I Tried Starbucks' Unicorn Frappuccino!

Fleeting thoughts on the mega-limited-time-only Starbucks beverage you've probably already forgotten about ...

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Sometimes, you just experience something so ephemeral that even as it happens in front of you it feels like something nostalgic from 20 years ago. I got that sensation when I tried Burger King's infamous "Halloween Burger," when I tried Pizza Hut's ill-received "Hot Dog Bites Pizza" and I definitely felt it when I tried Hardee's "Most American Thickburger." And - without question - I felt those odd pangs of insta-nostalgia as soon as I wrapped my lips around Starbucks' hyper-limited-time-only Unicorn Frappuccino.

By the time this thing has been posted, the heavily-hyped Unicorn Frappuccino has been out of Starbucks stores for nearly a full month. Most chains only carried the LTO beverage for about a week, and a much publicized ingredients shortage meant that many Starbucks across the States couldn't even make it for customers at all. So it's one of those things you had a super limited amount of time to try, and if you missed out on it - well, this is one of those things you may never, EVER get to slurp upon ever again. 

Of course I acknowledge the whole damn thing is just a crass marketing ploy by Starbucks - a feverish, marketing-engineered cultural phenomenon basically tailor-made for the "I've gotta' Instagram everything" crowd. It's outlandish and gaudy and weird simply for the sake of being weird, but really, what's so bad about that? Like that one girl in drama class with pink hair that always wears neon blue lipstick, this shit is supposed to try too hard, and that's kinda' its charm.

Aesthetically, at least, the Unicorn Frappuccino is pretty easy to describe.The thing is Barney the Dinosaur-purple, with a Smurf-blue squiggle running around it. The top of the beverage is basically a giant dollop of whipped creme, with a smattering of ultra-tart, sour raspberry artificial flavoring as adornments. So yeah, just in terms of pure visuals, it's basically what happens when you blend that gay Teletubby over ice and coffee and hawk it for $5 a cup.

Now, the taste, on the other hand, requires a little bit more insight. According to the official Starbucks website, the primary taste of the beverage is supposed to be mango, but personally, I just didn't see it (well, more like taste it, but you know what I'm trying to say here.) Yeah, I know they say it's supposed to have a dominant passion fruit taste, but really, the "pink powder" add-in is what really runs this particular show. Now, the official 'bucks website says the stuff is made out of a bizarre combination of artificial flavors (including cherry, sweet potato and even radish!) but deep down, we all know what kinda' make-believe fruit flavor the chain is really shoving down our throats - it's fucking raspberry. Don't give me none of that mess about the "blue drizzle" having white chocolate mocha sauce in it, this thing more or less tastes identical to a raspberry-flavored Slush Puppy, only sludgier and with more of a chunky, dairy-taste and consistency. Now, per Starbucks' own marketing materials, the beverage itself is supposed to change colors when you rotate the drink, but I didn't see that many revolving hues. Oddly enough, that little blue streak thingy remains almost perfectly consistent as you drink the motherfucker, and while it does taste noticeably thicker and pulpier than the rest of the drink, it doesn't really taste that divergent from the main raspberry-slush flavoring.

Which brings us to the speckles of artificially flavored sour grape. No, I mean literal sour grapes, not the figurative kind that almost everybody interprets incorrectly. Up top the Unicorn Frappuccino has a pretty big splotch of what I think is supposed to be sour raspberry (or maybe even sour blueberry) but really, it tastes more like super tarty artificial grapes than anything else. And rest assured, this shit IS STRONG. Think about the most potent Warhead or Sour Patch Kid you've ever eaten, and I guarantee you the syrup Starbucks used on this thing is at least 100 times more potent. Because I ain't got no gumption, I decided to lick the liquid residue off the top of my cup and I almost went into convulsions - this shit isn't just sour, it's a-mouthful-of-Sour-Patch-Kids-mixed-with-lemon-juice sour. Strangely enough, all that industrial strength sour juice doesn't really meddle with the overall beverage flavor as much as you think it would. Granted, it gives the raspberry slush a noticeable sour blueberry aftertaste, and once you get down to the last clump of mushy creme at the bottom of the cup it does taste remarkably like standard sour cream, but somehow, someway, it doesn't turn the beverage as a whole into an undrinkable, taste-bud-torturing elixir.

