The oft-quoted fact that an average person swallows 8 spiders in their sleep per year is not true! This fact, which appears on Snapple Cap #31, was disproved by Snopes.

Snopes is attracted to wobsites of the same gender, so you can’t copy text from it, but basically, they state that in 1993, this columnist wrote this article about how gullible people are when it comes to the internet; that people believe anything they read on the internet. She found several examples, and then listed some of her own “facts” that she made up (I think this one actually came from an outdated book of bug rumors), but sounded believable. Well, ironically, the one about the spiders sounded too believable, and people started quoting it as a real fact!

Out of protest for not letting me quote their text, I’m not going to link to Snopes, but the Snapple wiki (below) and Snopes are my sources.

The Wife^® apparently doesn’t drink Snapple anymore because I haven’t seen any Snapple Cap posts in a while. That, compounded with my Trivial Pursuit calendar from yesterday, let me to investigate some Snapple Trivia.

The Unadulterated Food Corporation was founded in 1927 in New York by 3 Jews. Snapple is kosher; there is a small “K” on the label because of this.

One of its first products was a carbonated apple juice, which was described as having a “snappy apple taste.” Snappy apple lead to the name “Snapple,” which replaced their even worse name in the early 80’s.

The brand became popular in the early 90’s because of “the Snapple Lady” commercials. Her name is Wendy Kaufman. The story goes that when she was young, she sent a letter to Greg Brady that went unanswered, which inspired the commercials.

Wilford Brimley’s favorite company, Quaker Oats, bought Snapple in 1994 for $1.7 billion (at which time, Wendy was fired for some reason), but then sold it to Triarc in 1997 for $300 million (ouch!). Triarc sold it to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion in 2000, and was spun off into the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group in 2008.

In 2003, Snapple paid off the city of New York to put Snapple machines in all New York schools and public buildings. Snapple is the official drink of New York City.

According to wiki – which is always true – about 28 of the Snapple cap facts are wrong. At least 3 of them were debunked by Mythbusters, and 1 by Snopes (see next post). Reading some of them, though, I wouldn’t call the caps “wrong” per se.

I personally find Snapple overpriced and pretentious… That’s about it.

Source: My TP calendar, wiki, and briefly wiki.

Ants have a better sense of smell than dogs do.

Source: My Snapple Cap today

The sun can sometimes be as hot as 15 million degrees.

So- the sun was born in Arizona then. Huh. I can’t explain why else it could get up to 92 this weekend and it is almost Halloween. I still remember the blizzard of ‘91 being knee high in snow while still trying to get some candy…

Source: My Snapple cap today