July 11, I’m going to write something about 7-eleven, the worldwide 24 hours convenience store franchise, famous for their Slurpee and.. Slurpee.
When I was a kid I had some fantasies for 7-11, slurping a Slurpee is kinda feeling like heaven.. I guess their TV commercials must be working pretty well back then.
I already have not much interest in Slurpee after growing up, and btw.. we can buy a Slurpee maker for home if we want to.
Nowadays I went to 7-eleven for beer instead. Some of the 7-11 stores serve the best arieties of beer that no other pubs or places can match in terms of choices available.
I tried to find the TV ads for 7-eleven Malaysia from YouTube, fruitless.. but found a commercial from Taiwan featuring the popular stars Mike He Jun Xiang and Rainie Yang Cheng Lin instead.. quite a cute video.
[thanks to burles for the video]
I always thought that 7-11 was originated from Japan, but to my suprise it’s from Dallas, Texas instead. 7-eleven was however popularized in Japan, and 7-eleven Inc. is majorly own by the Japanese since 1991.
A few more random facts about 7-eleven..
- The convenient store concept started back in 1927
- It started using the name 7-eleven in 1946
- The name 7-eleven was adapted by then the operating hours, 7am-11pm
- 7-eleven has a network of around 30,000 stores worldwide in 2005
- 11,000 of the 30,000 stores are in Japan, another 6000 in US & Canada
- Malaysia have 605 7-eleven as of September 30, 2005
[history and random facts adapted from 7-eleven.com and sej.co.jp]
Story of Slurpee.. [from Slurpee.com]
The story of Slurpee® drinks began in Kansas 1959, Omar Knedlik’s soda machine broke at his drive-in hamburger restaurant, and he began serving icy-cold bottled soft drinks from his freezer.
Customers fell in love with the slushy drinks, sparking Knedlik to come up with the idea of creating soft-serve frozen drinks. After failed attempts to create a machine to make his icy beverages, Knedlik contacted the John E. Mitchell Company, a Dallas machinery manufacturer in 1959.
Mitchell was attracted to the idea and began working with an automobile air conditioner to create a machine that would freeze carbonated soft drinks that could be served in a sherbet-like form and would be drunk through a straw.
Although a revolution in the soft drink field, Mitchell’s frozen drinks were not a huge success with retailers.. until an encounter with a 7-Eleven manager would forever change the success of the frozen beverage.
While visiting a competitor’s store in 1965, a 7-Eleven zone manager came across one of Mitchell’s machines and thought that it had a huge potential for success. In the Fall of 1965, 7-Eleven purchased three machines to test the product in their stores and was an immediate success.
By the Spring of 1967, the machines were in almost every 7-Eleven store.
The Slurpee mark was created in May 1967 during a brainstorming session at 7-Eleven’s in-house ad agency. While drinking the product through a straw, agency director Bob Stanford commented that it made a slurping sound. The Slurpee® drink phenomenon was born.
July 12th, 2006 at 6:51 am
haha i still remember the brain freeze ads lol….i quite like the Mr Softees also…do you like those also?
July 12th, 2006 at 11:24 am
I can’t remember the brain freeze.. I do remember their maskot though, not sure it’s Softess or whatever. Actually can’t remember most of it, but that’s just that kinda feeling that worked in those days.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:08 am
rainie look like a whore and mike look like a nerd. they both looked stupid and dumb in there.