Edible 90's Nostalgia - Lisa Frank Cookies

I would love to label myself as an 80's baby, but I arrived too late into the decade. Like it or not, I'm a 90's kid. (But I'm not a normal 90's kid, I'm a cool 90's kid.) 

 

One of my 90's-kid hobbies was collecting stickers in an album, counting them, and never sticking them on anything. Ever. Partially because my parents wouldn't let me, and partially because I didn't want to "waste" a sticker. It's a weird hang-up I still wrestle with. It took me until I was 30 to place a sticker my PC tower, and not feel like I had just ruined it forever. But, thanks to my bizarre sticker hang-ups, I still have an album full of stickers from my childhood, and some of the best ones are Lisa Frank. 

Holographic hip-hop-bears, strawberry-scented white Maltese dogs, and ballerina bunnies. Lisa Frank stickers were some of the best, and some of the weirdest. It seems like they quietly faded into obscurity, but now that former children are adults, with money, and desperate for any small bit of happiness we can grasp...Lisa Frank has made a resurgence. It's mainly rainbow-unicorn-based, which wasn't really my thing, but I still had to buy these. 

Let's see how they taste and take the quiz to find out my "unicorn name!"

Unicorn Kisses and Dragon Whisper Dreams - Do Kids Even Like Seltzer?

Impossibly Good Polar Seltzers - BJ's Whole Sale

I hate buying food online, so even though I was dying to try Polar's unicorn-themed seltzer, I decided to wait until I found it in stores. After a few years of casually checking the seltzer aisles of every store I went to, I was at BJ's grabbing supplies for my hoard of cats and my foster cats (yeah, that's a thing I do now, my animal-insta is @pepperjackpoms), I saw this box-set of mystical seltzers aimed at kids. Unicorns included! Even though I felt like the price tag was a bit steep for 4-packs of itty bitty seltzer cans, I didn't want this to slip through my fingers, so I bought it anyway. 

Do kids even like seltzer? I mean, I know it's trendy for adults right now, but as a kid I hated the stuff. Is there a market for this or is the main target chumps like me? 

Whomever their target audience is, they really went all out on this packaging. Look at these things! 

"There are no unicorns, so there are no rules!"

Unicorn Cupcakes - Walmart 

We seem to be at the tail end of the unicorn trend. It was going strong for several years, with notable detour through mermaids, before taking a shocking left turn into llamas. I'm not sure how we went from magical creatures to a real-life furry animal, but, here we are. 

I myself am not a unicorn-person, but I have several unicorn-people in my life with ages ranging from single digits, to nearly 30, so I get the appeal. They're magical, they're colorful, they're a symbol of innocence, and they inspired Peter S. Beagle to write one of my favorite books, "The Last Unicorn." (I actually met him at Otakon once, he was a really cool guy and they totally screwed him over the animated movie rights.) I'm not shocked that unicorns were trending, and I'm not even annoyed by the trend itself, but I am annoyed by how lazy most of these products seem to be.

Liquid Terminator Water Ice?

Don't judge my badly chipped polish too harshly!

Unicorn Water Ice  - Rita's Italian Ice

The foodie fascination with unicorn-everything has been going strong for about two years now. (Although there has recently been a notable detour through mermaids.) And I get it, unicorns are fun, they're colorful, they're magical, but...they don't taste like anything.

We all know unicorns do not exist, and the concept of them isn't associated with any particular flavor or food imagery, so what classifies something as "unicorn" flavored? Well, according to Starbucks (whom I blame for all of this), unicorns taste like mango, sour blue raspberry, and immediate regret. Project 7 thinks unicorns taste like tropical fruit. Which pretty much concludes why foray into unicorn-flavored territory. Until now. So, what is Rita's take?

Unicorn Gum? I give up. (Quickie Review)

Fairytale Fruit Project 7 Gum - Target

I don't even know what to say for myself. I keep saying I won't go back to Project 7, because of the artificial sweeteners, but their gimmicks sucker me in every time. 

This is unicorn gum. UNICORN. GUM. What am I? Made of stone? So yeah, I don't have high hopes for this, but it's pretty and I wanted to photograph it, so... here we are. 

Functionality-wise, the packaging is the same packet-style as all the other Project 7 gums I've reviewed in the past. Plastic foiled packet, re-seal-able, matte-finish, etc. It photographs like a dream and the colorful fruity unicorn illustration is Juicy Fruit meets Lisa Frank. It's wonderful. 

#TBT Remember Starbuck's Unicorn Frappe?

This was a post I started writing a LONG time ago, 

thought it'd be fun to clean it up, add pics, and post it for today's #tbt  

To celebrate (finally) having hot water in my home, I took a break from home repair last week to pop into Starbucks. (Something I never do.) Why? Because of unicorns. 

That's right. I went against my better judgement and bought into the fancy unicorn drink craze along with all the other food bloggers and Instagramers. What can I say? It's pretty, and I'm a sucker. 

So, how was it?

Cotton Candy (Unicorn) Milkshakes!

Frozen Bean Cotton Candy Frozen Drink Mix - Walmart .99 cents

The days are shorter, the temperature is dropping, and Pumpkin-pocalypse 2017 has invaded the grocery store shelves. If there was ever a time for a (denial-laced) summery unicorn-themed cotton candy milkshake, it's now. 

Today's post is part two of my Frozen Bean drink mix trilogy. We started with plain ol' Cookies n' Cream and now we've moved on to fabulous cotton candy.

Grab your cozy denial-blankets, ignore all adult responsibilities, and marvel at my decorative paper unicorn straw, as we sail off into a sugar-induced unicorn hallucination.