Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino: A Journey
The straw is the horn.
When I first heard about Starbucks’ newest specialty drink, the dazzling pink & blue Unicorn Frappuccino, two thoughts leaped fully-formed into my head in this very specific order:
I need this.
What is it?
This is something that I thought would have plopped out of Dunkin’ Brands— not Starbucks, who in the last year, tried their hand at wine nights, piously crafted salads (at least here in Chicago), and nitro cold brew station installed in locations, where the sneering question of “what’ve you got on tap?” finally extends to coffee.
Images, articles, and even Starbucks’ own drink description puzzled me. What on Earth could it taste like? I was imagining strawberry milk, blue raspberry pixie stick — but “mango syrup” kept jumping out at me. Excuse me? Pink and blue, I get. That falls right into unicorn lore .. but mango? Maybe Starbucks has a keen insight into the nature of unicorns that I do not.
Mango, as we all know, is the boy king of fruit. And as one favors the lion in the court of animals, I was eager to try this mysterious drink.
At first, it’s like drinking a vague cake. Then, the sour hits. I’m not sure if it just caught me off guard, or if I hit a particularly concentrated spot, but it was Warhead-level sour that led me to realize oh my God. The straw is a horn.
Overall, it was okay. It didn’t blow my dick off, but it doesn’t grip me with deep regret. I went in expecting nothing, and I left mildly satisfied, but with a lot of questions. Why such a limited run (April 19–23)? What brought this about?
It feels like an ad exec let his five-year-old name and create Starbucks’ new drink. That’s the tender narrative. The more cynical one (past the magic & glitter) is a chamber of social media gurus, sales wizards, and engagement ninjas writing their desired result on the white board, and circling it 8 times— What’s a visually nuts, Snapchat-friendly product we can get spinning on the Trend-O-Wheel. Pink and blue. Unicorns? Millennials fucking love unicorns. And let’s throw some mango syrup in there too.
And then they worked backwards from there.
Either way, I’m content to slurp my way to the whipped cream. And really, isn’t that what life’s all about?