Pork board reacts to April Fools’ Day joke on unicorn meat

24-06-2010 | Home | News

The US National Pork Board (NPB) has sent a 12-page warning to the web site ThinkGeek.com after having offered canned unicorn meat as an April Fools’ Day joke.

The board demanded that the web site stop infringing on its slogan. The ‘new’ product used the tagline ‘Pâté is passé. Unicorn – the new white meat’. The site added: “Caviar is so 1980s. Unicorn is the sparkling, crunchy, savory meat of today’s elite.”

Pork, however, is branded as ‘the other white meat’ by the NPB and the Pork Checkoff in the United States. The issue is purely legal, confirmed NPB vice president of domestic marketing Ceci Snyder. “Yes, it’s funny. But if you don’t respond, you are opening your trademark up to challenges.”

No intention to misguide
“It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn,” Geeknet president and CEO Scott Kauffman replied in a statement, offering his apologies. The web site has a lot of fun pork items on sale.

The web site announced a number fictitious products on April 1 for the last few years. Among them bacon paste and caffeinated meatloaf could be found. Real products for sale at the site include bacon soap, bacon popcorn and bacon-flavoured envelopes.

Related websites:
• National Pork Board (NPB)
• Thinkgeek.com©