This one’s been nagging me and a friend for the last few days…
Does anyone have definitive info on the origin of the phrase:
“Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”
A little googlage brought up tentative references to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a Richard Dreyfus movie, both @1987 or '88, but I’d like a more reliable attribution, if anyone knows.
I’ve also heard Pop Stand. It goes at least as far back as my childhood in the 60s. I’m sure it’s older than that.
The origin goes back to using “blow” to mean to “leave a place” in 1898, at least in print. In that instance it was “I blew the bunch,…”
In 1902 it appeared as “…blew the joint.” So there we have someone definitively using the sameold/sameold, just not using “pop” or "popsicle.’
There is an actual cite from 1974 using “Let’s blow this pop stand.” It certainly went back before that. There was a 1980 Mork &f MIndy show which included the “…blow this popsicle stand” language.
All info from Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.
More than you wanted to know, perhaps?
All I know is, I’m naming my son Popsicle Stand.
Why not name him “Bubbles”?
Or why not “Blanket” ?
I always thought it was “Taco stand.” Hmm.