So, on the whole, I really can't complain too much about the overall product. Its aesthetics get a solid A for effort in my book, and the super fruity/kinda' sour milkshake consistency and flavor is definitely unlike anything you've probably ever tried at the franchise. Nutrition-wise, I reckon you already know what you're getting into here. At 410 calories a cup, it's pretty much on par with most of Starbucks' other event drinks, with about 10 grams worth of saturated fat lurking in the plastic container just waiting to make you fat, too. Probably the craziest thing about the beverage as a whole, I suppose, is the amount of sugar inside the frappuccino - an astounding 59 grams. That comes out to about 15 tablespoons of sugar, which yeah, is prolly about as bad for you as it sounds.

At the end of the day, it's a bit difficult determining the import of the Unicorn Frappuccino on contemporary pop culture/consumer culture history. Seeing as how the thing was literally only around for seven days, its general influence is pretty minimal, but considering how crazy everybody went for it when it was available at stores, you really can't write it off as an inconsequential relic of 2017, neither. The beverage was indeed a true First World consumer phenomenon, something so ubiquitous within the social media sphere that it was practically impossible to not be aware of the product's existence even if you never saw a single ad for it. I guess in the long haul the real importance of the Unicorn Frappuccino lies within the way it was marketed; eschewing traditional advertising methods, they just dropped they shit in stores for a week and let the Instagram-Uber-Alles novelty culture do all the heavy lifting for them. And needless to say, that approach just plain worked. The thing sold like gangbusters, everybody on Facebook was talking about it and posting pictures of it online and even if you don't like Starbucks or coffee in general, there's no way you couldn't have heard about it. Love or hate Starbucks, few companies out there know how to make "event foods" work, and even fewer know how to captivate (if not capitalize) on the post-Myspace cultural hivemind.

And come on - are you really going to bitch and complain about people showing off photos of food that looks like something the Lost Boys in Hook would've had for breakfast? I think not, America. I think fuckin' not.

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A Chick-Fil-A Breakfast Buffet!?!

Just outside of Atlanta, there's a one-of-a-kind Chick-fil-A restaurant that serves a full breakfast buffet. I went there, and it was every bit as amazing as it sounds.

If you really want to experience the best Georgia has to offer, you really have to get outside of Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, there are some pretty cool sites in A-Town -- drive-ins and superhero-themed pizza places and an entire museum dedicated to soda propaganda among them -- but outside the perimeter is where you will find all of the really, really noteworthy destinations.

For example, in Summerville, there is an outdoor museum dedicated solely to the artwork of Howard Finster, a probably psychopathic pastor whose portfolio consists almost entirely of apocalyptic paintings and sculptures of people with Down Syndrome heads. Similarly, Ashburn is home to the Crime and Punishment Museum, whose exhibits include a replica of electric chairs and authentic KKK apparel. It is adjoined by a local favorite restaurant, named, fittingly enough, the Last Meal Cafe. And under the penumbra of Stone Mountain, you will find Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation headquarters, which is home to a life-size bronzed statute of the beloved rapper/convicted racist.

Nestled in Woodstock is yet another must-stop "what-the?" roadside attraction ... or should I say "event," rather.

This one requires just a bit of a history lesson. You see, Chick-fil-A was not the first restaurant venture undertaken by Truett Cathy. Long before Chick-fil-A was a zygote of an idea, he opened a series of restaurants called the Dwarf House.

I'm not exactly 100 percent, certain but I am fairly sure the concept never made its way out of Georgia. Even now, however, the old buildings dot the outside-the-perimeter landscape, although almost all of them have since been rebranded as "official" Chick-fil-A businesses. Although I recall visiting one of the old-school Dwarf House restaurants as a kid, for the life of me, I can't really remember anything about the menu or even its general ambiance. This being the early 1990s, though, I assure you it was nothing like the modern, sanitary Chick-fil-A experience we all know and love -- I don't recall much about the brand, but I most certainly do recall the restaurants being dirty, dingy and very musty-smelling.

The restaurant in Woodstock is sort of a fusion concept -- basically, it appears to be a fairly new Chick-fil-A restaurant attached to the weathered remnants of an old Dwarf House establishment. I suppose the photographs do a good enough job of describing the general concept, but for the visually-impaired, it's basically just a red-brick facade with a bright red miniature door and something of a medieval cottage motif welded onto a modern-day restaurant space ... or is it the other way around?

