BITES

The Chunkinator

Chunky Monkey, long a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, is now a doll as well. Based on a cartoon character created, so the publicity material tells us, by “World’s Fastest Cartoonist Pauline Comanor” and made by Mary Meyer Corp., it will be sold in toy stores and Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops beginning this month; suggested price $25. Four percent of the proceeds will be donated, in the Ben & Jerry’s tradition, to a cause, in this case the International Primate Protection League of Summerville, S.C.

The monkey has the vacuous, adoring look so popular in dolls. And come to think of it, it does look a little chunky. Maybe if it cut back on the ice cream a little. (Nawww.)

Sauce Source

The Mount Horeb Mustard Museum isn’t just a museum, though it does apparently curate more than 2,400 mustards in quaint Mount Horeb, Wis. No, it’s evidently the center of some type of mustard cult. To judge from the museum’s twice-a-year newsletter, the Proper Mustard, the cult includes baseball fandom, excruciating puns and a fierce hostility to catsup and mayonnaise. (At its National Mustard Day party Aug. 3, hot dogs were free but catsup use was fined $10.)

The museum is funded by its gift shop and catalog, which sells more than 150 domestic and imported mustards, not to mention horseradish and chile sauces and mustard-oriented oddments such as Delft mustard pots and an English mustard bath powder. You can even buy an assortment of Canadian mustard seeds and flours for creating your own mustard blend.

Oh yeah, there are T-shirts and diplomas from something called Poupon U. (We told you about the puns.) For the catalog, call (800) 438-6878; for a year’s subscription to the Proper Mustard, send $5 to the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum, P.O. Box 468, Mount Horeb, WI 53572.