Toby Keith helped advance red Solo cups to the next level with his hit song “Red Solo Cup” in 2011. But would he have approved of a major change to the design of the cup that’s such an important part of country music culture?
According to Daily Mail, the company that makes Solo Cups, Dart Container, has quietly removed those iconic lines around the cup that started at the bottom and appeared in intervals moving up the cup.
This is a big deal, as college kids and other partygoers have been using those to measure out alcohol pours for decades.
Line one was believed to be for 1oz. liquor pours, line two was believed to be for wine pours and line 3 was supposedly for a 12-oz beer.
However, Dart Container says that those lines being there for measurement purposes is just an urban legend, and that’s not what they were for this whole time.
According to the company, they were actually there to help vending machines and packagers grab the cups without them sticking together.
Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble.
The new redesign of the iconic red Solo cup has dispensed with those lines in favor of braille-like dots that make it easier to grip the cups, with an arched structure that reinforces the cup’s strength:
Here is the part that shocked us the most in our deep dive of the red Solo cup: The inventor of the cup that is synonymous with partying and getting drunk, Robert Hulseman, was a devoted man of God and would write poems to and about God daily.
He was known for supporting various organizations committed to Catholic study, as well as charity organizations.
Hulseman never intended for the red Solo cup to be used for partying, and he could not have foreseen a popular country song being written about it, either.
The old versions of Solo cups are likely still available at some retailers, as they don’t have an expiration date, but once they finally phase out, the new versions will be the ones that the next generation will carry at parties for decades to come.
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