Polar Bear, Inc. (Polar) is a small-sized publicly traded company engaged in the production and distribution of ice cream. Polar has been using the LIFO inventory cost flow assumption for many years, and at the beginning of the year had a LIFO layer of 800,000 gallons of sweetener (high-fructose corn syrup HFCS-42) at an average LIFO price of $1.08 per gallon. Except for the dairy products used to produce the ice cream, the sweetener is Polar’s largest and most costly inventory item.