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Pretty power: Can unicorn frap protect phone in drop test?

Sure, unicorns are magical, but can they save a smartphone from Starbucks' loopy new drink?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper

Unicorns are miraculous creatures, but do their powers transfer to the sparkly-sour limited-edition Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino?

The GizmoSlip YouTube team loves to wrap smartphones in unexpected items and see if they can survive a fall -- for Easter, they slid a phone inside a chocolate bunny.

In their latest test, published Saturday, they decided to play around with Starbucks' new bizarre drink (our Amanda Kooser taste-tested it, and we rounded up Twitter's many jokes about it here). The team bought 12 -- count 'em, 12 -- unicorn frappuccinos from a Portland, Oregon, Starbucks. Then they took a gleaming new Samsung Galaxy S8 and slipped it into one of the drinks.

Good thing the phone is waterproof, because it had to sit in the frap for about an hour while they raced around to retrieve a forgotten component. And then, the true test.

Once you've watched the truly surprising video showing the unicorn frap holding the phone for a 100-foot (30 meter) drop, you might want to also check out the second video showing the rest of the unicorn fraps raining purply pink goodness from the sky.

The unicorn frappuccino special offer ends Sunday (at participating stores in the US, Canada and Mexico only) and whoever thought of this at Starbucks corporate had better be getting a raise for all the publicity the stunt garnered. Maybe pay them in unicorns.