The worlds of food and animatronics (motorized puppets) collide more than you might expect.
Stew Leonard's, a prominent grocery store chain in Connecticut, features the "Farm Fresh Five," a band of milk cartons with faces that serenade you as you pick out their lifeless breathren in the dairy section.
And so when a video of Irish artist Joan Healy's "Meat Market" installation surfaced on Makezine, I thought: It's about time grilling season got a mascot -- the sound-activated dancing pork chop. As the chop (which looks like a fleshy baseball glove) jerks back and forth to a whistling sound, it's a reminder of the way mechanized food has been used to say (or sell) a lot of things.
Last year, in the Village Pet Store & Charcoal Grill, British prankster/artist Banksy offered up his take on a pet store that featured Chicken McNuggets and dipping sauce in pet cages among other window displays.
Here in Kansas City, there are perhaps more animatronic restaurants than is necessary. Chuck E. Cheese has four locations in the area and there's T-Rex Cafe in the Legends. Sadly, the Rain Forest Cafe is no more.
Perhaps this trend can be attributed to the influence of Disney's
Imagineers, who created two (now defunct) exhibits at Epcot Center in
Disney World. Kitchen Kabaret was a disturbing mix of mannequins and animated food products like Mr. Hamm and Mr. Eggz. It was replaced in 1994 by Food Rocks, which transformed rockstars into poorly titled puns like Pita
Gabriel and The Peach Boys. After a suprising run of a decade, Food
Rocks was retired in 2004.
Yet another reminder not to play with your food.
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