wildyams

I don't normally like to just lift something off of another blog and re-post it (I've already got links to Fark and Boing Boing over on the left after all), but this is just too fantastic to not post here. What can I say, I love to see a large company's wacky publicity stunt go haywire :lol

Under the noontime sun of New York's first day of summer, Snapple, the soft drink maker, answered the question of whether a 17 1/2-ton Popsicle can be made to stand upright in Union Square.

It cannot.

In a brave attempt to surpass a Guinness record - "The World's Largest Popsicle" - Snapple mixed and froze a gargantuan icy doppelganger of its new kiwi-strawberry flavored Snapple on Ice. Then the frozen treat was hauled by freezer truck from Edison, N.J., and raised with an enormous crane in Manhattan.

Alas, like James Arness in the 1951 alien thriller "The Thing From Another World," the giant Snapsicle began to melt. Soon pedestrians were fleeing in not-quite terror, fire trucks were converging and the police were closing off streets to contain the publicity stunt gone wrong.

Snapple officials first started to worry when the pink liquid began to flow onto East 17th Street. They feared cyclists and automobiles would slip in the ooze...

Maria Ortiz, 45, a cleaning worker at Sephora, a makeup and perfume store at the north end of Union Square, noticed the hubbub.

"There was a lot of pink water, pouring all the way down" onto East 17th Street, she said. Then she noticed the crane stop as it tried to lift the giant Popsicle, like a frozen flagpole.

Ms. Ortiz, of East New York, Brooklyn, said she and her co-workers were waiting for the Popsicle to go up. "But we didn't see the pop, just the pink water flowing down the street," and here she spread her hands, as if parting the Red Sea.

The Police and Fire Departments were summoned. Breaking News Network, which monitors police scanners for news organizations, sent out an alert:

"A giant Popsicle being displayed by Snapple has melted in the heat and sun and spilled all over 17th Street. F.D. on scene attempting to wash down the roadway - sticky goo all over the area."

What went wrong?

To paraphrase Cameron Poe, my first guess would be "a lot."