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The Pimp Cocktail is a nine-ounce highball built on four ingredients, one of which is Sunny Delight. That is not a substitution or a modern reading of something older, it is what the recipe calls for, and it places this drink squarely in the era of bright bottled orange drink and blue liqueur poured with a heavy hand.
Here is the part worth knowing before you make it. Blue curacao plus five ounces of orange drink does not produce a blue cocktail. Blue and orange sit opposite each other on the color wheel, so they cancel, and what lands in the glass is a cloudy green somewhere between olive and pond water. Plenty of people pour this expecting tropical blue and get a surprise. It tastes considerably better than it looks, which is a reasonable summary of the whole drink.
Glass: Highball glass | Strength: Medium | Serves: 1 | Prep Time: 2 minutes
Bartender’s tip: If the green bothers you, drop the blue curacao and add a half ounce of triple sec instead. You keep the orange-peel note without the color collision, and the drink turns a clean amber. If you want to keep the blue, the fix is the opposite direction: swap the Sunny Delight for lemon-lime soda and let the curacao actually show. Either way, build it over plenty of ice and stir rather than shake. There is nothing here that needs aeration, and a shake will only knock the fizz out of anything carbonated you add later.
