Hoax Museum Blog: Food

Outhouse Springs Water — Stuart Elliott, in today's edition of his NY Times email newsletter, writes about a hoax product that recently became a real product. It goes by the name Outhouse Springs water. This brand of bottled water was dreamed up by an advertising agency that wanted to gauge how effective outdoor billboard ads could be. So they put 40 billboards advertising the fictitious Outhouse Springs Water up around Charleston, South Carolina. The billboards sported slogans such as "It's #1, not #2!" People definitely noticed the ads and actually started asking for the stuff at retailers. Demand became so intense that the ad agency eventually made a deal with a bottled-water company to produce a limited run of Outhouse Springs Water. It's on sale now at Piggly Wiggly's in Charleston. This product reminds me of Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale.

Meat Shakes — Here's a new hoax website: meatshake.com. It claims to be the homepage of the MeatShake Corporation, operators of the Meat Shake chain of fast food restaurants. You guessed it, MeatShake offers meat lovers the chance to quench their carnivorous appetites with ham, beef, and turkey shakes. Let there be no doubt. This is meat put in a blender and sipped through a straw. Their corporate vision is simple, "Meat. Lots of Meat." (Thanks to Jeff Whealton for pointing the site out to me).

In reality, the MeatShake website is the creation of a band from Long Beach called Ugly Duckling. Their latest album, "Taste The Secret," tells the story of the MeatShake restaurant and it's battles against the rival chain Veggie Hut. The three members of the band claim to have met while working at a MeatShake restaurant.

Need more proof that MeatShake is a hoax? Well, if you examine the images on the site, you'll discover that whoever created them forgot to change the hidden preview file attached to the images, and this preview file shows what the images looked like before they were photoshopped. Thus, we discover that:


  

The Meat Shake sign (left) was originally a sign for Champion Burgers (right)

  

and the Meat Shake store with a 'Taste the Secret' banner (left), is actually an abandoned store with a 'For Lease' sign (right).

The Naked Chef — An email going around claims to contain, as an attachment, the next cookbook by Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef). It's actually just a mock-up, containing recipes from his previous book. But I'm bummed that I haven't received this email yet.

Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale — A visitor (Bill Graham) informed me of a memorable hoax that I missed: Ye Olde Frothingsloth Pale Stale Ale. Frothingslosh is a unique beer that's so light that the beer actually floats on top of the foam. It all started out as a running joke on Rege Cordic's Pittsburgh radio show in the 1950s. He made up all kinds of joke ads for this fictitious beer and invented slogans such as "A whale of an ale for the pale stale male" and "Hi dittom dottom, the foam is on the bottom." But the Olde Frothingsloth concept became so popular, that eventually it caught the attention of the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. who started selling small runs of Olde Frothingsloth for special occasions such as Christmas and holidays. Of course, the beer being sold was really just Iron City Beer repackaged with Olde Frothingslosh labels, but the labels themselves were so outrageous that they instantly became prized among beer can collectors. The most popular cans were those that featured Miss Olde Frothingslosh, Fatima Yechburgh (pictured below), the supposed winner of the Frothingslosh Beauty Contest. Fatima was described as a resident of a small town near Pittsburgh. When not studying arc welding, she enjoyed soap carving, arm wrestling, sky diving, and ballet. I believe that the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. still occasionally produces small runs of Olde Frothingslosh. I'd love to try some.

Poland Spring Water — This is disappointing. Poland Spring water turns out not to be spring water at all, just highly treated groundwater. Nestle is being sued for false advertising. I used to drink Poland Spring all the time before I moved out to California.

McDonald — The Chicago Tribune on the McDonald's Whole-Wheat Hoax. Apparently, and contrary to McDonald's belief, dying white bread a caramel color does not make it "whole wheat."

Finger-Lickin — Apparently the old Kentucky Fried Chicken email hoax is still going around. I thought this one had died out ages ago. I guess the good ones never die out completely.

Fake Lettuce — Baywatch star Traci Bingham has been getting a huge amount of publicity for parading around European cities in her bikini made out of lettuce. Her point was to promote vegetarianism. But purists will note that the bikini was made out of fake lettuce.

Dr. Pepper Pledge of Allegiance — Got a few e-mails about the Dr. Pepper/Pledge of Allegiance issue that's circulating through e-mail. Here's the text of the e-mail that people are receiving:
Just sharing the info with you that I received!

For those who have not heard, the bottlers/manufacturers of Dr. Pepper and their other products, have started a "new" can campaign. They are putting patriotic scenes on them. One, is the Empire State Bldg. with the pledge of allegiance...but ... they left off the words..."under God". They felt it might "offend" some. I don't know about you, but as a Christian, I am boycotting their products! They said they didn't "have room" for those words, but yet they had room for "indivisible" on the can Please pass this along to others and see if we can get a message out to Dr.Pepper ....ifhaving "under God" on cans offends them, then they don't need our money with "in God we trust" on it!!!
It turns out that Dr. Pepper did quote part of the Pledge of Allegiance on a patriotically themed can, and they did leave out the phrase 'Under God.' But then they only quoted three words from the pledge: "One nation... indivisible." So they also left out all references to the flag, the republic, liberty, and justice.

Here's Dr. Pepper's official response to the controversy: Dr. Pepper