Colonel Sanders was apparently a music fan. During the late 1960s, while he still owned Kentucky Fried Chicken, he released a number of albums which were sold at his restaurants.
His first record, released in 1966, was "Favorite Old Church Hymns recorded by The Colonel's Mandolin Band for the glorification of Christ."
The story goes, as reported by the Danville Advocate-Messenger (Nov 6, 1967), that "a group of sixth-graders originally became interested in mandolins after their teacher brought an instrument to the school. When the children, who lived near Colonel Sanders, had formed a band and played many times, they performed for him and he forthwith bought them all new mandolins and assisted them in making a record." In fact, he decided to print 30,000 copies of the record, almost none of which sold.
Vice.com reports that thousands of copies of the record are still in a storage warehouse in Kentucky, and you can buy one if you visit the original KFC location in Corbin, Kentucky.
The other albums he released were more generic music compilations. The best title among the lot is Colonel Sanders' Tijuana Picnic, which sounds vaguely obscene, but was just a collection of Tijuana Brass knockoffs. You can listen to the whole album on YouTube (clip below).
1924: Despite being fed sweet hot tea and peppermint creams in an experimental attempt to increase their energy, the Yale soccer team lost to the visiting team by 5 to 1.
Throughout the 1950s, the donut industry tried hard to make Donut Parties a Halloween tradition. Their PR men also claimed that donuts could help make Halloween "more nutritious."
San Bernardino County Sun - Oct 30, 1957
San Bernardino County Sun - Oct 30, 1957
Oct 23, 1955 - “Dos & Don’ts for Halloween Donut Party”
I promise this will be my last Cheetos-themed post for a while. But for some reason, I've been coming across a lot of weird stuff about Cheetos recently.
I didn’t realize this when I posted yesterday about Cheetos lip balm, but it turns out that this past week Cheetos announced it would be hosting the brands first-ever runway show, as part of New York Fashion Week. From the press release:
Cheetos will unveil the Cheetos Flamin' Haute look in New York at the brand's first-ever runway show and style bar and is asking fans to show off their #CheetosFlaminHaute look for a chance to gain entry... the brand will debut high-fashion-yet-playful looks with clothes, hair, makeup and nail styling that takes 'looking like a snack' to a whole new level.
A number of sites (such as USA Today) list Cheetos Lip Balm as one of the greatest product flops of all time. I don't agree. It was definitely weird, but I can't find any evidence it flopped.
Some context: it came on the market in 2005, created by Lotta Luv, a New York cosmetics company that specialized in licensing flavors from well-known brands. Some of the other odd lip-balm flavors they offered included Hostess Ding Dongs, Cracker Jack, Junior Mints, fourteen flavors of Snapple, and Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion. Their target market was girls 8 to 14. Apparently, young girls loved these weird lip balms.
As far as I can tell, the Cheetos lip balm remained available until 2011, which doesn’t seem like a flop.
From Japan, comes a solution to the problem of getting your fingers greasy when you eat potato chips. Snack-maker Koike-ya has designed chips that you can 'drink' directly from the bag. From the Wall Street Journal:
[Koike-ya’s] One Hand brand features a line of splintered potato chips and other snacks that can be consumed like a bottled drink. It’s marketed with a jumbo-size premise—“a new snack style humankind has been waiting for.” The idea originated with the observation that customers like the mix of potato chip crumbs and flavored powder left at the bottom of the bag. Some eaters tip the chip bag into their mouths to dump the delectable detritus. “What we said is, ‘Why don’t we make it easier for them to do that?’ ” said Kohei Shimosaka, who led a five-member team of chip designers to find the optimum configuration... The research and development finally cooked up a hand-held package with an angled opening.
It looks like a bag of french fries to me. And couldn't you do this on your own with regular chips if you smashed them up while in the bag, and then cut an angled opening to pour them right into your mouth?
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.