Starbucks brought back its famously colorful Unicorn Frappuccino for one weekend in August, and customers showed up in enormous numbers. The company says it sold more than 2 million of the drinks at North American company-operated stores alone.
Then a very different image began spreading online: a trash can near one of Los Angeles’ best-known social-media selfie spots with discarded cups inside, including several bright pink Unicorn Frappuccinos that appeared to have much of the drink still inside.
Fashion Times shared footage from TikTok creator @sofia1089, who filmed the bin near the famous Paul Smith Pink Wall on Melrose Avenue. Her caption took a swipe at the drink itself, saying it had tasted bad since its original 2017 run. The image itself also bears the text, “performative LA at its finest.”
The scene quickly fueled accusations that people were buying the photogenic drink, posing with it against the equally photogenic wall and then throwing it away. The debate is further muddied because the video shows waste but cannot establish why each customer abandoned their drink.
A Famous Photo Drink Meets A Famous Photo Wall
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@sofia1089 unicorn frappe has tasted foul since 2017 #unicornfrappuccino #pinkwall #2016 #la ♬ original sound – Noah
The Paul Smith Pink Wall dates back to 2005, when British designer Paul Smith opened his Los Angeles store on Melrose Avenue. Smith designed the bright-pink building himself, reportedly taking inspiration from Mexican architect Luis Barragán; the striking color was already meant to make the store stand out. The Los Angeles Times covered the opening that year.
As social media took off, the exterior became a destination in its own right. By 2016, Smith said the wall was attracting about 400 people a day looking for the perfect selfie backdrop. The Los Angeles Times reported that the building had essentially become one of Melrose Avenue’s best-known photo spots
The Paul Smith Pink Wall was already an Instagram destination long before the Unicorn Frappuccino returned. Fashionista reported as far back as 2017 that visitors came expressly to the Los Angeles storefront to create photos, often spending several minutes posing and reviewing shots before trying again.
The drink at the heart of this story—the Unicorn Frappuccino—has its own long(ish), highly documented history on social media. Starbucks brought back the original 2017 recipe beginning Aug. 15 for a limited weekend run, describing the pink-and-blue beverage as a sweet-and-tart mango blend whose colors and flavors change with every swirl.
Its return was a huge commercial success. On Aug. 17, Starbucks announced that over 2 million Unicorn Frappuccinos had been sold at its North American company-operated stores and that Aug. 15 became the company’s biggest Saturday sales day ever in that market. Starbucks itself emphasized the social side of the comeback, saying customers shared photos and videos of the drink throughout the weekend. That made the sight of several barely consumed pink drinks near an already-famous photo backdrop particularly remarkable, especially online.
Were People Really Buying Them Just For Photos?
The video posted by @sofia1089 inspired a major discussion after it spread to Reddit, where the post accused people of buying entire drinks simply to photograph them at the Pink Wall before throwing them away.
Commenters disputed how much the image actually proved. Some pointed out that several of the visible pink drinks appeared substantially full, while others offered a simpler explanation: customers may have wanted to try the returning drink, disliked its unusual sweet-and-sour flavor, and tossed what remained.
That theory has some history backing it. When the drink made its 2017 debut, The Guardian reported that more than 100,000 photos tagged with the #unicornfrappuccino hashtag had already appeared on Instagram while reviews of its taste proved very polarizing.
Whatever motivated each person, the viral footage captured a perfect storm of social media sensations. According to Fashion Times, @sofia1089 later returned to the Pink Wall to find the bin nearly empty—and made a point of showing that, whatever anyone else thought of the taste, she intended to finish her own Unicorn Frappuccino.