Not all candy records are as static as the giant Kiss, which can be kept in a museum virtually indefinitely. Mentos mints, famous for their characteristic of setting off bubbling geysers when dropped into bottles of soda, orchestrated a brief but creative bit of performance art when Eepybird Perfetti Van Melle, USA, the mints’ Kentucky-based manufacturer, enlisted fans in Cincinnati to help set an impressive new record. To celebrate the launch of its new “Mentos Geyser Loading Tube,” a tube-shaped candy packaging designed to facilitate such tricks by flawlessly dropping several Mentos into soda bottles simultaneously, the company got 504 people to do just that, all at the same time, resulting in a dancing waters–style fountain show and earning the first-ever Guinness World Records title of “Most Mentos and Soda Fountains.” As Pete Healy, the company’s vice president of marketing told Candy Industry magazine, “We’re thrilled that millions of people have enjoyed making Mentos Geysers, and posting and watching Mentos Geyser videos online. The new Mentos Geyser loading tube packages are our way of thanking Mentos fans and helping them create even cooler and more elaborate Mentos Geysers.” He was not kidding. On the video of the event, which can be viewed on the company’s website, along with several other geyser experiments (www.eepybird.com, Guinness World Record Event), the multiple Mentos dropped from the tubes into two-liter bottles of Diet Coke shoot sugary geysers upward of twenty feet into the air. What is notable about the Mentos record is that since it is multiple food and not true giant food, it appears vulnerable to the average person. Predictably, one of the thousands of Guinness fanatics who scour the book looking for records to break quickly seized on mass geysering. Almost immediately some intrepid folks in Texas quickly put together their own Mentos-and-soda team and broke the company’s record with 791 fountains. Not to be so easily outdone, Eepybird’s Dutch parent company took matters into their own hands, and in Castle Square of Breda, Holland, launched 851 Mentos-and-Diet Coke-powered geysers to retake the world record. Emphasizing how Guinness-mania can take off, the original record setting and the two record-breaking spin-offs all occurred within a period of just five months. By the time you read this, I suspect competitive Mentos geysering will no longer be measured in the three digits.
Guinness World Records Day, an annual festival of record setting and breaking organized by the book’s marketing folks and now in its third year, is a perfect giant food venue. Once planned, these feats usually can be staged at any time and are done more for publicity than anything else—something the roving media covering the international record-smashing spree can provide. The original Guinness World Records Day in 2005 kicked off with giant food as one of its very first official deeds as shoppers and staffers at the main Birmingham branch of venerable English supermarket, Selfridges, assembled the world’s tallest free-standing tower of doughnuts. The tower should not be confused with the record for the biggest single doughnut, sixteen feet in diameter and weighing a ton and a half. The event also took brand promotion a step further by teaming the well-known retailer up with doughnut manufacturer Krispy Kreme, who supplied the hardware for the tower in the form of 2,544 doughnuts.
Not every giant food attempt ends as successfully as the doughnut tower or enormous ice cream float, even when sponsored and concocted by a deep-pocketed international food producer. Such was the case when beverage manufacturer Snapple visited New York City in an attempt to break the record for “World’s Largest Ice Pop,” and instead became the victim of the world’s largest ice pop meltdown. As PR Week, a trade publication for the public relations industry, wryly noted, “In retrospect, ‘Returning the Favor’ might not have been the best tagline for the Snapple PR stunt that turned into a kiwi-strawberry tidal wave in New York City last week. An attempt by the soft-drink company to break the Guinness World Record for the ‘World’s Largest Ice Pop,’ turned into a fiasco when the 35,000-pound ice pop melted on a hot summer day, sending bystanders scurrying to escape the world’s largest pool of all-natural beverage…. The spectacular failure of the ice pop generated hundreds of news stories across America, but most pointed to the ineptitude of the idea’s execution rather than the quality of Snapple’s new ice pops.” To rub salt on Snapple’s wounds, the New York Post reported that several minor injuries were caused by the juice flood, and attorney Michael Lasky told PR Week “that Snapple might have neglected to ‘plan protectively’ to keep itself from legal liability in the case.” In one of the few cases of anyone being shy about Guinness World Records publicity, good or bad, representatives from Snapple and its public relations firm did not return the magazine’s calls.
