Care For A Tie-Dye Frappe?

Literally couldn't stop laughing while reading 'The Starbucks Tie-Dye Frappuccino tastes like Laffy Taffy and disenchantment' by Maura Judkis published in The Washington Post on 10 July 2019.

Aside from its usual city-specific summer sugar bombs across the world, Starbucks is offering a summer drink that tastes like tropical fruits; its coloring comes from turmeric, red beet and spiraling. How they came up with the name? 'Tie-Dye'. REALLY. Like an island vacation? Like Bali? Or Krabi, Fji and whatever exotic island? You know, summer! 🙄

What a grande strange trip the latest iteration is, then. Fifty years after Woodstock, the Tie-Dye Frappuccino is here to remind you that the idealism of the 1960s is dead.

Sitting in a Starbucks for its coffee and assorted other drinks was such a teenager and college thing. A Starbucks cafe is quite the venue to while away time. The moment I understood what caffeine and coffee is all about, I avoided Starbucks like plague. The last time I was interested in one was because I wanted to check out its original store at Pike Place Market in Seattle, and later on in 2014, its first Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room on the Hill. Its nitro cold brew aren't too bad, but I'm not a fan of iced coffee. I'd just head to the nearest bar for a...Guinness.

However, the one thing I didn't bother with- its Frappuccinos and its seasonal drinks. The whipped cream is just eiooowww. The first and only frappe I had sent me straight to the toilet for two days of diarrhea. Never again. Those annual cups of pumpkin spice latte amuse me to no end. I've not tried it. I love masala chai and pumpkin, but I'm not curious enough to try Starbucks' Christmas edition. I don't enjoy pumpkin spice latte in any version. It's like mulled wine, you know? It sounds so wonderful and festive, but it really sucks. I hate mulled wine and hot apple cider.

“In the Trump era when right-wing politics is so loud, I think tie-dye can be viewed as a peaceful, but defiant protest against conservatives,” R13 fashion designer Chris Leba told the magazine. 

If splotchy rainbow dresses and a banana milkshake are the state of the resistance, the resistance sure is in trouble. 

Instead of referencing politics or the ’60s, Starbucks’s promotional materials are all about nostalgia for summer camp and childhood crafts. The company is so eager to avoid its previous political minefields that it released a rainbow drink 10 days after Pride ended. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” has become, “Buy it, sip it, ‘gram it.”

The tweets coming out from Starbucks baristas are way funny, if they're for real. I won't know the taste of this Tie-Dye Frappuccino. It's just going to be cloying, way sweet and full of disappointment. I'm not drinking it. But here what the writer thought of the frappe,

This is the dawning of the age of Frappquarius: a pale yellow drink with streaks of green and pink throughout, and a whipped cream topping sprinkled with pink, purple and blue. The colors come from natural sources — beet, turmeric and spirulina — which is a pretty hippie recipe, Starbucks. Press materials don’t identify the flavor, but I’d describe it as artificial banana and disenchantment, with a touch of peach. It looks like a Grateful Dead T-shirt that took a few spins through a Vitamix with some Laffy Taffy and magic markers, but only for the first three minutes after it’s handed to you. After that, all the colors settle to the bottom, and it evens out to a pale shade of yellow with a layer of pink-gray sludge at the bottom. It coats your mouth and tongue with a viscous film of sugar and has an aftertaste that lingers like sour milk.