ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610150050
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GRIESSMAYER STAFF WRITER
What's cold and tastes great and turns your tongue crazy colors?
Give up? They're Slurpees and they're cooler than ever.
To Slurpee lovers, nothing else is as fun and as cold to drink. Nothing else comes in wild flavors such as Tangerine Scream, Go Blue! and Electric Green Apple. And nothing else causes "Brainfreeze" quite like a Slurpee.
Well, this year the Slurpee turns 30 years old. It's hard to believe that something that's so cool to kids was also a favorite with their parents. In fact, just as many adults buy Slurpees as kids do.
"Everybody loves Slurpees," said Missy Alabran, a 7-Eleven manager in Roanoke. "You've got kids buying Slurpees and you've got older people buying Slurpees."
In the 30 years that Slurpees have been slurped, 7-Eleven has sold almost 5 billion of the frosty treats. That's enough Slurpees to circle the Earth eight times!
Almost 11 million Slurpees are sold each month in the United States alone, but people from all around the world - 16 countries - buy them. Alabran said overall, the most popular flavors at the Grandin Road 7-Eleven store are Coca Cola and Wild Cherry.
But for kids, the most popular flavors are the blue ones.
"Kids go by color," Alabran said. "Anything that looks wild is popular with them."
Another Slurpee flavor that's cool for kids is the suicide, which is a mix of all four Slurpee flavors. Most grown-ups think suicide Slurpees taste gross, but many kids love the ugly mix of colors and flavors.
"It's like a surprise with all the colors mixed together," said Emery Wallace, a third-grader at Crystal Spring Elementary School in Roanoke. "But I only get it if it's four flavors I like to begin with."
According to the Slurpee legend passed down from the 7-Eleven headquarters, the frozen drink was invented in 1959 by two men from Texas. They built a machine that mixed flavored syrup, water and carbon dioxide and then froze the ingredients. Carbon dioxide is a gas that's added to a drink to make it bubbly and fizzy like a soda.
By 1967, there was a Slurpee machine in every 7-Eleven store in America. After a bunch of funny radio advertisements, Slurpees started selling so fast that 7-Eleven workers couldn't keep enough of the syrup in the store. Some stores sold more than 1,000 Slurpees every day.
Slurpees were so popular in the 1970s that there was a Slurpee magazine, Slurpee buttons and many different kinds of Slurpee collector cups. There was even a Slurpee record for sale at 7-Elevens that taught people how to do a new dance: The Slurp.
Today, with the cool new Brainfreeze commercials on television, Slurpees are as popular as ever. Kids around Roanoke seem to love drinking them as much as kids anywhere.
Krystle Waller, a fourth-grader at the Roanoke Academy for Math and Science, drank a Season Opener Orange Slurpee last week at a 7-Eleven in Roanoke. Between slurps, she said what she thinks is the main reason people like Slurpees.
"They're just so cold," she said.
Krystle's cousin Ronnie Edwards, also a fourth-grader at the Roanoke Academy for Math and Science, has loved Slurpees ever since he had his first one - blueberry, of course - when he was just 2 years old.
Since then, he's had a lot of Slurpees, but blueberry is still his favorite. He agrees that it's the chilly temperature of a Slurpee - 28 degrees to be exact - that makes it so good.
"They're so nice and cold," he said. "And they come in so many different flavors."
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER/Staff. Roanokers (from left) Emery Wallace,by CNBRonnie Edwards and Krystle Waller, all 9, slurp up the latest in
Slurpees at a 7-Eleven. color.