Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe’s series, Catastrophic Cocktails, where, in order to buy himself time and write off his copious alcohol purchases as business expenses, Jon O’Guin explores the world of drinks. A process he USED to do without a special name, but branding is the Master Sword of internet marketing, so here we are. Today’s cocktail is a surprisingly simple, somewhat nostalgic, seasonally appropriate, and legally non-actionable riff on a drink from Jon’s childhood. And while you COULD explore all of those interesting descriptors, you can also just click this link, get the recipe, and get brewing for yourself. You decide.

A Ghost of A Chance

Look, I’m not going to play coy, you read the title card. And thus, you either know what we’re doing, or you’re worried I’ve started speaking in tongues.  Those of you with the background, skip to the next section to skip over the explanation for the young’uns. OR don’t. I’d say “you decide”, but I literally just did that bit. Turns out I’m a bit of a repetitive drunk. 

Anywho, to the unaware,  whom I just implied were young’uns, to those of us born from around 1982 to 1992,  the phrase “ecto-cooler” is a stabbing knife of memory to a younger, happier time. In a way I…THINK something like “Drake and Josh” or “ Catscratch” might lock in your brains. I don’t know. To those OLDER readers who have no connection to the idea, the example I would use is…probably Jell-O Pudding Pops? I don’t know early 80’s/late 70’s food.

I’ve just discovered that Vanilla Pudding Pops would make a good “Unicorn Horn” dessert if I ever have a need for that, however.

THE POINT is that I assume most people around my age know of Ecto-Cooler, and where it comes from: Which is the Ghostbusters; 4 cool dudes (or, most recently, gals) who bust ghosts. The first Ghostbuster movie came out in 1984 and was a huge hit, like, “highest box office ever for a comedy” at the time level of hit. This of course meant that, in the profit-driven cocaine-scape that was the 80’s, this movie about ghosts, ghost blowjobs, and a dude named “Keymaster” hooking up with a chick named “Gatekeeper” to summon a Cosmic Goth should DEFINITELY be a children’s cartoon, because kids buy FUCKING TOYS, and that meant MORE MONEY.

(Side note, the history of Ghostbusters, as a movie, and the creation of it, is WILD. Like, apparently Dan Aykroyd’s  family is all SUPER into ghosts and the supernatural, and he was going to do it like a Blues Brothers but with Ghosts thing with Belushi, but then John Belushi tragically overdosed, so he got Bill Murray to sign on instead.)

Within 2 years of the film, “The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon was made, (more on that later) and as part of it, the company Hi-C made* a fruit juice drink called “Ecto-Cooler”, which was a green drink that tasted like Oranges and Tangerines, to mimic the character Slimer’s…slime.

Drink of my essence, children. Drink, and become part of the Gluttonous Slime.

Got it? Good. Let’s get everyone back together

It Ain’t Easy, Being Green

 So, even if you know about Ecto-Cooler (which you all should, now), one thing you may or may not be aware of is where exactly it came from, and what HAPPENED to it. You may faintly remember that part of the buzz about the 2016 Ghostbusters film was that they were “bringing back” Ecto-Cooler. Which begs the question: where did it go?

The answer to that is very simple and rather obvious from a corporate point of view. As we noted, Ecto-Cooler was made to look like goo from Slimer. He was straight up on the juice boxes. But Hi-C doesn’t OWN Slimer. Which means, somewhere, somehow, Hi-C was paying for that picture. And if there’s one things corporations hate, it’s expenditures they don’t need. Amazingly, Slimer stayed on Ecto-cooler boxes for 6 YEARS after The Real Ghostbusters ended, and the drink wasn’t formally discontinued until 4 years after THAT, in 2001. At which point they simply changed the name to, and I am NOT making this up: “Shoutin’ Orange Tanger-green”, and Slimer was replaced by a green ball of lips.

“What if, instead of the legally actionable floating green mouth demon, we made a DIFFERENT green-mouth demon?”

This may sound somewhat cheap, but you’ll be happy to know it’s part of a proud tradition. You may have noticed that I put an asterisk on “made” 4 paragraphs ago. That’s because Hi-C didn’t make a brand-new drink for Ecto-Cooler. Or, rather, they didn’t try very HARD when making it. See, in the 1960’s Hi-C invented a drink called “Citrus Cooler”, which was a bright green orange and LEMON flavored juice product. And they sold that right up until they unveiled the new version, Ecto-Cooler, which traded out the Lemon flavor for Tangerine, and then suddenly Citrus Cooler was gone. (It was gone so suddenly, in fact, that you can actually find old commercials for grocery stores from the late 1980’s that SHOW containers of Citrus Cooler from after it was replaced.)

Anyway, Ecto-Cooler became Tangergreen, which lasted another 5 years, before being re-branded again, to “Crazy Citrus Cooler”, before finally being discontinued in 2007. Meaning that, in one formula or another, there was a green Citrus “Cooler” drink on shelves for like, 44 years. Which is INSANE. That means it had a longer run than VHS tapes, which were invented in 1976, and discontinued 40 years later in 2016.