The anteroom (that's one 1 percenters call a "lobby," in case you were wondering) is really a site to behold. It's hard to describe, but somehow,they managed to cram a to-scale midget-sized Hobbit house just inside the foyer, complete with min-stained glass windows and an operable door that the wee ones can actually run in and out of. Thankfully, they also put a deadbolt on that sucker, because you just know at some point, some nefarious crook or robber tried to squeeze himself through it during the off hours.

Of course, the entrance also has some of the expected Chick-fil-A signage, but for the most part, it doesn't feel anything at all like the average branded restaurant. I got REALLY excited seeing this castle door mock-up at the double doors, but as it turns out, that's not actually a normal decoration. According to one of the suspiciously well-groomed teenage employees, they put up the display to herald some sort of mother/son function, which, yeah, is just a wee bit on the creepy side.

As for the rest of the restaurant, it is more or less was your standard Chick-fil-A diner, albeit just a teensy bit larger than the average store. I visited the place on an early Saturday morning, and it was quite busy -- apparently, this particular branch also does breakfast buffets on Friday mornings and Thursday evenings, too.

So, after plopping down my $9.49 plus state and local taxes, I hit up the metal queue. If you are not familiar with how buffets work (and judging from just how surprisingly popular my write up on Golden Corral has been in developing countries, I am assuming that's quite a number of you), you pay a flat fee and eat a virtually unlimited amount of foodstuffs, which are constantly being replenished by sweaty chefs at breakneck speeds. So in short ... it's the most American thing that has ever existed, or ever will exist.

Comparatively, there wasn't a whole lot of variety offered this morning. All in all, I counted up nine different foodstuffs in the line-up, which is a pretty thin number, especially compared to competing chains like Shoney's, which generally offer enough all-you-can-eat goods to qualify as a miniature grocery store.

That said, you really can't argue with the quality of the food, though. Pretty much everything on tap was delicious, from the golden-flaky biscuits to the super crispy bacon to little sausage roll thingies. In addition to the home fries and scrambled eggs (the staple of any decent breakfast,) you also get a healthy amount of sides, including grits, chunky gravy and what appears to be apple cobbler. Of course, the big draw, of course, is the endless tray of chicken patties, which is pretty much reason enough to visit this place. No lie, folks: I ate ten of them, and almost throw up on the cashier woman while paying my meal ticket.

To be fair, Chick-fil-A is a pretty contentious business, and I would be telling you a flat out whopper if I said I wasn't just a smidge uncomfortable dining there. For one thing, there were a LOT of people doing scripture readings -- I mean, practice what you feel like practicing and all, but shit, what kind of glances do you think people would give me and my buddies if we decided to have a Koran study at Subway, or a dramatic reading of the Satanic Bible at Taco Bell? Secondly, there were a TON of cops in there. Like, at least three or four squad cars worth, and they were sharing a table with a gaggle of girls who could not have been older than juniors in high school. And also, one of them appeared to be Jewish, as evident by the Hebrew tattoos he had on his arm, which I am pretty sure is against Jewish teachings, now that I think about it. And then, there were the servers, who kept telling me it was "their pleasure" to serve me. Now, I know it's corporate policy and all, but I know you really don't give a hoot if I need a coffee refill -- and by the way, their proprietary brew is kinda' on the crappy side, too.

By their very nature, I think buffets are supposed to be kind of scummy. The waiters are supposed to be distant and despondent, providing you with just the bare minimum amount of interface to facilitate you giving them your credit card. Also, the lighting is supposed to be drab and dreary, to cover up the fact that you're eating food that likely has a bunch of fly eggs and eyelashes embedded in it, and that the utensils are just sorta washed. That kind of runs counterproductive to the entire Chick-fil-A corporate mantra, which is customer service and cleanliness ... the precise two things that buffets attempt to stamp out entirely.

Still, the experience is probably worth a detour if you are ever in the Atlanta area. It's a bit on the pricey side, but as stated before, it's basically your only opportunity to ever drop a dozen Chick-fil-a patties on one ceramic plate and tear into them in public without people thinking you are a feral child or something. And it's also astoundingly, ironically close to a sex toy outlet, which means God really does have a sense or humor (or at least, the planning commission in Woodstock really doesn't care about getting re-elected.)

So, to recap? If you like gluttony, processed poultry and people into Jesus, you'll probably really like this place. And if you're a vegetarian, an atheist, a homosexual, someone who is no longer married to his first wife or an individual ready to storm the offices of the Family Research Council? Well, there is a Del Taco pretty close by, I guess...

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