“Who would have thought 25 years ago that would happen?” “What’s happened now in popular culture is that the appearance of the red cup signals to people that it’s time to celebrate the holidays,” said Sandy Nelson. Year after year, the excitement around the holiday cup seemed to grow and the cup itself became emblematic of the season. Before long, pop culture websites featured countdown clocks anticipating when cups would be “red again,” and the cups popped up everywhere from nascent social media platforms to late-night talk shows. Then in 1999, the cups featured a candy-apple red design for the first time, and a new icon was born.
The next year, the holiday cups made an even bigger splash as customers were invited to “embrace the warmth” of the holidays with a cup in purple hues.
“I thought, wow, this is big,” Nelson said. She was visiting Anchorage, Alaska for Thanksgiving, and stepped off the plane to see a Starbucks kiosk piled high with stacks of colorful cups she had designed. Nelson remembers the first time she saw customers carrying cups with her designs. The design featured a linoleum block-style pattern with swirls and hand-drawn holly leaves flecked with coffee beans. They weren’t red – but instead were wrapped like a gift in rich shades of magenta, sapphire, and emerald and purple.
Sandy Nelson, then a Starbucks designer, created that first set of holiday cups, selected from dozens of design concepts. Facebook and Twitter were still years away. When Starbucks introduced its first holiday cups back in 1997, the word “selfie” had not yet been invented.
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