Kids, ask your parents.

As a child of the 90’s, I don’t honestly remember drinking much Ecto-Cooler, though I’m sure I had SOME. I “blame”, such as that term can be used, the fact that my parents both worked, and I was one of quite a few children at a local day-care, where we were more likely to get Squeeze-its and Mondo than Hi-C, since there was just straight-up more liquid per container.  But I still know the name, and have a connection to it. And that is why I was so stoked to see the recipe I based this one on, so let’s talk about our origin story

Drink, Drank, Drunk

One of the hidden time costs of doing a blog like this is what could be scratched down on an hours sheet as “Market Research”. Which means, generally, learning what other creators are doing/what trends are going around. As I’ve mentioned before, I personally buy and read something like 4-6 food magazines a week. I watch multiple food shows, and Youtube channels. I don’t tend to think of them as ‘work’, since it’s not a huge investment of energy and I do find them entertaining. If anything, my biggest issue (both in life and in media) comes from the AMOUNT I consume: I think my current regimen of “shows I watch purely for fun” and “shows I watch for semi-work purposes” comes out to like, 15 hours a week. Which sounds like a lot (and probably is more than is strictly healthy), but amounts to an hour or two a night, and a couple extra hours on the weekend, sort of arrangement. Which would be fine, if I could STOP FINDING NEW SHOWS.

Which is where today’s recipe was inspired: I’ve recently (ie, the last 6-7 months or so) started idly watching a channel called “How to Drink”, which is, in many ways, a weird mid-point between like, what I do, and what other popular Youtube channel Binging With Babish does: the host, Greg, is not a bartender, but he’s rather educated on cocktails and different alcohols, and he makes drinks. A lot of his videos are tied to movies or shows, and he does a nice job talking about various opinions/details he knows. For instance, his video for “The Cooler Ecto-Cooler”, which inspired today’s post, has a fun discussion about the legal reasons for calling the Cartoon “The REAL Ghostbusters”. (Turns out there was already a kid’s show called Ghost Busters in the 70’s, the owner made a deal to let the movie use the name for a cut of the profits…and then Columbia did the old Hollywood trick of “Well, despite making $250 million MORE than our budget, the movie just didn’t turn a profit. Sorry.” So he made a cartoon to steal some of their hype/get his money back, so they had to add to the name to make their cartoon. Wild.)

I recommend checking out the channel, because the videos are solid middle-length Youtube fare (about 9-15 minutes most of the time), with a lot of fun details, and because Greg is just a delight. So I based my recipe off of his, with A: cheaper ingredients (because I decided to make this during the car ride to Leavenworth, so I had to buy all my alcohol myself) and B: one additional little twist, which we’ll talk about in a second. But let’s discuss the recipe!

Orange, White, And Blue

At its core, this is a REALLY simple recipe: it’s just tangerine juice, white rum, and Blue Curaçao. Because, when you think about it, you just need something that tastes like Orange/Tangerine, and IS green. The tangerine juice is orange, add the blue, wham bam thank you ma’am.

One thing that I’ve been asked many times is what, exactly, Blue Curaçao is. The alcohol is technicaly pronounced “kyur-ah-sow”, but many people say “Ku-rah-koh”, due to a lot of producers not using the cedilla when writing their labels. (that weird tail on the C is there to tell you “this is an S sound, not a K”), Which they might be doing for legal reasons: official curaçao has to be made with a specific kind of citrus peel, grown on the Caribbean ISLAND for which the alcohol is named. The citrus itself, a “laraha” or “larahi” orange is fascinating, because it’s a great example of people making do with what they have: Seville oranges brought to island turned out to be disgusting: much more bitter and fibrous, with thick pale green skins that turned a washed out yellow when ripe.

To be clear, THIS is what a Seville Orange looks like. Laraha failed to be THIS unappealing and fibrous.

But, it turns out those thick peels were stuffed with aromatic oils, and they smelled delightful. So eventually, the island used dried peels to infuse liqueurs, making Curaçao liqueur, which is a colorless liqueur with bitter-sweet orange flavor. And then, for reasons no one fully understands, but I have a hunch about, they started coloring all their liqueurs. While today, we tend to only know it as Blue, you can also buy it in White/Clear, Red, Green, or Orange colors. Again, the reason for this isn’t certain, but I think it IS worth noting that Curaçao already has a history with colors: the capital, Willemstad, is a vividly colorful city. Supposedly, centuries ago, the Governor suffered from headaches which he believed were aggravated by the white walls of the city (most of the city was built with lime-rich plaster on the bricks, which dried to a bright white, helping to reflect the heat of the tropical sun) and ordered that buildings be painted any color but white. (Interestingly, supposedly it was later revealed that he was a partial owner of the only paint store on the island…) In any case, the city’s capital became known for a brightly colored waterfront.

