Sulawesi

In the 1990s, the merchandise inside a Starbucks was about the coffee. It was about the coffee beans, the coffee variety, and the many amazing blends. At several times in the 1990s, Starbucks released series of coffee mugs based on the coffee stamp design for that coffee.  The “coffee stamp” was literally a sticky stamp used to label bags of coffee when you scooped beans out of the bins, and sometimes used to securely close bags of coffee.  At one time, it was truly common for people to buy only half-pound sizes of coffee, and so if the barista needed to rip open a one-pound flavorlock bag, the coffee sticker was used on the customer’s 1/2 pound bag.  Slowly, Starbucks has gotten so far away from these old coffee stamps that these days I meet many baristas who are not sure why their store has them.  The merchandise in the 1990s often showed off or was influenced by the coffee stamp for a specific coffee. These four mugs shown here are an example of what I mean (sadly, I only own these four).

The care and thought that went into each of these mugs is obvious: Each one has truly a beautiful design on it.

Enjoy these beautiful mugs!

And if you like this kind of blog entry on 1990s era Starbucks merchandise, be sure to look at this blog entry on a 1994 book called “Passion for the Coffee”:

Also, if you want to read another blog post on Starbucks mugs, check out this blog entry on the Starbucks city mugs:

Bottom of mugs

Thank you to Molly of Seattle Custom Framing for her assistance with the photography used in this blog post.

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Sulawesi
Sulawesi