The range of recipes suitable for supersizing seems limited only by the imagination, but some themes have caught on more than others. There are foods, there are giant foods, and then there are giant sausages, perhaps the most hotly fought subcategory of enormous edibles in the Guinness World Records book. When a single unbroken sausage measuring an unimaginable twenty-eight miles in length—longer than the marathon that has been the basis for so many colorful Guinness World Records over the years—was entered in the debut Big Foods chapter in 2000, who could have dreamed it wouldn’t last? Apparently the natives of Melon, a town in Spain’s Galicia region, famous for its spicy chorizo sausage, who did not know about the feat when they cooked a giant chorizo measuring 360 feet long and tried to enter it in the book. While a sausage longer than a football field sounds impressive at first glance, it is strictly minor league by Guinness World Records standards, especially given that the 2000 standard was shattered in the same year the book came out, when one J. J. Tranfield of Sheffield, England, broke the record, originally set in Canada, with his thirty-six-mile-long sausage. Upon finding out that Melon had fallen more than thirty-five miles short of world record status, its mayor, Alberto Pardellas, got on the phone with the Guinness researchers in London and may have talked his way into the book. The Times reported that “The local mayor thinks he’s persuaded Guinness to create a specialist chorizo category, thus allowing his town’s comparatively puny product its chance of glory. He explained that the attempt was ‘to publicize our town’s main industry, which is sausage-making.’” While such an attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat sounds a bit contrived, Mayor Pardellas was simply relying on precedent, as the 2000 edition did list lengths and weights for several sausage subcategories, and his town’s chorizo would fall squarely between the world’s largest salami (68') and longest bratwurst (over a mile). Amazingly, another sausage subcategory, a brand new record for Longest Hot Dog, appears in the 2008 edition immediately adjacent to an explanatory graphic box titled “Claims We Don’t Want to See,” which in addition to the understandable “Fastest Surgery” and “Fattest Cat” lists “Longest French Fry” and “Largest Potato Chip”—with the explanation that “there’s no merit in these claims so thanks but NO!” This bewildering logic is a clear case of Guinness World Records sending mixed messages, leaving the reader to ponder why bratwurst, hot dogs, salami—or for that matter onion bhaji—is inherently more worthwhile than various forms of fried potatoes. It does show that there is still nothing quite as appealing to the editors as sausage, yet while the book has proven extremely flexible in its larger-than-life sausage records, don’t expect to see the largest sausage house or sausage dam or other architectural sausage undertakings anytime soon. “We also disappointed the Hungarian village with the tradition of making a wall from sausages,” Guinness World Records editor Craig Glenday, the same official who anointed the world’s largest soup in Mexico, told the London Telegraph. “It is possibly the biggest wall made of sausages in the world, but we have to draw the line somewhere.”
8
Records Go Global
Like I was in Malaysia last year, and they are totally into records, it’s just incredible. I was a celebrity in Malaysia and I didn’t even know until I got there.
—ASHRITA FURMAN, HOLDER OF THE MOST GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS
Is there a record for the nation with too much free time? Canadians ro
cked the book this year, shattering more than 100 world records.
—TIME MAGAZINE, 2006
No country takes the setting and breaking of world records more seriously than tiny Singapore—at least by some accounts. No less of an authority than Ashrita Furman himself describes the place as a hotbed of all things record breaking. In addition, Singapore has its own record book and record-setting club to augment Guinness. But then, so does India, where record attempts are regularly front page news. India has also proven very fertile ground for new Guinness World Records museums, and its residents overwhelm the book’s London office with record-related correspondence. The arguments for India as record central are strong, but so are those for Australia, though statistics Down Under may be skewed by a handful of especially obsessed serial record setters. China is bursting onto the scene at what may be a record record pace, and in Malaysia Ashrita is a pop star. It seems that Guinness record mania is more prevalent in the Pacific Rim, unless you count Canada, which has an exceptionally high per capita record tally and buys more copies of the book per person than anyplace else. The United States still dominates record setting, and England and Germany are in the top five. Despite the natural competitiveness the book has inspired, it may be impossible to pick a national winner: Guinnessitis has gone global, and about the only thing everyone can agree on is that the leader of the craze is not record-deprived Chile.