Seen here looking like a screensaver.

Which kind of tracks to the idea of coloring the curacao: if you’re coloring up the town as “anything but white”, I can definitely see a local distillery or bar making jokes about coloring their curacao too. Blue turned out to be the most popular, since it really tracked well with the tropical atmosphere: blue seas, blue skies, tropical flavor…Basically, if you’re looking for “tropical drinks”, you can make something with lime, something with coconut, or something with Blue Curaçao.

Now, my recipe is very much a “making do” version of Greg’s. Greg uses Plantation 3-Star Rum, a white rum that only costs about $23 a bottle. I used Captain Morgan, which is more like $10. He gets Tangerines, I had to use Minneolas (a hybrid of Mandarins/Tangerines with Grapefruit/Pomelo. Look, we’ve talked about how Citrus is complicated.) because they were the only thing the local market had.

All citrus looks the same when juiced.
Also, no, I’ve never heard of O’Keefe paintings, what are they about?

By the way, juicing the minneola was a bit of a pain. They took EVERY opportunity to projectile vomit juice out of a nick in their membranes like they were in the Citrus version of the Exorcist, squirting me at least 4 times over the course of juicing ONE fruit.

I also, horror of horrors, had to make my own simple Syrup, because I forgot to ask to borrow some. Which added like, 6 whole minutes to the process of making this 4 ingredient drink.

At least one minute of which was figuring out “how do I pour this hot pot of sugar into this tiny cup?”

That agonizing ordeal over, it was time to mix it up. Get your rum, citrus juice, syrup, and ice in a shaker, and wiggle-waggle that bad boy until the cold burns your hands. Is that correct? I don’t know, it’s what happens to me every time. Strain into a glass, and marvel at how unappealing your mixture looks.

Turns out hand-processed citrus juice is fairly separated.

Then, add some blue curacao, and stir to combine. And THAT’s Greg’s recipe. And it’s…fine. As noted, I’m definitely not where I’m supposed to be, what with replacing half of the ingredients, and working with a cheaper alcohol, so my version tasted more like orange PEEL than oranges, with the sort of raw oil sensation you can get. Which was fine. You work with inferior ingredients, you get an inferior product. Also, I knew I wasn’t going to just STOP with his recipe, since I want to do more than just steal another guy’s hard work. Oh no, I was planning on BUILDING on this thing. Which I DID. In a (thematically appropriate given the history of Ecto-Cooler itself) very lazy way.  I just added some Tropical Sprite.

Seen here. I don’t know WHY it’s seen here, but I took the picture, so damn if I’m not using it.
Though, since we’re here, I’m pretty sure that label says this has 65 total carbs, 64 of which are Sugars.
What the hell is the last carb in SPRITE?

Tropical Sprite, if you’re unaware, is a variety of lemon-lime soda that has been further flavored with Pineapple, Strawberry and Orange. I added a little to the finished Cooler Ecto-Cooler for several reasons:

1, as noted, the original Citrus Cooler was Orange-Lemon, before it was changed to Orange-Tangerine, so this kind of unifies the two.

2. By adding in Pineapple and Lime, we get a little more Tropical, which I think is fun.

3. Adding more Orange flavor helps us cover the “there were no tangerines at the store, so my fruit is less orange-y”

4. A little carbonation makes the drink a little more “fun” for Halloween, with the bubbling green-brew motif.

And

5. So no one could sue me. I don’t think How To Drink would do that, but hey, better to actually use the inspiration and make something kinda new than just lazily copy their work (badly) and hope for the best.

You can’t see it very well, but these ice cubes are shaped like skulls.

And the Sprite definitely helped balance the whole thing. So if you can get the good alcohol, I recommend you try Greg’s method. But if you’re looking for something a little more cost-effective, a little more ‘corporate bottom-line’ conscious and still pretty okay, try the Ecto-Ribbean Cooler!

THURSDAY; LOOK, I AM FINISHING WRITING THIS POST 3 HOURS AFTER I NORMALLY UPLOAD THE PICTURES. I GOTTA SORT THINGS OUT, I’LL GET BACK TO YOU.

MONDAY: EITHER CANDY, SOUP, OR POTATOES. I HAVE IDEAS, THEY’RE NOT PINNED DOWN, I’LL TELL YOU MORE ON THURSDAY.

Recipe

Ecto-Ribbean Cooler

Makes 2

(can be scaled up or down)

Ingredients

½ oz Simple Syrup

4 oz White Rum

2 oz Tangerine* Juice (or nearest available citrus)

1 oz Blue Curaçao

1.5 oz Tropical Sprite

Preparation

1. Combine the first three ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake, and then strain into coupé glasses, or ornate chalices.

2. Add blue curacao and Tropical sprite, and stir to combine.

3. Garnish with Skull ice cubes and/or a slice of tangerine, and serve.