Think #7

Hungry Hungry Hippos

• Hasbro did not miss with this. The game is simple; there are only two things players need to do. One is pressing a button to get the marbles onto the board, aka the hippo pond. The second is pushing the lever on your hippo to open its mouth so it can eat as many marbles as possible.
• The hippos and board are made of plastic, so each time the hippos open and close their mouths, there’s a pretty loud clacking sound, which adds to the general chaos of the game.
• According to Wikipedia, Hungry Hungry Hippos was going to be adapted into an animated movie, but unfortunately, the concept went into development limbo and production never started. RIP.
• I think this game is a great way to introduce kids to gentle-spirited competition. You want your hippo to eat good? Better keep your eye on those marbles, pal. CLACKETY CLACK.

Honeybaked Ham

• My initial curiosity about Honeybaked Ham was spurred by a Christmas movie- not Home Alone, as I had originally thought, but actually Christmas with the Kranks. There’s a scene where Mrs. Krank is sprinting to grab the last Hickory Honey Ham at the grocery store (spoiler, she does not get it) that made me wonder, “What’s so special about these honeyed hams?”
• The company website states that there is a 16-point inspection for hams, and only 10% of them are chosen to be a Honeybaked Ham. There is a secret cooking process that involves curing and 24 hours of smoking as well as an undisclosed honey glaze recipe. In addition, their spiral slicing process, which took about 8 years to perfect, is patented.
• Evidently, a whole lot of people are Honeybaked Ham fans. There are a bunch of others who say that Sam’s Club and Costco’s spiral-cut glazed hams are just as good. The main point seems to be that many Americans really like ham, especially around the holidays.

Hair shedding

• All mammals shed hair. The hair shedding I notice most is my own, Joint-Cracking Meal Prepper’s, and my friends’ pets’.
• Losing up to 50-100 hairs from your head per day is normal, per the American Academy of Dermatology. Assuming I lose 25 head hairs per day, that’s 750 hairs lost per month. 1 hair has a tensile strength of 150-270 MPa (mega Pascals). In comparison, steel has a tensile strength of 380 MPa.
• If I took the hair I shed (from my head) in a month and held it together lengthwise, I’d have a thick bundle with decent tensile strength. If everyone with long hair collected the hair they shed, and there was some sort of donation/collection program for it, all that hair wouldn’t end up in the trash, and it could be used to make things like rope.
• I’m sure someone else has thought of this. It would probably take a lot of research and capital to even pilot this idea, but it would be super cool.