm pretty into the idea (more so than cake pops). it looked pretty easy and fun. my love for strawberry rhubarb knows no boundaries and boy would some strawberry rhubarb pie pops be great at a picnic!