On 7-Eleven #BYOCupDay, Slurpees fill garbage cans, planters
The convenience store chain lets customers fill up on Slurpees using almost any receptacle they can drag into a store and stick under the spigot. And fans of the drink take full advantage.
7-Eleven's trademark cold, sugary Slurpees are turning 50 this year, and to celebrate, the convenience store chain gifted customers with Bring Your Own Cup Day for the second year in a row. For two days.
For this glorious and sticky occasion, people could fill up on Slurpees using cups that don't have the 7-Eleven logo on them -- and "cup" is a very broad definition. All good lawyers would argue that any watertight object that carries liquid counts as a cup, and a store that sells a cup that can hold 64 ounces of Mountain Dew isn't in any position to argue that claim.
On Friday and Saturday, for $1.50 (roughly £1, AU$2) 7-Eleven's US customers responded with some mighty creative vessels for quenching their thirst for the summer -- and possibly into next spring. 7-Eleven did establish some boundaries on the Slurpee website, such as requiring that "cups" were watertight, clean, could "fit upright through a 10" hole" and not be a living thing like a dog. Seriously, that was one of the rules. That means someone must have tried it.
Those rules still left plenty of wiggle room for customers to turn all sorts of items into Slurpee cups, like this guy and his rice cooker.
This next group of dudes immediately made it onto my list of favorite Bring Your Own Cup Day participants because they took me back to my younger days. My friend Jamii and I would ride our bikes down to the Time Saver on Franklin Avenue in New Orleans, where we'd pour ourselves a huge Icee and use the change left over to play a full, four-quarter game of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition. I wish I could go back in time "Quantum Leap"-style so I could relive that moment and steal these buddies' idea of using a massive planter to get their Slushie fix.
It seems unthinkable now but there could come a time when 7-Eleven runs out of Slurpees or whatever ingredients are used to make them. So unless there's a country with an underground stockpile of high-fructose corn syrup that we haven't tapped into yet, it might be a good idea to stock up on Fanta Pina Colada or Pepsi Cherry Vanilla Slurpee now in case of an emergency. Take a tip from this guy who filled up on his favorite Slurpee flavor with a gas canister and one of those massive brandy glasses you see being used at bachelorette parties or by heavy drinkers who want to feel smaller.
Whenever we get hot and need to cool down, water always seems to be the most logical choice for liquid refreshment. Sometimes, however, you feel like being a little naughty and throwing something sugary down your gullet when you need to cool off. This guy came up with a way to turn his water cooler into something that dispenses delicious rainbow colored Slurpees at home without voiding the warranty on his water cooler dispenser.
These friends who used a garbage can to stock up on Slurpee slush are now the Scarface of Slurpees. From now on, no one who wants a Sour Patch Watermelon Slurpee will be able to get one unless they go through them. As Homer Simpson once said, "First you get the sugar, then you get the power."
Finally, if the Peabody Awards are handing out medals for the Most Creative Way to Take Advantage of a Corporate Promotion next year, it should go to these guys. They taped together eight Double Gulp cups from 7-Eleven to creative a tri-tandem drinking vessel that holds 512 ounces of Slurpee slush that they can drink together. If the gods of Olympus had to-go cups, they probably looked something like this.