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Fact or Fooling you?

Taking it to the limit on April 1

Whatever happened to April Fools' Day? When you look at the pranks people used to pull off - the fake fairies of Cottingley, H. L. Mencken's spoof about bathtubs, the weird composite animals - April Fool's Day or not, you realize our zeitgeist has gotten way too serious.

So in honour of this grand opportunity and the inner trickster in us all, here's a quick test of your F.Q., or Foolishness Quotient. Which of the following food fricassees is fact or fooling you? Now, no cheating - give it your best shot before you check.

And remember, all your April Fools' fooling has to be over by 12 noon April 1. But you can start at midnight, which can let you land some real unexpected zingers.

Have fun!

 

Fact or fooling you?

No. 1: Grass for gamon

Media can't resist April Fools', and many of the tricks over the years have centred on food, no surprise, given its primacy.

One of the biggest April Fools' spoofs of all times was a 1945 broadcast from ABC radio in Australia. The Ministry of Agriculture announced that, working with researchers, it had developed a method of producing high-quality protein from grasses. This at a time when war rationing had meant few consumer goods and, unless you had a good aim and could hit a kangaroo at 50 yards, you didn't have a lot of meat to feed your family.

The ministry reported that, effective immediately, the national government would pay five cents a bushel for any grasses, wild or domestic, brought to the ministry's laboratories in Canberra. Donors would also receive a coupon for each bushel delivered that could later be redeemed for four ounces of the new meat product, gamon - delicious roasted or fried, for dinner or lunch.

The broadcast was followed by a "commercial" featuring high-pitched children's voices begging their hapless, mother to please, please make them a gamon sandwich, and to hurry it up, they couldn't wait.

The result was overwhelming. The ABC switchboard was jammed with calls asking for details on how to deliver the grass. People with more gumption didn't wait to call - thousands of them descended on the steps of Parliament, or at the ministry's office on Adelaide Avenue, with sacks, boxes, rickety trucks, anything they could get their hands on, stuffed with grass.

When bewildered civil servants explained they had no idea what the grass collection was all about, furious grass collectors dumped the fruits of their labour on laps, heads, desks, hallways and stairs. It was a good joke - until the government threatened to sue ABC. The radio station hastily issued an apology and employees were dispatched to clean up the grassy mess.

To this day you can still find Aussies who grumble that gamon is a good idea. Too bad someone hasn't come up with it yet...

 

Fact or fooling you?

No. 2: Re-design those slippery dogs

The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that hot dog weenies be re-engineered to make them less weenie-like. Plus they want food manufacturers to put choking warning labels on their products. According to the Guardian , weenies account for about 17 per cent of food-related choking deaths of kids in the U.S. each year.

Gary Smith, director of the centre for injury research and policy at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio was quoted in USA Today : "If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child's airway, it would be a hot dog."

One technical food consultant acknowledged that hot dog weenies could be engineered in any shape you want - circles, cubes, whatever - but would they still be hot dogs?

 

Fact or fooling you?

No. 3: From Taco Bell to Taco Liberty Bell

Taco Bell, purveyors of Mexican fast food, took out a full page ad in the New York Times to announce that the company had purchased the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell. The company bought the cracked bell, one of the most famous symbols of the American Revolution, to bolster its image and to help out the nation during the recession, much as other corporations were getting involved in the "adopt-a-highway" program.

 

• • •

 

So here goes, folks. Are they fact or foolish?

No. 1: Grass for gamon

Ha, ha. April Fools'. It's all fake - honest, I made it up.

The fact is the biggest April Fools' food prank of all time was the story about the bumper spaghetti harvest broadcast by BBC TV in 1957. BBC TV's revered news show, Panorama, described how the harvest in southern Switzerland was much greater than usual that year due to the unusually mild winter. It went on to describe how spaghetti harvesting in Switzerland was more of a "family affair," nothing like the huge commercial harvests of Italy. The story was accompanied by footage of workers earnestly harvesting spaghetti from trees.

The BBC was inundated by calls, including ones from people wanting to know where to buy a spaghetti tree. The BBC's director general later confessed that even he had to research where spaghetti came from. The whole episode was cooked up by a Panorama cameramen who had been scolded by a teacher for being so stupid he'd believe that spaghetti grew on trees.

No kidding.

 

No. 2: Re-design those slippery dogs

Fact. Truly. The academy is seriously proposing re-engineering weenies... and sausages, and liquorice cigars. Sorry, I'm kidding on the last two. It's just the weenies they're proposing for re-design. I think.

 

No. 3: From Taco Bell to Taco Liberty Bell

It was an April Fools' prank in 1996, but it is all true. Taco Bell took out the ad, suffered the indignities when people realized it was a prank, but also bolstered its sales by over half a million dollars that week. You can read all about it, and lots of other great pranks in Alex Boese's entertaining book, The Museum of Hoaxes .

 

Glenda Bartosh is an original prankster masquerading as an award-winning freelance writer.