It took the first edition of the Guinness Book of Records just a few months to hit the best-seller list and less than two years to emigrate to the United States, now its largest market. Within a decade there were editions being published in French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, Japanese, Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Czech, and Dutch. The book’s universal appeal has never ebbed, and since its inception more than half a century ago, it has been translated into thirty-seven languages and spawned television shows, museums, and a legacy of global record breaking that transcends all cultural barriers. All of this success with so many radically different readers proves that the book’s allure is not due primarily to pub culture or English traditions but to its very human appeal. The world’s tallest man is still a man, whether it’s Robert Wadlow or the various living record holders of that title, be they Mongolian or Ukrainian, as the last two have been. The human element shines through to all people—and so do the fifteen minutes of fame and Guinnessport fascination of the book. These just seem to appeal to people in some places more than in others.
Early on, the McWhirters saw a markedly more passionate response to the getting-into-Guinness phenomenon in the United States than on their home turf. They attributed this to America’s fascination with exploring and taming frontiers. But while the book still sells more copies and generates more records in the United States, it is more beloved, and in some cases worshiped, in other countries and cultures. In pure world record bulk, the United States is followed by Britain, Australia, and Germany, but devotion to the book seems to be greatest in the Pacific Rim and Canada. The privately held company is as guarded about its finances as its record database, and depending whom you listen to, claims for the highest numbers of record holders per capita cite various nations including Canada and Singapore, while many record pundits believe India is the hottest of all Guinness hotbeds. These nations are certainly extreme examples of Guinnessitis by any measures, and they are not alone.
“In my research I came across articles about India’s cult-like obsession with records,” recalls Ben Sherwood, who did exhaustive research for his novel The Man Who Ate the 747. “I think they have the greatest number of record holders, even if it’s not per capita, and the people who hold the records are revered in cult-like status. They sell a tremendous number of books there.” Actually, India is only tenth on the list of most records by a nation, but its followers make up for this with fervent dedication. In the 1990s, record mania in India grew so much that one out of five pieces of mail received at the company’s London headquarters came from there. Ashrita Furman recalled reading “in India about how Guinness World Records there are like Olympic medals,” and recounted the story of the Indian who sought to obtain widespread respect by breaking his orange-pushing record. Certainly India has produced some of the most bizarre attempts at Guinness immortality, even by the book’s lofty standards of bizarre, pushing the limits so often as to constantly have records declined. Examples include the doctor’s teenage son who tried to get into the book as the youngest surgeon, a four-year-old boy who tried to run a forty-three-mile marathon (he was stopped by doctors and his coach was jailed), and a seventeen-month-old toddler who ate fifty Bhut Jolokia peppers, which are recognized by Guinness and the rest of the world as the hottest on earth, in under four hours.
These attempts are less safe, but hardly less unusual, than many Indian efforts that did make the book. “India is a land obsessed with superlatives, especially the kind that get you into the Guinness World Records book,” writes the Associated Press’s regional reporter Sam Dolnick. “Here, a Guinness record is the stuff of national headlines.” Dolnick cites successful examples of Indians achieving record status including Radhakant Bajpai, who grew ear hair more than five inches long; Vadivelu Karunakaren, who quite literally followed in Ashrita Furman’s footsteps by skipping ten miles in under an hour; and Arvind Morarbhai Pandya, who took the timeless Guinness tradition of going backward to new heights by running 940 miles backward in just over twenty-six days. Dolnick points out that records aren’t just personal in India but matters of civic pride, and as a result are the frequent subject of headlines of major newspapers. He reports that a leading paper, the Hindustan Times, ran more than fifty stories on Guinness World Records in one year, with bold headlines such as UTTAR PRADESH BOY CAN WRITE ON MUSTARD SEEDS! and ORISSA MAN CLAIMS A RECORD FOR CRACKING OPEN 72 COCONUTS BY ELBOW! Not to be outdone, another important daily, the Times of India, which Dolnick says covers Guinness bids like political campaigns, bannered, MAN LOOKS TO SET WORLD RECORD PULLING VEHICLES WITH MUSTACHE.
