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Huge publicity stunt by Snapple turns into mushy flopsicle

Under the noontime sun of New York's first day of summer, Snapple, the soft drink maker, answered the question of whether a 15.87 tonne Popsicle can be made to stand upright in Union Square.

It cannot.

In a brave attempt to surpass a Guinness record -- "The World's Largest Popsicle" -- Snapple mixed and froze a gargantuan icy doppelganger of its new kiwi-strawberry Snapple on Ice. Then the frozen treat was hauled by freezer truck from Edison, New Jersey, and raised with an enormous crane in Manhattan.

Alas, like James Arness in the 1951 alien thriller The Thing From Another World, the giant Snapsicle began to melt. Soon pedestrians were fleeing in not-quite terror, fire trucks were converging and the police were closing off streets to contain the publicity stunt gone wrong.

Snapple officials first started to worry when the pink liquid began to flow onto East 17th Street. They feared cyclists and automobiles would slip in the ooze.

Ice sculpture specialists who were helping Snapple with the publicity event also wondered whether the Snapsicle was beginning to become hollow in the middle and would topple when set upright.

Snapple officials then decided to stop the Snapple-raising at a crowd-disappointing 25-degree angle. The mushy giant block was then trucked away and a television-sized ice sculpture in the shape of the Snapple logo took its place.

Maria Ortiz, 45, a cleaning worker at Sephora, a makeup and perfume store, noticed the hubbub.

"There was a lot of pink water, pouring all the way down" onto East 17th Street, she said. Then she noticed the crane stop as it tried to lift the giant Popsicle, like a frozen flagpole.
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