Slush Puppie
Neon syrup and soft pellet ice from the countertop machine at the convenience store, the skating rink, the community pool — anywhere a kid had a dollar. The cup had a puppy in a knit hat on it, and if you saved enough of them, prizes.
Slush Puppie was founded in 1970 by salesman Will Radcliff, who spotted a slush-making machine at a Chicago trade fair and saw an empire. He and his family coined the name — a play on "hush puppy" — while sitting on their front porch in Cincinnati. The product was elegantly simple: flavored syrup mixed with water and frozen into soft pellets of ice in liquid, a texture unlike any other frozen drink, dispensed from branded countertop machines.
Those machines went everywhere kids congregated: convenience stores, skating-rink snack bars, community pools, bowling alleys. The mascot — a white puppy in a knit winter hat and a blue "S" shirt — grinned from every cup, and the brand ran collect-the-points cup promotions redeemable for prizes, a tradition that survives in today's "Paw Points" program. For a certain kind of 90s summer afternoon, a blue tongue was the receipt.
Radcliff sold the company to Cadbury Schweppes in 2000 for $16.6 million, and J&J Snack Foods has owned the brand since 2006. Slush Puppie is still sold worldwide — same dog, same hat, same brain freeze.
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