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Bologna and prune sandwiches? Cherry and ketchup salad? Ham and bananas hollandaise? The past is a foreign country, wrote L.P. Hartley in The Go-Between. They do things differently there. Humanity being the omnivorous species it is, nowhere are these differences more immediately obvious than in food choices between then (whenever then was) and now (whenever now is). In this spirit, American menus during the middle decades of the twentieth century -- chock-full of questionable cuisines as they were -- made it difficult to immediately know the answer to a burning question: Could people really once buy a legally edible product called boned rolled pig from grocery chains? An image purportedly showing a vintage advertisement for the institutional meat food started appearing in various corners of the Internet in 2018: Although the advertisement was filled with jokes (would a company really advertise a pork product as fire resistant or admit that this legally edible food contained a minimum amount of vermin droppings?), some viewers conceded that it could possibly just another remnant of America's strange product history. There was a time, after all, when both cigarettes and cocaine were considered medicinal. However, in this case, the image is a hoax. It was created by Cris Shapan, a comedian and graphic designer who has a penchant and talent for creating fake vintage advertisements. Although Shapan's fans are typically aware that his artwork is intended to be humorous in nature, these images are occasionally shared without attribution or context and thus eventually get mistaken for genuine. In April 2016, for instance, we debunked another one of Shapan's faux advertisements featuring a product called Winking Glue. The fake boned rolled pig advertisement appears to be based on a genuine ad for a genuine vintage product with an equally strange name: The original image comes from Flickr user mikeyashworth, who said that it appeared in a McNeill's leaflet from 1962: McNeill’s were founded in 1837 and manufactured roofing felts and insulation materials. This 1962 leaflet is for the composite insulation material Slagbestos -- that didn’t contain asbestos, quite a rarity in such materials. Anyhow, what a cracking name! We haven't been able to trace down the original leaflet yet, but McNeill's was a real company and they truly did sell an insulation material called Slagbestos. Architectural historian Miles Lewis mentions the company and its Slagbestos product: A number of images from Grace's Guide to British Industrial History also mention McNeill's patented slag wool, which is an insulator or packing material also called mineral wool or rock wool, and which is created using blast furnace byproducts: Either way, we wouldn't want it as a sandwich ingredient.
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