Why is raspberry flavoured slush blue?

Everyone knows the classic slush colours – red and blue. Arguably the most popular two of the many slush flavours we offer (we’ll let you decide which one is the best!). Who doesn’t have memories from their childhood of mixing the two for a perfect combination? Red for strawberry (or cherry), and blue for…raspberry? Why is raspberry flavoured slush blue?

That doesn’t sound right at all, does it? A blue raspberry? It seems normal to choose a blue slush for the refreshing raspberry flavour – but we all know that raspberries definitely aren’t blue!

If you grew up thinking that there was such a thing as a blue raspberry, you weren’t the only one! The news that there is in fact, no such thing as a blue raspberry made headlines in the national newspapers not so long ago. The colour is used for all kinds of raspberry flavoured sweets and jellies, but they found the original culprit behind this misconception to be – slush!

With so many bemused as to why raspberry flavoured slush is blue at all, we decided to look into it.

Blue slush dates all the way back to 1974, and there’s a very simple reason behind it. Raspberry flavoured slush is blue to distinguish it from the strawberry/cherry flavour!

And it wasn’t an easy colour to come by. With some obvious exceptions like blueberries, blue is rare shade in nature. However, the dye was eventually developed in the mid-20th century, and was given the name Brilliant Blue – a colour that is still used today to give slush lovers the signature blue tongue!

What about the flavour? Well that usually comes from the Whitebark Raspberry, a native to western North America states such as California and Arizona, and was discovered as a great flavour for sweets at around the same time as Brilliant Blue was created. It was as if they were meant to be!

So now you know. There is no such thing as a blue raspberry – even though many sweet manufacturers have also adopted blue for their own raspberry flavoured products.

And of course, if you’re looking to make the ever-popular blue raspberry slush available to your customers, we supply the highest quality slush machines, and many different slush syrups across the nation. With an average 77% gross profit available to you with a Snowshock machine, you could be missing out. Take a look at our products, get in touch and join our thousands of happy customers.