The time popcorn and coke smoothies made Cleveland cinema snack buying more efficient

Jenny Thomas was going to miss the start of Back to the Future, and there was nothing she hated more than missing the start of a film.

She locked her car and dashed to the cinema. There was no queue, but that was because everyone had already gone in.

She bought her ticket and could hear the sound of the 20^th Century Fox fanfare echoing out of the auditorium, she was never going to have time to buy both popcorn and a coke and make it in time.

“Popcorn and coke smoothie, Miss?” Asked the attendant.

She nodded gratefully, paid, and made her way inside to enjoy the wacky adventures of Michael J Fox in the past.

It was 1985 and, in Cleveland, Ohio, buying both a box of popcorn and a cup of coke was a thing of the past.

“It was a great idea,” said the son of the manager of Cleveland’s Roxy cinema, Michael Brown who invented the popcorn and coke smoothie in 1984

“The beauty of it was its simplicity. Just popcorn and coke, blended together. No special equipment. No secret recipe. Just a blender.

“Most people didn’t really drink smoothies back in 1985, but they were becoming popular with yuppies.

“Dad saw an article about them and thought ‘why not?’”

The popcorn and coke smoothie made its first appearance with the release of Back to the Future and on that first night, it seemed to be a hit.

“Oh, yes, people loved them. Why take both a coke and popcorn into a cinema? Just take this one smoothie.”

Unfortunately, the invention, as efficient as it was for cinema-goers, had a fatal flaw.

“Well, it was vile,” chuckled Mr Brown.

“It had the appearance and texture of vomit, and it tasted like evil.

“People thought they were being punished. They’d come to the cinema, buy a popcorn and coke smoothie and wonder who they’d wronged in a previous life to suffer such wretched treatment.”

Ultimately, after a few weeks of Roxy staff emptying gallons of undrunk popcorn and coke smoothies into the Cleveland sewage system, the city suffered a disastrous drainage breakdown that saw gallons of raw effluent back up into the streets and people’s houses.

“Ironically, many people thought that the sewage was actually still more appealing than the smoothies,” remembered Mr Brown.

The smoothie machine was abandoned and film fans went back to separate containers for their coke and popcorn.

However, for Jenny Thomas, the coke and popcorn smoothie was a boon that meant she didn’t have to miss the beginning of Back to the Future.

“Yes,” she remembered.

“Although, after drinking half the cup I had to go to the toilet to vomit copiously, missing the bit with Huey Lewis as the teacher when Marty does his audition.

“I still think I deserve a refund.”