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Giant Popsicle floods Union Square


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Disaster on a stick

Snapple’s attempt at popsicle world record turns into gooey fiasco

The Associated Press

Updated: 5:25 p.m. ET June 22, 2005

NEW YORK - An attempt to erect the world’s largest popsicle in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film — but much stickier.

The 25-foot-tall, 17½-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground.

Firefighters closed off several streets and used hoses to wash away the sugary goo.

Snapple had been trying to promote a new line of frozen treats by setting a record for the world’s largest popsicle, but called off the stunt before it was pulled fully upright by a construction crane. Authorities said they were worried the thing would collapse in the 80-degree, first-day-of-summer heat.

“What was unsettling was that the fluid just kept coming,” Stuart Claxton of the Guinness Book of World Records told the Daily News. “It was quite a lot of fluid. On a hot day like this, you have to move fast.”

Snapple official Lauren Radcliffe said the company was unlikely to make a second attempt to break the record, set by a 21-foot ice pop in Holland in 1997.

The giant ice pop was supposed to have been able to withstand the heat for some time, and organizers weren’t sure why it didn’t. It had been made in Edison, N.J., and hauled to New York by freezer truck in the morning.

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Guest akanalog

i live a block away literally-i can see union square from outside my front door-and i didn't even know this went down. granted i do not leave the apartment much during the day but it wasn't a big deal here since i wasn't even aware.

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i live a block away literally-i can see union square from outside my front door-and i didn't even know this went down.  granted i do not leave the apartment much during the day but it wasn't a big deal here since i wasn't even aware.

That's funny. The way they've seeded the article with 'unsettling' and 'scurrying for...' you'd have thought that it was something approximating an anthrax scare.

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The 25-foot-tall, 17½-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground...

Sounds exactly like some of the events in this modern classic children's book...

cwacom.jpg

Great book, BTW, even if you don't have kids! :cool:

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