The Woopop Story
The man, the myth, the legend. (okay, not quite…) But anyway, before we get to anything else, everyone is always dying to know just what the hell Woopop means… So here are all the gory details:
When I first arrived at my dorm at RIT, after getting all my things settled in my room (and meeting the worst possible roomate anyone could ever have), I wandered down the hall and met Tejus, who would become my partner in crime for much of the first few weeks. I came up with the bright idea to ask the question “Do you call it pop or soda?” as an ice breaker to meet people. (Hey, coulda been a lot worse!) Most people in Western New York call it pop, as I do being from North Tonawanda, NY, while it seems the rest of the country says soda (like Tejus did, being from New Jersey). In any event, in our travels through the Helen Fish Hall of RIT (pre-renovation!), we came upon the now-legendary Fish B (2nd floor, co-ed). As we were in the process of meeting the inhabitants of Fish B, we found the room of Jen and Mary. After introductions were made, the question was posed… Pop or Soda? Jen said soda, Mary said pop… It turned out she lived a couple of towns over from me, so we instantly had some things in common to talk about, least of which was the soft drink in my hand.
I had been drinking a can of Wegmans store brand cola. (Wegmans is a supermarket chain in Upstate New York, and their in-store brand pop/soda is called W-POP.) It’s better than most store-brand stuff, and more importantly, it’s what mom threw in the fridge when I moved in. In any event, the very can I was holding defined my existance at RIT from that point on. A conversation ensued about the Wegmans TV commercials that showed a can with a burning wick on it, with the tagline “Wooooo… It’s Dynamite!”. The soft drink was henceforth referred to as “Woo-Pop”, and eventually, so was I.
And that’s all it took. Everyone seemed to have a nickname for everyone else to help remember who people were (keep in mind, this is the first week, no one knew anyone else), and I had just gotten mine. A lot of people’s nicknames were forgotten about after that first week. I wasn’t so lucky. I was always drinking the stuff, so that perpetuated it more than anything else. But what the hell, its not derogatory, rolls easily off the tongue, and its definately unique. So there you have it, the glorious story of the woopop name!
Only the coolest EBay find ever… a Woopop Tie! (Yes, I won the bid…)
My dad snapped a pic of this nifty display at the Wegmans on Niagara Falls Bvld. in Amherst:
I also found (and have never found again to give credit!) this picture of the “Woo-Man”, constructed out of pop cans!
