The Blue Hawaii cocktail was created in 1957 on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, during the post war tourism boom when tiki culture was exploding across the United States. It was invented at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel’s bar by bartender Harry Yee, who worked at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. Yee originally developed the drink to showcase the vibrant blue curaçao liqueur at the request of the hotel’s sales director, who wanted a visually striking cocktail to serve tourists and promote Hawaiian tropical imagery. Unlike some tiki drinks that leaned heavily on rum blends and exotic syrups, the Blue Hawaii combined light rum, blue curaçao, sweet and sour mix (or fresh lemon/lime), and pineapple juice to create a bright, fruity, and visually memorable drink that quickly became associated with island leisure and mid century cocktail culture.

Though Harry Yee is most commonly credited with inventing the Blue Hawaii, the exact origins are sometimes muddled by contemporaneous tiki bartenders experimenting with similar tropical recipes. Blue curaçao had been used in cocktails before, but Yee’s particular combination and the name “Blue Hawaii” tied the drink directly to the islands’ growing identity as a tropical escape. The cocktail’s popularity was further cemented by Hollywood and the entertainment industry’s fascination with Hawaiian motifs during the 1950s and 60s, helping the Blue Hawaii travel far beyond Waikiki to become a staple of bars worldwide, emblematic of bright, easy drinking tiki style cocktails.