The mysterious superfruit

Department of bizarre advertising. I'm sure I'm not the only one to wonder what's the faintly obscene-looking object in the omnipresent banner ad on Facebook for "This Superfruit Melts Fat". It leads to a characteristically naff ad for bowel cleanse / slimming products, which makes no mention of this object.

The excellent Google Images, which Felix Grant recommended to me a while back, identifies the thing: it's just a picture of an abnormally formed hen's egg, posted originally on a Canadian poultry forum in 2009 (Weird looking egg, 11th April 2009) and later, in higher resolution, by the hen's owner on her blog My Mountain Garden Gleanings (Weird Eggs, January 27th 2011).

How this egg image came to be ripped off for a slimming ad I can't really imagine. Perhaps it's a teaser to make people click on the ad out of curiosity? Perhaps it's a "stupidity filter" to select for punters who don't get alarm bells ringing about a weird advert whose picture has no relation to the product sold. But then you'd have to be pretty stupid not to spot the ridiculous non-sequitur in the advertising text:

You may have heard of the enormously popular Ketone Extract in the news. It's a completely organic fruit found deep in the Congo rainforest of Africa.

What? There's a fruit called a Ketone Extract? I must look for it in the greengrocers next to the nice ripe Aldehyde Concentrates, which are just coming into season alongside the deliciously juicy Terpene berries.

- Ray