A look inside the Big Gulp universe

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“Do I need 32 ounces of any fluid?” asks late-night comedian Dennis Miller. Whether it’s at the local Hoyt’s cinemas or McDonald’s drive-through, we’ve all asked ourselves the same question. Reporter Andrew Brownstein recently tried to get some answers.

Torrance, an edge city of beach and skyscrapers, enjoys a quiet existence on the Southern California coast. Compared with Los Angeles, its neighbor to the north, Torrance is a town of small ambitions — home to the American Youth Soccer Organization and the nation’s second-largest indoor mall.

Few residents, if any, are aware of the city’s important role in history. For it was here, during the dog days of summer 1975, that something big happened in Torrance. Something very big.

The Big Gulp.

A local 7-Eleven convenience store sold its first mammoth carton of soft drink, and, with it, altered the sociological — not to mention gastroenterological — landscape of our time.

The Big Gulp was the beginning of the large food craze that has given us serving sizes out of the Flintstones: Jacuzzis of popcorn. Bathospheres of cola. Muffins, pretzels, hot dogs — all have hit the Big Time.

“The Big Gulp,” explains Winona Ryder in the 1994 film “Reality Bites,” “was the most profound invention of my generation.”

Quite right. But it almost didn’t happen. Like Galileo and Columbus, the creators of the 32-ounce cup faced legions of doubters.

“I was one of them,” says Dennis Potts, vice president of marketing for 7-Eleven’s parent company, Southland Corp. of Dallas. “I said, `Have you gone completely out of your mind? This is insane. No one will want to drink that amount of soda.”‘

As Potts explains it, the invention of the Big Gulp was a happy accident — not unlike the meeting of chocolate and peanut butter that inspired Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

One day in 1975, a supplier for Canada’s Continental Can Co. pulled into a Torrance 7-Eleven with a cargo of large soda containers. The containers looked like oversized milk cartons with a clip on top, the kind that were once staples of summertime fairs.

“They said, `We’ve got these extra 32-ounce cups,”‘ Potts recalls. “`Could you use them in your fountain drinks?”‘ The store agreed to give them a try.

That was a Thursday. By Monday, they’d sold out of all 1,000 cups and a sensation was born.

The Big Gulp begat the Super Big Gulp. The Super Big Gulp begat the Double Gulp. And it was good.

The Double Gulp, at 64 fluid ounces, is 10 times larger than the original contoured bottle introduced by Coca-Cola in 1916.

“We didn’t even have the carton technology to handle that level of fluid,” said Steve Johnson, who helped market the Super Big Gulp in the mid-1980s.

In a sign of how much times have changed, the Super Big Gulp now has its own Web site, where worshipful browsers pay homage to the “44 oz. personal Jesus” and spin thirsty yarns about their favorite convenience stores.

The Big Gulp is no longer alone in the House of Large Sizes. Wendy’s has Biggie fries and drinks. McDonald’s asks its customers to “Supersize it.”

In the effort to reach for bigger and bigger portions, many fast-food chains have dumped their old sizes. In the early ’90s, when economists were lamenting the disappearance of the middle class, the medium-sized fries were quietly stricken from the McDonald’s menu.

Large movie chains are downright Orwellian, corrupting the very language of size.

At the local cineplex, a small is really a large. A medium is a Big Gulp. And a large requires an installment plan (Not to mention a strong bladder).

Hoyts is promoting a 64-ounce Coke for $4.55 — with an option for a free refill during the show. You get to keep the cup.

Not suprisingly, the Big Gulp has proved a bottomless well for humorists, who tend to view the phenomenon with a jaundiced eye.

“This drink has an undertow,” said late-night comedian Dennis Miller. “I guess this is for the person who came directly off the surface of the sun and into the 7-Eleven.”

Comedian Louie Anderson pokes fun at the trend’s most appealing attribute: its bargain-creating potential. He describes sheepishly leaving a 7-Eleven with a 55-gallon drum — a purchase, he defensively tells customers, that cost “just a nickel more” than a large.

“There’s a certain bigness that Americans go for,” explains Louise Kramer, who covers the fast-food and beverage beat for Advertising Age. “It’s like the Great American Frontier.”

Making matters worse, a recent study shows that we may not be able to help ourselves.

In what is surely one of the zaniest experiments in the annals of modern science, research psychologist Dianne Engell gave 25 men in their 30s different portions of macaroni and cheese. The men at Natick Labs, an Army facility in Massachusetts, were randomly handed small, medium or large portions. The more they were given, Engell found, the more they ate. Yet they all reported being equally satiated.

The experiment suggests the trend has a potentially unlimited life span. Which begs the question: Will we supersize ourselves indefinitely — sort of a fast-food version of manifest destiny?

Once again, the experience of the Gulp is instructive.

In Canada, 7-Eleven once tried to outdo its gargantuan 64-ounce Double Gulp. Fueled by hubris, perhaps, or giddiness with the possibilities of the metric system, 7-Eleven officials introduced a 3-liter plastic bucket, a veritable Babel of beverage.

It flopped faster than New Coke.

“Can you imagine 3 liters of soda?” asks Potts of the Southland Corp. “It’s cumbersome. You can’t really drink out of it. It’s a damn bucket.”

Of course, that’s what they said back when the Gulp was first introduced in 1975.

A lot has changed since then. Bigness, it seems, is everywhere — in convenience stores, supermarkets and fast-food chains.

In Torrance, the place where it all began, residents may finally be learning of their hometown’s place in soft-drink lore.

“I’m going to tell the Torrance Historical Society all about it,” said Torrance Mayor Dee Hardison. “We might want to add the Big Gulp to a little corner of our museum.”