More fun to buy it from a vender off the stree corner in your neighborhod on a hot summer day! People hav way too many gadgets in the kitchen. Most they dont use.

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Making your own syrups shouldn't be very difficult, and would be significantly tastier, I wager. Bring equal parts sugar and water to a boil to make a simple syrup. Then to flavor it, you can take just about any fresh fruit (or vegetable... been a big fan of frozen rhubarb concoctions lately, myself), simmer it in water to cover until it gets soft and goopy, then run it through a chinois (or other fine-meshed strainer), reduce that a little further and mix with the syrup.

Sounds more complicated than it is, and it's hard to screw up... and fun and tasty.

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I love these things.
I once had the Snoopy snow cone maker that was mentioned here quite a while ago.
And yes, the syrups were the most challenging part of it all. I ended up experimenting with Kool Aid and various lemonades to get it all to work.

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DaVinci Gourmet has better syrups.

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i've bought a bunch of ice shavers (manual and electric) from various stores, and returned them all. the ice that comes out is way too coarse, unlike the shaved ice i've had in hawaii or the philippines. the only ice shavers that i've found that give a fine enough ice are ones found in asian food stores. the one i use is a manual japanese model that my family bought before i was born.

as for comment #1 (MJ), i live in columbus, ohio. believe me, if i could just go out and buy a shaved ice from someone on the street corner, i would. not every city has street vendors.

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Comment to TR from Ohio. Live in NC and even though the ice cream trucks dont come on a regular basis when I was a child. Here we have a large hispanic community and you can get mango and other such flavors they travel in truck and bikes. When I hear that music I think of childhood.You can even buy them at the grocers I still think its too much trouble. But thats me! I Will spend a couple of hours to pick the right wine..........LOL

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The snow cone syrups are readily available at Target and come in a variety of different flavours.

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food pet peeve #2:
snow cones are found on the continental us
SHAVE ice is found in hawaii
there IS NO such thing as shavED ice, get it straight :)

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I use a manual ice shaver during all the summer, but I don't like the syrups, what I do is ice some kind of tea, I specially like fresh mint tea, and then shave it! In my country we call this "granizado", and the lemonade granizado is the most popular, but there is also coffe and other fruit varieties

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