Bob CollinsIt’s National Lollipop Day, a piece of trivia that nobody cares about except the occasional TV anchor, a blogger or two, and the lollipop industry that’s probably behind making it National Lollipop Day for some free media advertising.
Who’s responsible for this ongoing daily nonsense?
Marlo Anderson of North Dakota, Forum Communications reports.
Anderson started a website in 2013 to catalog obscure commemorations and create new ones for anyone willing to pay for it.
For $2,300, National Day will proclaim your special day, add it to the calendar and send an alert to some 20,000 media outlets nationwide.
Paying $4,500, plus compensation for time and travel, adds a personal visit from Marlo Anderson and his wife, Alice. Earlier this week, the two visited Chicago courtesy of the American Licorice Company, which received its own National Sour Candy Day in honor of its sour punch candies line.
“They rented a food truck, had it wrapped with ‘National Sour Candy Day’ and we drove up and down the streets of Chicago handing out sour candy,” Anderson said.
Anderson says he gets 18,000 applications a year for special days and approves only about 30 of them.
Occasionally, he eliminates certain days from his calendar.
“Like bittersweet chocolate covered almond day,” Anderson said. “It’s been around a long time, since the mid 1800s.”
Sweet gig that we fell for.
Oh, it’s also National Moon Day today, as proclaimed by Richard Nixon. It comes by the honor honestly, thanks to humans who actually landed on the moon 47 years ago today.
