Why The Eff Are We So Obsessed With Unicorns?

Charlie is no longer the only unicorn in the village. From alcohol to toast, grown women are obsessed.

- Mel Evans

For those of you who like coffee, reading things on the internet, using your eyes, or just noticing things, you’ve no doubt noticed an influx of unicorn-related fluff floating around the traps.

Gone are the days of My Little Pony alone tickling your horsey proclivities. Now there’s a stable of products from unicorn makeup and unicorn toast to floaties for the pool, ornaments for the house, unicorn essence for the face and ‘unicorn snot’ (otherwise known as ‘wet glitter’) for everything else. In my quest to unveil all that was ’corn-y, I even happened upon a unicorn dildo. True story.

We’ve become tangled in a glitter-covered matrix oflargerthan-life proportions. And just as I neared the end of my tether, Starbucks went and introduced their Unicorn Frappuccino – a drink that didn’t even have a drop of caffeine, just syrupy goodness to keep your sugar levels spiked and rearing for horseplay. Just like that, the hype was turned up to 11.

But… why?

Consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier says you can blame the tech-heads in Silicon Valley for introducing the whole idea. They started using the term ‘unicorn’ in 2013 to describe a rare, good investment opportunity – usually valued at over the billion-dollar mark – and, however innocently conceived, it wasn’t long before the masses attached their own meaning to the word.