Promotional Gastronomy - The Six Flags Way!!!

After my roachy post of Monday, it occurred to me that the Six Flags promotional event involving the consumption of live, wriggling insects was not simply the product of deranged minds in the executive program at the theme park but was in fact the product of professional marketing experts.

All right, so technically that does mean that it was the product of deranged minds, but there's still something about this gimmick that I think can be generalized to other companies and attractions. As we're always on the lookout for a way to promote our own site, and generate wads of cash, I've come up with a list of suggestions that others might use to attract visitors and customers, and of course, should any of these corporations take up these ideas, they can contact me directly regarding robust financial compensation.

I and the good people here at DOUI (most notably our lawyer F. Johnny Lee, who is at this moment holding a Glock to my head) do however reserve the right to not be legally responsible should they employ these methods, and something go horribly wrong. (That's good enough for F.J.L. He's put the Glock down and returned to his favourite pasttime... watching his bank balance increase live on the Internet.)

So here they are: Earl's Gastronomically Radical and Dubious Promotional Schemes - the Six Flags Way!!!

• I Could Eat a Horse and Just Did!!! - Eat a whole horse promotional. Customers who can eat an entire horse, excepting the bones and jigglies, will receive a free prize from or admission to the attraction in question. This would work great for Horse racing venues, glue factories, or French restaurants.
• Colour Me Hungry!!! - The Crayola company could offer an "Eat a box of Crayons" contest. Visitors who manage to get through an entire box of Crayolas (the 64 size, to be sure) will get free admission to the plant tour. To heighten the sense of excitement, Crayola could festoon the entrance to the plant with the colourful smiles of previous contestants.
• Eat Me!!! - No, not me Earl Fando, but whichever representative of a particular company might enjoy that sort of thing. Sado-Machocist resorts, etc. Now, of course I'm not actually suggesting real cannibalism. Rather, a mock up of the person in question would be suitable. As Hufu has turned out to be unreliable, I suggest something made of Spam, Treet, or an approximate substitute.
• Supplemental Iron - Iron is supposed to be good for us, right? So why not reward a person who can knock back a few pounds of it. These iron men and women would stand out for their abilities, and that's just at a metal detector! ...Great fun for vitamin companies and Gold's Gym.
• Fungus Among Us - but Which One? - Mushrooms aren't the only fungi there are out there. What brave soul though would chance random fungus??? This promotional idea would find out. "Was that oyster mushroom or smut fungus?" "Erm... I don't know. I just know I need to throw up."

Sorry! Sorry!

I'd just like to take a moment and apologise for the dearth of posts this week, in what has probably been our slowest week since the week before we started this blog.

I actually have had a post in progress since Wednesday, but keep getting interrupted by work, yardwork, meals, and the overwhelming need for sleep that kicks in between 11 p.m. and midnight. Any day now I shall begin to develop the hunger for Blue Plate Specials at 3:45 p.m. that signifies that I am truly a geezer.

Anyway, I have several posts in the works, most having to do with cheese, badgers, and Moldovian import tariffs if I remember correctly, and I'm sure that Stew, Nuffy, and Linus do also.

Maybe.

Save the Roaches!!!

PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (or as we at DOUI like to refer to them, Americans Striving to Spoil Eating Sausages) have taken up the case of a new, mistreated and abused member of the animal kingdom and pulled it into their warm, smothering, flat, vegan bosoms:

The giant, hissing Madagascar Cockroach. You know, that insect that looks just like a regular roach, only much louder and large enough to drive off in your Astin-Martin.

PETA's action is in response to a new Halloween contest that the Six Flags amusement parks have initiated, whereby anyone who eats a live, hissing cockroach gets preferred status in queues around the park. That's right, scarf a large, noisemaking insect into your gullet and you get to jump line on any ride in the park, most of which will have you throwing the nasty thing right back up again. They should entitle it "Scarf and Barf." (Six Flags, call my representation and we'll talk about the rights.)

In the meantime, PETA has declared war on this particularly cruel form of entertainment. Of course, the real cruelty is the one infected on the stupid git who's perfectly happy to munch on a giant cockroach so they can jump to the front of the line to ride Tatsu for the 73 time. "What's that between your teeth, mate? It looks like a big, hairy roach leg! Blimey, they do go for the cheap hot dogs here, don't they!"

Ironically, Tatsu is the most common surname for a cockroach in the world, like Smith or Wang. Just observing...

As reported by The Boston Herald, PETA, came to the defense of these poor, semi-flying, motel infesting, dirty little buggers, by claiming that cockroaches have been given a bad reputation, and that, “They are gentle, complex animals.”

Right, I've always noted that the little bastards who get caught in the Roach Motels I used to keep around the flat were too busy solving differential equations or working out complex metaphysical systems to bother chewing off their legs and squirming to freedom, like many less complex mammals and lizards.

Maybe they just seem complex to PETA officials, who seem to thrive on an ethical simplicity that would leave a rock scorpion underwhelmed.

Anyway, according to the Herald, a representative from Six Flags said that they are going through with the planned contest. "Nothing will squash it now," claimed Melissa Pinkerton, Public Relations Manager for Six Flags New England, and amateur headline writer for the New York Daily News.

She also pointed out that cockroaches are high in protein and low in fat, just to avoid additional pressure from the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, who were all ready to launch a new, "Cockroaches are Heart-Attacks on a Silver Six Flags Platter" advert campaign .

In a related story, Jenny Craig just announced a totally new diet, called the "Six Legs to Health" diet, with a secret, hissing ingredient.

Kirstie Alley has been slated to lead the promotional campaign, just as soon as she stops retching into her hat.