A while ago at the liquor store, I saw something near the cashier checkout that caught my eye. It was something called a "spiked snow cone." As regular readers no doubt recall, I'm a sucker for new and unusual kinds and formats of booze. In just the past few years I've tried alcoholic gummies (see my post on March 4th, 2023), and two kinds of alcoholic popsicles (see my posts on November 14th, 2020, and on April 30th, 2022). So I picked up this one, too. The cone was the "tiger's blood" flavor from the Daily's line.
Man, do the Daily's company top executives want to stay anonymous! I checked their official website, and various other business-related websites, and still never got the founder's (or founders') name. But I did find out a little about their history. In 1960, the Daily Orange Juice Company started manufacturing orange juice, and they sold it door to door, in the Pittsburgh, PA suburb of Verona. In 1965 the company began also selling a sweet & sour mix for making cocktails. Over the next few decades more kinds of pre-mixed alcoholic drinks were developed and sold by them. In 2005 the business came up with frozen alcoholic drink pouches. Somewhere along the line Daily's became a brand name, and the overall company name was changed to the (very generic) American Beverage Corporation. In 2015 ABC was acquired by Brynwood Partners, as a subsidiary of the Harvest Hill company. Harvest Hill specializes in selling juices, or at least juice-like beverages, as they also own Juicy Juice, Sunny D, Veryfine, Fruit2O, and several other brands. It's a little confusing, but I believe that ABC also makes Little Hugs Fruit Barrels, Big Hug's Fruit Barrels, and the Guzzler brands. The only top ABC executive I could discover is that the current President appears to be Kevin McGahren-Clemens. Whether he's a descendent of the founder, or even the founder himself is unknown. Alternate flavors of the spiked snow cone line include peach smash, blackberry smash, raspberry mojito, margarita, strawberry daquiri, and Bahama mama. Dail's also markets some cocktail mixers. And, as far as I can tell, the company fazed out selling orange juice some time ago.
Also, I was curious if snow cones are just an American thing, or are enjoyed worldwide. Just in case foreign readers aren't familiar with the term. Well, first off, snow cones are ground up (sometimes very finely) ice with a syrup poured over, and within them. The flavors are typical fruity, and the snow cone is often served in a cone-shaped paper receptacle. Anyway, snow cones are an American development. With a caveat. Back in the days before modern refrigerators and freezers, people of course had to put actual blocks of ice in their "ice boxes." Trucks from colder climates would make the trek down to Southern U.S. states, even down to Florida. Along the way the truckers would have kids begging them for chunks of ice to beat the heat in the summer. Particularly in Baltimore, Maryland, for some reason. It became the usual habit in the 1850's for trucks to give the kids pieces of broken ice, which they would then grind up further and flavor with egg custard from their mothers. It became a Baltimore tradition, and other flavors, such as fruit syrups, began to be added as well. By the 1930's and 40's these "snow cones," as they were called, became popular across the country. Modern fridges and freezers make the storage of these treats much easier. There are a bunch of alternate spellings for snow cones--snow kones, sno kones, sno-kones, sno cones, sno-cones, and possibly others. So, do only Americans get to enjoy this dessert? Nope. We Americans weren't the first, or only people to develop the ground-up-ice-with-flavors-atop-and-within-it idea. It's just that folks in other countries have different names for them. Therefore, "snow cones" are technically an American invention, but desserts that are the same kind of thing as snow cones exist in many other countries--they're just called something different.
Daily's spiked snow cone, tiger's blood flavor: Had a deep red color. The taste was strawberry-ish, with some alcohol-like flavor. Overall it was okay, but not great. It was kind of a fun twist on the booze format, so I can see folks enjoying it because of that, similar to the adult popsicles, Jello shots, and the like. It did resemble blood, and since I actually consumed it in October, that was appropriate. So maybe a fun concoction for Halloween parties. I will say the red dye in this snow cone really lingered--I was still spitting red after thoroughly brushing my teeth, even. Oh, and the alcohol content for this 10 ounce (295 mL) pouch was 5%, or about the same as a typical bottle or can of beer, glass of wine, shot of liquor, etc.
When I saw the flavor name for my snow cone, I thought about actor Charlie Sheen's bizarre ramblings and rants from a while ago, as he talked about "winning" and tiger blood. This was around the time of his acrimonious departure from the successful television program "Two and a Half Men" in 2011. I figured that this flavor was a rather late reference to this cultural verbal phenomenon. It turns out, though, that it probably wasn't. The tiger's blood as a flavor name predates Mr. Sheen's ravings by several decades. In the 1980's folks began mixing together strawberry, watermelon, and coconut into a combination, and using this for flavoring things like snow cones. Where it began is disputed--it was very associated with the state of Hawaii, but some think that it was actually invented in Texas. Wherever it truly started, the flavor spread quickly, into places like Utah and South Carolina initially, and the rest of the country eventually. Getting back to Carlos Estevez (Charlie's birth name), in addition to using the expression "tiger blood," he was also photographed drinking something called that in a bottle, using a hand-made label done with a Sharpie. Apparently, this was a mangosteen juice drink called Xango, which Sheen really enjoyed. (And it was reportedly $45 per 750 mL bottle, so probably mainly consumed by rich folks.) Then, in 2017, in an interview Sheen apparently blamed his weird outbursts on overuse of a testosterone cream, which allegedly caused him to undergo "roid rage," and ramble incoherently. Finally, I could find no information on this, but evidently literal tiger's blood is not considered to be an especially tasty topping for snow cones, or other frozen desserts. And since the animal is woefully endangered, this would be incredibly wasteful and irresponsible anyway.
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