Food
Heinz Help Fruit Drink
Heinz's venture into the beverage market during the mid-1970s with its Help Fruit Drink only lasted a few years. The fact that Heinz is so associated with ketchup probably didn't 'help' the product. But also, what an odd name 'Help' was.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Sep 03, 2018 -
Comments (0)
Category: Food, 1970s
Macaroni woman of the year
Since I posted a few days ago about eggplants that looked like Richard Nixon, I thought it only fitting to also note that his wife, Patricia, had her own food thing going on. In 1970, she was named Macaroni Woman of the Year by the National Macaroni Institute. She also had her portrait painted out of macaroni by the artist Don Wheeler.
Redlands Daily Facts - Oct 1, 1970
Wilkes Barre Times Leader - Apr 14, 1971
Posted By: Alex - Sat Sep 01, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Art, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Food, Politics
Gibbon Diet
In order to raise awareness and funds for the Gibbon Protection Society of Malaysia, Grace Watson is spending a month eating only what a gibbon would eat. From stuff.co.nz:Lunch is usually a variation of apples, bananas, mandarin, and edible insects, while dinner is limited to vegetable soups, salads or slaws of grated beetroot, carrot, apple, with a squeeze of lime and some seeds...
Although she would like to entirely commit to the animals' diet in order to draw attention to the endangered primates, she cannot consume leaves like they can. "I'm unable to do that as part of my diet because humans can't break down nutrients like gibbons do from leaves," Watson conceded.
While it seems like a fine cause, it seems to me like it's cheating just a bit to eat cooked food.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 30, 2018 -
Comments (2)
Category: Animals, Food, Dieting and Weight Loss
Miss Cold Potato of 1966
All will be explained at the link.Many many thanks to WU-vie Fred Goebel for this charming discovery.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 28, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Food, 1960s
Non-melting popsicle
Recently announced by the U.K. design firm Bompas & Parr, who say that it took them a year to develop and that it was "designed with global warming in mind," so thatThe technology is based on pykrete, which is a frozen mixture of sawdust and water that resists melting. Pykrete was invented during WWII, and for a while the British Royal Navy was considering building a supersized aircraft carrier out of the stuff.
The non-melting popsicle uses edible fruit fibers instead of sawdust to achieve the same non-melting effect. A company rep said, "The texture of the ice lolly is not far off a regular lolly, though a tad chewy."
More info: fast company
Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 24, 2018 -
Comments (7)
Category: Food, Candy, Inventions
Alice in Dairyland
I can see having a beauty queen to represent the dairy region. But what's the Lewis Carroll connection? The website is not forthcoming. Does she have surreal adventures or not?
Source.
Home page.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Aug 18, 2018 -
Comments (5)
Category: Agriculture, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Food, Regionalism, Twentieth Century
Follies of the Madmen #378
Cupid, traditionally the intermediary of erotic love, engenders a pea-based affection between mother and son.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 08, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Food, Children, Parents, 1950s
Hunting Groceries
For one week in 1992, German artist Christian Jankowski "hunted" his groceries in the supermarket with a bow and arrow. From his website:Imagine trying to go into a supermarket with a bow and arrow nowadays to hunt your groceries.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 31, 2018 -
Comments (6)
Category: Food, Shopping, Performance Art, 1990s
Microwaveable Ice Cream Sundaes
Johnston's Hot Scoop Microwave Sundae is one of those products where you have to wonder what was going through the minds of the executives who dreamed it up. Introduced in the mid-1980s, the concept was that it was an entire, frozen ice cream sundae that you could heat in the microwave, and (in theory) only the topping would melt.In practice, the ice cream also inevitably melted, leaving consumers with a soggy mix of ice cream and topping. And yet the company went to all the effort to make this thing because they figured it would be too difficult for people to just heat the topping on its own.
A review of the product:
Minneapolis Star Tribune - July 16, 1986
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jul 30, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Food, Products, 1980s
Frozen Foods
Technically, their business did involve the handling and preparation of meat.
Pensacola News Journal - Nov 10, 1980
And it seems that the Elliot-Hamil Funeral Home is still around. Their website.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 28, 2018 -
Comments (1)
Category: Death, Food, 1980s
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |