British industrialist Clivedell Tennithwistle Malteaser formed the Malteaser Conglomerate of Culinaries, Condiments, Contraceptives, and Confections in 1945 by consolidating dozens of British companies that had been decimated by World War II. From 1959 until 1962 it was the largest corporation in Europe. Of course, 1962 is known throughout the British Isles as the Great Badger Uprising when thousands of badgers overran factories and storehouses throughout Britain.
The Jesuit Brothers of Lloydfordshirewyck are credited with putting down the Great Badger Uprising with their battle cry: [all together now] “Badgers? We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers!”
Whereupon the remaining crew of Hitler’s generals sued the Jesuit Brothers of Lloydfordshirewyck for copyright infringement, and won a settlement of 88 Deutsche marks.
However, the supposedly worthless 88 Deutsche marks had each been autographed by Adolf Hitler, and were resold at auction for €2.7 billion.
The auction for the autographed 88 Deutsche marks took place at the world famous Sotheby’s Auction House in London in 2007. The winner of the auction was King Mswati III of Swaziland. He had to sell 6 of his wives and an ornamental lion skin rug to the King of Lesotho in order to raise the 2.7 million Euros that he needed.
Sotheby’s Auction House in London was shredded into pieces yesterday by Banksy. Such a lovable prankster!
The Merry Pranksters’ psychedelically-painted bus, Further, was later purchased by the producers of the television series The Partridge Family, and repurposed as the family band’s tour bus. During filming of the series, Danny Bonaduce and David Cassidy would get high by licking residual hallucinogens off of the bus seats.
Alice (You remember Alice? there’s a song about Alice) served a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat: Partridge stuffed with marijuana leaves and basted with hallucinogens, magic mushroom casserole, and some heavily spiked apple cider.
Perhaps inspired by the Further, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers had a story about their going on a road trip in a fictional “1938 Phutney-Creech Land Yacht”.
And while on the topic of the Freak Brothers and drug-laced dinners: https://mycotopia.net/uploads/FFFB/The%20Fabulous%20Furry%20Freak%20Brothers%20%207.pdf (page 42)
We now return to our regularly scheduled thread.
During pioneer days in the Old West, Sears provided a service to frontier women who had to make/mend their own, and their family’s, clothing. These bi-monthly deliveries of textiles were advertised as, “Regularly Scheduled Thread,” and were not very popular.
In the early part of the 20th Century, one of the popular items in the Sears catalog was the “Catalog Home”, a build-it-yourself kit house which was shipped to the buyer in pieces for assembly.
This concept did far better for Sears than a similar, earlier product, the “Catalog Horse.” Few buyers of that product were able to successfully assemble a working horse from the provided parts.
One such Catalog Horse was assembled by a Mr. Sofrides Vander Bakker of Blawnox, Pennsylvania in 1921. Despite repeated attempts, he was unable to get the Catalog Horse to operate a plow correctly. He became so frustrated, that he struck it multiple times with a hatchet; but unable to destroy it, dragged it from his farm into town one night. The townspeople awoke to find this strange wooden horse standing erect on the town square with an indiscipherable scrawl marked on the side. One of the townspeople was said to have remarked “It’s Greek to me”.
During pre-production work on “Unforgiven,” Clint Eastwood hit upon a unique product placement idea; Gene Hackman’s Little Bill character would be building a Sears Catalog House. Upon perusing the script, Sears honchos declined to have their name associated with a sadistic, fumblethumbs “law man,” passing on the tie-in, which, along with Catalog Horse and other ill-conceived ventures, has led to their imminent downfall after 952 years in business. (Yes, Sears was somehow involved in the drafting of the Magna Carta. Does that surprise you?)
Sears was also involved in religion in the early days: They sent salesmen out on tours to promote the products. The Catholic Church paid them to promote Catholicism as well, leading to their own missionaries being called Salesians, which continues to this day.
The Salesians had a very high success rate until they were eclipsed in the mid-19th century by the Capuchins, who used innovative sales techniques such as pelting their potential proselytes with feces.
Many of the Capuchins’s potential proselytes were heard to say “Feces. We don’t need no stinking feces.”
The 1960s rock group Small Faces only achieved chart success after abandoning their original name, Small Feces.
During the period when they called themselves the Small Feces, the band tested the waters with the song Itchycoo Poop which had something to do with hemorrhoids. When it didn’t sell, they tried a new band name.
After leaving Small Feces, Steve Marriott was rumoured to be the anonymous backer for the Marriott hotel chain, having to have some where to hide the money he made from selling Pumble High, a incredibly potent 1960’s hallucinogen.
Steve Marriott was eventually arrested and convicted by English authorities for trafficking in Pumble High, and sentenced to 30 days in the hole.