The first mention of “unicorn” is about 3000 years old.
At that time, unicorns were believed to be native to India and real, but they were considered elusive (impossible to catch and very difficult to find).
One Greek historian Ctesias described unicorn as an Indian ‘one-horned’ ass, which was the size of a horse — white body, purple head, and blue eyes.
Those who drank from its horn were thought to be protected from various illnesses including poisoning.
Then from natural history books (where it was seen as a real animal), it started appearing in some transations of the Bible.
The Bible (Old Testament) had references to an animal called re’em (a strong and splendid horned animal) and some translations translated re’em as unicorn.
From biblical references, it travelled to Christian teachings and in these religious teachings, unicorn was shown as a strong, fierce but elusive animal that could be caught only when a virgin maiden was placed before it.
The virgin then breast fed the unicorn and took it to the king’s palace.
Because of this story, some medieval (5th to 15th century) writers likened unicorn to Christ who dwelt in the womb of Virgin Mary.
Gradually, it became a subject of great interest for artists and some portrayed it as the lover who is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin.
Its elusiveness, likeness to Christ and then to a lover kept the artists’ interest in it alive in the 16th and the 17th centuries.
It was in these periods that unicorns became rainbow coloured and glittery.
Now, rainbow had become the symbol for the LGBT community in the 1970s and possibly because of this association, unicorn showed up on t-shirts (with messages such as: “Gender is imaginary”) during gay parades in the 1970s and the 1980s.
Then, in 1981 came the TV series My Little Pony that featured ponies with colourful bodies and manes; by 1995 this show and related merchandise became popular worldwide.
Millennials, who had grown up consuming this show/merchandise, went crazy when food photographer Adeline Waugh in 2016 posted pics of toast with pastel-coloured cream on social media and called it unicorn toast.
Marketers recognised the trend, as more and more unicorn-themed pics surfaced online, and started exploiting it, e.g. Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino.
