Over at KFC Australia, they seem to be a little confused about how nachos work. Not that Americans have any special claim to snack food logic, but at least our fast food outlets haven’t done anything completely wacky like throwing popcorn chicken on nachos, or tortilla chips on a sandwich. [More]
international
Vanilla Shake M&Ms Exist In Australia, Are Boring
By 3.5.14
Ooh, more exciting international snack food news! Down in Australia, they now have Vanilla Shake flavored M&Ms. Does that sound tempting? Well, it isn’t. People there report that they’re similar to the boring flavor profile of Birthday Cake M&Ms, which just taste like boring old milk chocolate M&Ms. [The Impulsive Buy] [More]
English Grocery Store Offers Venison Special: Severed Deer Head At Checkout
By 6.12.13
You can encounter the weirdest stuff at the grocery store in the wee hours of the morning, but you probably haven’t seen anything weirder than what turned up in the self-checkout aisle of one of UK grocer Tesco’s stores at 1:30 in the morning: the severed head of a deer. [More]
Truckload Of Flaming Cheese Shuts Down Norwegian Highway
By 1.22.13
For five days, hot toxic gases filled the air near a highway in Norway after the contents of a truckload caught fire in a tunnel. The hot temperatures were too dangerous for highway personnel to approach: one told reporters that the material could be “almost like [gasoline] if it gets hot enough.” What was in the truck? Carmelized goat cheese. [More]
Pepsi-Chicken Lay’s Potato Chips Are Tastier Than They Sound, But Only Sold In China
By 12.13.12
If there’s anything that people across the globe truly need and want, it’s more fizzy sugar water. And so PepsiCo is investing more money in getting the attention and the business of consumers in the world’s largest market. Their latest attention-getting scheme and bit of inter-brand synergy between two of the company’s signature brands: Cola chicken-flavored Lay’s potato chips. [More]
Two London Residents Find Dead Frogs In Their Tesco Spinach
By 9.19.12
We’ve come to use the tag “free frogs” for any story about unexpected dead animals in one’s food. Over in the United Kingdom, they’re apparently running some kind of regional free-frog promotion. Two London customers of chain retailer Tesco have found dead frogs in their spinach in the last week. [More]
Branded Vrooming Noises Are Way Better Than An Internal Combustion Engine
By 4.19.12
I can’t be the only one around here who read The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary as a child and was disappointed that toy vehicles that move if you make vrooming sounds don’t exist in the real world. Domino’s in the Netherlands, on the other hand, has taken this concept and made it a reality. Except backwards. Which is why your pizza can now be delivered on a scooter that makes human-recorded vrooming sounds and advertises Domino’s as it rolls down the street. [More]
Cat Naps On Router, ISP Provides Decoy Router In Exchange For Cat Pictures
By 3.2.12
Liam lives in England and has a cat. As all people owned by cats know, warm, feline-posterior-sized electronic devices are irresistible to cats worldwide, and the DSL modem/router thingy provided by his Internet service provider, Be, is no exception. The problem is that this particular router doesn’t work very well with a cat on top of it. He made a joking forum post that featured a photo of his cat communing with the router and pleaded for a decoy router so he could keep his cat happy but also have functional Internet. Astonishingly…. the company complied. But only if he sent them more pictures of his cat. [More]
Cheap Chinese Labor Will Die On Jan 1 With A Minimum Wage Increase
By 11.11.11
Many of the things you buy and own were touched at some point by Chinese hands, and those hands are about to get a little more expensive. The Guangdong province in China, the seat of the country’s manufacturing might, is going to get a 20% minimum wage increase starting January 1st, 2012. [More]
Roving Tellers Spread Banking To India's Hinterland
By 9.30.11
Human ATMs are traveling from village to village in India, sometimes by rickshaw, armed with computer gear and taking deposits. They’re part of a state-wide initiative to spread banking to the vast rural population that normally has no access to it. [More]
Only 1.2% Of American Spending Actually Ends Up In China
By 8.11.11
For all the ballyhoo about how Chinese products have infiltrated our shelves, it turns out that only 1.2% of American spending actually ends up in their coffers. How is this? [More]
Landlord Suspected Of Releasing Thousands Of Scorpions To Get Tenants Out
By 8.9.11
A man named Chen woke up recently to find a scorpion crawling over his body. Snapping on the bedroom light, he found his bedroom to be full of scorpions. He gathered his family and worked to capture several hundred of the arachnids. When they left the apartment, they found their neighbors had been battling the poison-tipped beasts, and their landlord, who wants them out to make way for a construction project, is suspected of letting them loose. [More]
Don't Get Ripped Off By Your Cellphone When Overseas
By 8.9.11
Tales abound of cellphone bills in the double-digit thousands from customers who got snagged when traveling overseas. But there’s a bunch of easy ways to make sure that your cellphone bill doesn’t outpace your airplane ticket when gallivanting internationally. [More]
Stocks Fall On Global Economy Fears
By 8.4.11
Global stocks fell broadly Thursday afternoon amid worsening concerns about a global economic cooling and a European debt crisis. Each of the three major US indexes were down, deleting all the gains they had made so far this year. [More]
Mayor Crushes Car Parked In Bike Lane With Armored Vehicle
By 8.2.11
A mayor of a Lithuanian city this week took to driving an armored personnel carrier over a Mercedes-Benz that was parked in the bike lane. “I’ve had enough of these drivers parking their luxury cars on bike lanes and pedestrian crossings. This tank is a good tool to solve the problem of parking in the wrong place,” Mayor Zuokas told the assembled reporters. [More]
Counterfeit World Of Warcraft Theme Park Opens In China
By 7.22.11
The Chinese may have been the first to invent gunpowder and delicious pork-filled fried dumplings, but they have not caught up to the rest of the world when it comes to respecting intellectual property rights. Case in point, the recent opening of an entire themepark dedicated to World of Warcraft and Starcraft, two of the most popular online games in the world, in the Changzhou, Jiangsu province. It’s a sprawling $30 million megaplex spanning 600,000 square meters that aspires to compete with Disney and Universal Studios as a global theme park destination. And it’s a total knockoff. They didn’t pay Blizzard, the company behind those two games, a dime. [More]
Protesters Stop Foreclosures For Strangers In Spain
By 7.19.11
Some people don’t even know their neighbors’ names, but in Spain protesters are gathering in front of people’s houses to stop or stall foreclosures. And they’re getting results. [More]
China's Hypergrowth Fueled By Building Giant Cities No One Lives In
By 7.15.11
Chin up, America. China ain’t so great. That 10% GDP growth they’ve been having? A lot of it is fake. Take this investigate report that looks at the big trend over there of Chinese ghost cities and ghost malls. China is building ten of these cities a year, cities that can serve millions, with rows of apartment complexes, shopping malls, and universities. But almost no one lives in them. By pouring materials and resources and labor in, the government can keep national GDP at its state-mandated levels, even if its not meeting any real demand. It’s like someone is playing SimCity with all cheat codes, but this is a game China is going to lose. [More]
