DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
A ‘Kissmobile spotted’ in Oregon in 2006. PICTURE: rat_fink (licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)
• US chocolate firm Hershey’s had announced it is retiring its fleet of ‘Kissmobiles’, designed to resemble a chocolate known as a Hershey’s “kiss”. The three odd-shaped vehicles first hit the road in the US in 1997 but the company has reportedly said that due to safety concerns over the aging vehicles they won’t be returning to the road in 2020. Speaking of odd-shaped vehicles in the US, US hotdog company Oscar Meyer is once again looking for a new “hotdogger” to “travel the hot dog highways of America” in its hot-dog shaped Wienermobile. The paid position runs for a year.
• A gold and diamond-encrusted driedel – a traditional Jewish toy played with during Hannukah which aims to help teach children the symbols and lettering of the Torah – has set a new Guinness World Record for being the world’s most valueable. Made from 18 carat gold and 222 diamonds (with a 4.20 carat diamond tip), the driedel was valued at $70,000. It was created by Estate Diamond Jewelers with an art deco style in mind and took four months to make.
• It was ‘Tumblegeddon’ on roads in in the US state of Washington on New Year’s Eve when several drivers found their cars stuck in a traffic jam of a different kind. Piles of tumbleweed said to be up to nine metres high forced a highway to be closed several hours earlier with five cars and a truck trapped when balls of the dry plants started blowing in. SkyNews reported Trooper Chris Thorson of the state patrol, the person apparently responsible for dubbing the event ‘tumblegeddon’ saying that: “People were still stuck at midnight and rung in the new year trapped under the weeds.” Snowploughs had to be used to clear the road which was opened about 10 hours after its closure.