Dolnick attributes India’s records passion to a gamut of reasons, ranging from its true national superlatives (largest democracy, largest youth population) to its sudden wealth and opportunity against a background of strict cultural hierarchy and history of a caste system. He even posits that records may be a bid for Western approval and recognition of the nation’s superpower-to-be status. In this environment, the records give people who are neither part of the newly minted millionaire generation nor born into upper classes a chance to achieve social respect. “Persons who have no money wish to do something in their lives, so the poor people try to break records by their strength or their will,” said Guinness Rishi, sixty-six years old, whose business card lists nineteen records (the vast majority not or not yet acknowledged by Guinness) and who hires himself out as a record-setting consultant. Because of his feats, which include drinking a bottle of ketchup in thirty-nine seconds, he believes that “People consider me an extraordinary person, not an ordinary person.” The obvious proof of his love of the book is that Rishi changed his first name from Har Parkash to Guinness, shortly after participating as a member of a team that kept a motor scooter in motion for a world record 1,001 hours, his sole official record. Lack of authentic certificates has not stopped his political career: Rishi has served as the president of the Guinness World Record Holder Club of India.
Guinness Rishi, with his dozen-plus unrecognized records, and all the would-be child surgeons, marathoners, and chili eaters, demonstrate the Indian propensity to forge ahead with record attempts without regard for the book’s approval, much more so than in other countries. As Guinness World Records spokeswoman Amarilis Espinoza told the Associated Press, due to India’s incredible record-setting determination, “they just go ahead and do it,” whereas other would-be record setters usually ask first, partially explaining the plethora of seemingly unsafe ideas. This shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach to record breaking has also led India to pioneer an unusual niche in record-breaking lore—that of litigation against the vene
rable book. “The fascination with records there is unbelievable, and they are really into it, so much so that they are litigious about it. If you don’t pay attention and at least give their records consideration, you will hear from the Indian courts. There was this thing a few years ago where an Indian guy broke a record that had been retired and he went to court to reopen the record. Retiring a record is not unusual for Guinness World Records, but getting sued over it is very unusual,” said Robert “Bob” Masterson, the president of Ripley’s Entertainment. The company’s most famous product, the regularly updated Ripley’s Believe It or Not book, is viewed by Guinness and the publishing industry as one of the record book’s largest and most direct competitors, if not its biggest. In an unusual state of affairs, Ripley’s Entertainment owns the license to build and operate all the Guinness World Records Museums. This unique relationship came about when the brewing giant Guinness PLC still owned the book but was trying to get out of the record-making-and-breaking business. According to Masterson, Guinness had subcontracted the management of their museums around the world, which were losing money and had to be subsidized annually, when Masterson approached them and offered to take the red ink off the company’s hands. Ripley’s Entertainment, a subsidiary of one of Canada’s largest privately owned companies, now has the rights in perpetuity to museums based on the Guinness World Records and related special edition titles, in addition to its own Ripley’s-based attractions, wax museums, and water parks.
One of Masterson’s first moves was to shutter money-losing museums in less popular locations, including Las Vegas and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and replace them with new museums in record hotbeds like Tokyo, London (opening in 2008), and India. “We signed a deal in Bangalore, India, to do a Guinness museum, a Ripley’s museum, and a wax museum. The first India location should be open by fall of 2008, and we can see opening maybe four Guinness museums there, including Mumbai and Delhi. It [record mania] is so popular in India that the Guinness book was not able to keep up with the number of requests, so they came up with their own book of records, not sanctioned by Guinness World Records, but in India it has become almost as popular.”
Getting into Guinness Page 20
