Despite being a bladder-shattering 23.5 ounces, cans of AriZona iced tea have never wavered from the 99-cent price point introduced shortly after the drink debuted in 1992. It’s even printed on the label as a way of warding off sugar-water price gouging by retailers.
The fact that AriZona has been able to resist inflation for nearly a quarter-century is impressive. The fact that the cans usually wind up being cheaper than smaller soft drinks is also impressive, until you begin to realize how strange it is that a vat of iced tea and its accompanying ingredients somehow manages to be less expensive than plain water.
In a recent interview with Thrillist, AriZona chief marketing officer and co-owner Spencer Vultaggio shed some light on this convenience store mystery.
Unlike water titans Coke (which distributes Dasani), Evian, or Fiji, AriZona has virtually no advertising dollars invested in their teas. “We feel like it’s more important to spend money on something that our customer really cares about, instead of buying billboards or putting our cans in the hands of some celebrity for a few minutes,” Vultaggio said.
Even with a frugal approach to ads, AriZona still has to deal with rising production costs. To help resist increasing prices to compensate, the company has pursued alternative manufacturing methods, using 40 percent less aluminum in cans and having enough factories dotting the country to make transportation more efficient. Bottled water, in contrast, is sometimes sourced from abroad, making for exorbitant shipping costs.
In the end, it’s not the iced tea that’s more economical than the water; it’s that the container it comes in is simply cheaper to produce and transport. And while AriZona isn’t above charging a premium for fancier drinks—like a tea brewed with oak chips that sells for twice the price—their branding depends heavily on those familiar rows of 99-cent cans and the loyal consumers who keep reaching for them.
The researchers used high-speed photography and an instrument called a Rheometer to analyze frog saliva under prey-capturing conditions. The scientists think frog tongues could one day help engineers design reversible soft adhesives that could work at high speeds.
Read more about it here.
A remarkable Jacobean re-emergence after 200 years of yellowing varnish Courtesy Philip Mould
nicknamed ‘the handsome’
died before the age of 40 but compensated by living a full and interesting life that did not consist of fruitless guerrilla warfare interrupted by long boring spells in the slammer
literally the sultan’s favorite boyfriend
you think i’m kidding but i’m not fucking kidding
so his dad who was ruler of wallachia (aka southern romania more or less) sent radu and vlad to the ottoman court as political hostages when they were kids and they grew up there along with the future mehmet the fucking conqueror
you know. the dude who conquered constantinople in 1453, brought an end to the eastern roman empire etc etc
that dude
turns out mehmet had a ridiculous crush on radu
so one day mehmet tried to get handsy and radu thought to himself, what should i do in my precarious position as political prisoner from a small-fry principality on the fringes of the empire when the heir to the ottoman throne is putting the moves on me?
I KNOW I’LL STAB HIM IN THE LEG
so he did. he did that
and then he went and climbed a tree and refused to come down until mehmet got patched up and probably limped over all c’mon baby don’t be like that
like i bet stabbing the sultan got you a one-on-one appointment with the royal executioner. except not for radu because he was that much of a badass
meanwhile vlad was probably planning to LISTEN WHO FUCKING CARES
anyway
so radu eventually of his own volition became mehmet the conqueror’s boyfriend and they went on many exciting adventures together
like the siege of constantinople
where was vlad at the time? being kicked out of his own country because his standard approach to politics was ‘devise new and exciting ways to torture and kill people slowly’. despite what certain history books will have you think he was super unpopular with… everyone basically.
radu was highly educated and spoke multiple languages and was all about turkish and persian literature. also possibly converted to islam though sources tend to contradict eachother on that
by the time radu was 22 mehmet gave him a command and started sending him places
like wallachia to overthrow his brother who was being politically inconvenient
SO MUCH GAME OF THRONES-GRADE BACKSTABBY DRAMA HAPPENED YOU HAVE NO IDEA
also radu married a serbian (or possibly albanian) princess named maria despina and had one daughter
died suddenly in his late 30s, which is code for ‘probably poisoned’
and in conclusion: a genuinely interesting historical figure you don’t hear enough about because his brother was a vampire or something
my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini
Tags: This is my Black licorice and Balsamic vinegar Egg Tart I call it the You're contractually Obligated to Taste This Tart
Go on Bake off. Make sure everything I make is flavours Paul hates. Smash the actual bake though.
When he says I don’t like those flavours, stare him in those souless eyes and say “I know.”
Last Saturday, Whisper started having a rough time with her stomach, and within a few hours she started vomiting and pooping blood. We got her to a vet immediately, and they did bloodwork, x-rays, and a barium screening. It turned out Whisper had eaten the plastic bag one of our prints was in (she has a bad habit of chewing up art.) It basically ripped her up inside as it passed through, and she lost a lot of blood. Fortunately, after a night in the animal hospital, she stabilized and we were able to bring her home the next day, but with a pretty decently sized bill attached.
Whisper was a rescue cat, and when we got her she’d been living at the shelter for 6 months. She absolutely hated it, she was the saddest looking cat we’d ever seen, but when we picked her up for the first time she rolled over to be held like a baby. I love this cat with all my heart, and I’d do anything to help her. Black cats have a hard enough time getting adopted, they really need the extra awareness and love.
So, I’m gonna go for two birds with one stone! I’ve put up four new designs on teepublic that are on sale right now for $14, with the goal of raising a little more awareness to how wonderful black cats are. All proceeds will go towards helping pay off Whisper’s vet bills and for her gross new prescription cat food.
justin mcelroy has said many powerful things but honestly no set of words in the english language conveys the same energy as “that’s a funny trick to play on god”
Game idea: You play as a humble peasant who must fight off waves of adventurers who feel entitled to just waltz into your house and loot whatever they please.
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