Unicorned meat

Some companies have no sense of humour at all. They do have huge legal departments though. Put those two things together and you get true stupidity.

It all started when ThinkGeek, on April Fool's Day, advertised tins of Unicorn meat for sale ('excellent source of sparkles'), produced in County Meath, Ireland, and rubbed down with Guinness, like the beery Kobe beef in Japan.

I thought it was quite funny and forgot about it.

Unfortunately, those purveyors of foul offcuts, The National Pork Board, didn't see the funny side. They didn't even see the fictional side. Keen to object to the slogan 'The New White Meat' because it's sort-of like their slogan 'The Other White Meat', they sent a 12-page legal cease and desist letter to ThinkGeek. It didn't seem to occur to them that a website called ThinkGeek is unlikely to be really selling meat, let alone that Unicorns don't exist and it was April 1st.

ThinkGeek's response? Enormous amusement:

We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork--and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist.

"It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," said Scott Kauffman, President and CEO of Geeknet. "In fact, ThinkGeek's canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red, and not approved by any government entity."

We'd also like to extend a special discount to everyone we offended with our portrayal of Unicorn Meat as "the new white meat." For a limited time, take $10 off any order of $40 or more by using the code PORKBOARD at checkout, good until 6/30/2010 at 11:59PM ET.