Cavalcade of Awesome

I’ve talked about fast food collector glasses before. But that article covered collector glasses made of actual GLASS.  There are also a plethora of plastic collector cups.  A few weeks ago Nerd Lunch talked about super hero cups.   So, I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring and talk about a few of my favorite collector cups that have been given away at movie theaters and fast food chains.

I have each of these cups in my collection right now.

This is the Capt America The First Avenger Tri-Color Coolatta Cup.  My boy CT from Nerd Lunch discussed this back in July.  There are three sides/sections.  Each section holds the red (cherry), white (vanilla) and blue (raspberry) flavors of Dunkin Donuts Coolattas.  You can see the second side here and the third side is here.  The cup is sitting next to the stars and stripes donut that also promoted the Capt America movie.  They were both good, but I won’t lie, after consuming both for breakfast it felt like Cap and the Howling Commandos were fighting World War II in my colon.

This was the collector cup given out at movie theaters in 2000 to promote the first Singer X-Men movie. I like the tapered base of this cup so it fits in your cup holder. Many cups now don’t do that.  And check out the web address of the movie with all of those dashes.  http://www.x-men-the-movie.com.  Hello late ’90s.

Everyone remembers the Star Wars cup toppers from 1999 during the whole Episode I merchandising frenzy. There were 12 cups and figure toppers you could collect from KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Well, those toppers were based on an earlier promotion for the Star Wars Special Edition in 1996-97.  It was a set of 4 and featured C3PO, R2D2, Vader and a Stormtrooper.  There were two versions of this set.  Above left you can see the set that came from the Las Vegas FAO Schwartz store.  They had setup their own version of the Mos Eisley Cantina including themed ICEE drinks (like Jabba Juice).  I had visited Vegas in 1998 and was able to buy these at the store.  Click the image to see it bigger and to see the commemortive FAO Cantina cup.  The other version of this set on the right came from Pizza Hut and Taco Bell stores overseas (I don’t believe they were offered in the US).  The toppers were exactly the same but instead of the FAO cup it had a blue cup with a picture of the character on it (see the Stormtrooper above). You can see how these influenced the Episode I cup toppers. For obvious reasons, only the R2D2 was reused in the 1999 Episode I promotion.

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