I opened a bottle of Snapple today and put the lid upside down on my kitchen counter.  Something was written on the inside in very small, pale print and I picked it up to read “Holland is the only country with a national dog.”  At the top was written “Real Facts #140;”  at the bottom it said “Get all the Real Facts at www.snapple.com.”  Bemused by this extraordinary gesture to disseminate information in such an offhand manner, I logged on to the site and found the following other giveaways:

          Real Fact #5:   Camels have three eyelids

          Real Fact #20:  Broccoli is the only vegetable that is also a flower

          Real Fact #25:   The only food that doesn’t spoil is honey

          Real Fact #464:  Cows do not have upper front teeth

          Real Fact #475  Wrapping rubber hands around the ends of hangers can prevent clothes from slipping off

There are 672 old Real Facts and new ones have just been circulated beginning with number 673.  Undoubtedly there are people who collect the caps and will keep buying Snapple until they have the entire set.  But how many people even know where to look to find Real Facts?  Nothing on the bottle calls attention to this lagniappe, a word I’ve always wanted to use correctly and believe I finally have.  The dictionary defines it as “a small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of puchase;  something given or obtained gratuitously.”  In this case, the gift is doubly serendipitous because finding it is so surprising that it’s hard to understand the motivation of the seller.  Are the Real Facts only for the Snapple cognoscenti who know about them from word of mouth?  Are there that many consumers who go to the Snapple website to browse?  How many people unscrew a bottle cap and routinely look at its insides before tossing it on a counter or in the garbage?  Even though I am the kind of person who reads cereal boxes and milk cartons, this was probably the firsst time in my life that I read the inside of a bottle cap and I’m guessing that you’ve never read one either.  How much else have we missed reading in all the other products we consume?

     Snapple was founded in 1972 by three friends named Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden and Arnold Greenburg.  Maybe, like many other Jewish boys, these three were trivia buffs who dreamed of a wider audience and a national outlet for excessive information.  Or, since Snapple is a calming drink with many flavors of fruity tea, perhaps they felt that Real Facts would add some zing to this low key liquid experience - a small note of excitement as a trade-off for its lack of carbonated fizz.  Possibly, Lenny, Hy and Arnie’s grandchildren needed summer jobs and setting them to work harnessing Real Facts was an act of paternal solicitude, one they saw paying off on their progeny’s college application extra-curricular lists.  Whatever the motivation, who can resist the charm of something so un-grandiose as a throwaway fact in a throwaway lid?  I’ll send you off with these to ponder:

          Real Fact #36:  A duck’s quack doesn’t echo

          Real Fact #167:  You have to play ping pong for 12 hours to lose one pound

          Real Fact #199:  The largest cheesecake ever made weighed 57,508 pounds

          Real Fact #200:   The first country to use postcards was Austria

And my nomination for the pithiest fact ever -  Real Fact #38:   Fish cough.

 

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