Infantoriums, embalmed whales and the Minnesota Ice Man: Weird State Fair tales
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Since the first Minnesota State Fair in 1859, the Great Minnesota Get-Together has had its idiosyncracies and foibles, mostly innocent and charming — all the milk you can drink? Crop art? Butter sculptures? These regional oddities are part of the distinct character of our fair and are often visitor favorites.
But it does not take too much digging to discover that the fair has also been home to genuinely baffling events and displays. Here, for your edification, are a few of our favorites.
The littlest fair attendees
If you watched “Boardwalk Empire,” you may remember one of the stranger set-design elements on its recreated Atlantic City boardwalk: a storefront exhibit of premature babies in early incubators.
This was a real phenomenon and was primarily the work of one man, Dr. Martin Couney, who sought to popularize the technology. His “Infantoriums” made the rounds of fairs, and a version came to the Minnesota State Fair in 1909.
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The Star Tribune wrote about the display, and while it’s not clear that our local example was the work of Dr. Couney, it sounds like his work. The article did describe the babies: There were five of them, 11 inches in length, with the smallest infant weighing just a pound and a half.
Freeze Willy
In 1930, the State Fair brought a huge exhibit: A 55-foot embalmed whale, created by the Pacific Whaling Company, transported via train, and displayed in a glass-enclosed car.
In a cruel inversion of the “Miracle of Birth” exhibit, the whale was shown alongside an 18-foot, three-ton baby whale. “It is described as an educational exhibit,” the Minneapolis Star noted.
Fudge hijinks
In 1949, the State Fair offered a display of sausage and liverwurst. Perplexingly, on closer inspection, these turned out to be made entirely out of fudge. The signs for the exhibit read “Fool your friends,” but what sort of prank was this? Who would do such a thing?
Somehow, last year’s food selection managed to top this. Some of you might remember that Wow Fudge offered a pickle-flavored fudge.
The ice man cometh
Throughout the 60s and 70s, the Minnesota State Fair was the regular stomping grounds of one of our state’s more entertaining hoaxes: a gorilla-like creature lying in an ice block.
The proprietor — and almost certainly the creator — of the creature was Frank Hansen, who claimed the creature was discovered and shot to death in Siberia.
An investigation from the Smithsonian in 1969 determined the creature was a latex model purchased from a California company. The creature disappeared for a while, but popped back up on eBay in 2013. It was purchased by an Austin, TX, man named Steve Busti, who put it on display in his museum, the Museum of the Weird.
LGBTQ+ llama party
In perhaps one of the greatest mash-ups in fair history, in 2015 a group called Queer Bomb crashed a llama costume party at the Fair. This may take some explaining.
Queer Bomb, a sort of flash mob rave that would show up at random events and turn them into parties, decided to make an appearance at the AgStar Arena at the Fair. There, 4-H students were dressing up llamas for a contest — City Pages reported that previous llama costumes included giant bumblebees and Big Bird.
Afterward, Queer Bomb moved to Dan Patch Boulevard for an impromptu dance party. It is not immediately clear if llamas participated.
Audio transcript
MAX SPARBER: Hi, Cathy. I'm doing great.
CATHY WURZER: Good. So, I tend to these sorts of stories. What made you want to look into all this?
MAX SPARBER: Well, some of it I just remember. I've been going to the fair since I was a kid. And you'd go wandering around and there'd be RVs or tents with signs, and you'd go in and just see things you'd never seen before in your life.
And then, I've kind of made a hobby of when I get bored, just going to local digital archives, like the Historical Society or the local newspapers and just typing in state fair ghost, state fair polka, state fair burlesque, to see what will pop up, just combining words. And you do that enough, you start finding some really unusual stories.
CATHY WURZER: To say the least. Yes, I remember as a kid going on the midway and seeing some really weird things. And I'm not as old as the exhibit from 1909 that evidently was made up of actual human babies. Is that right?
MAX SPARBER: That is right. Yeah, that was. Do you remember Boardwalk Empire?
CATHY WURZER: Oh, I love that show.
MAX SPARBER: Yeah. On the Atlantic City Boardwalk, they had an exhibit in the show of just premature babies, and that was an actual thing. It was introduced by a guy named Dr. Martin Couney, and it was to showcase premature baby care.
And he would take these around the country. He called them The Infantorium. He also used to call them child hatcheries. So, he was a fellow with real talent for branding.
And the whole point, was to display early incubators at fairs and other attractions in order to popularize incubator technology, raise awareness about how they could help premature babies. And it worked.
He's sort of considered one of the fathers of NICUs and other prenatal and postnatal care. But it also meant that you're going to the fair and you were seeing premature babies in little machines.
CATHY WURZER: Wow. My grandma was always wanting to see the whale. I can't remember the name of the whale, but there was supposed to be some whale that was at the fair, too.
MAX SPARBER: There was. There were a couple of whales. And the one I know about was in 1930, which was a full-sized whale, 55 feet. It was embalmed and displayed by the Pacific Whaling Company. And it was accompanied by a smaller 18-foot baby whale that was also embalmed and displayed. Kind of the opposite of the miracle of birth exhibit. The whole point of it was supposed to be educational, but I find the idea little morbid.
CATHY WURZER: Ya think?
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, kind of weird. What about the sausage and liverwurst exhibit, which sounds a little unappetizing, perhaps?
MAX SPARBER: Yeah. This is from 1949, and it was an exhibit that said, fool your friends. And it involves sausage and liverwurst. Turned out they were actually made of fudge. It was a prank, supposedly to the delight of people who would try it and taste sweet instead of liverwursty.
I think it highlights the playful and sometimes weird sense of humor you find at the fair. I don't know what the point of it was, but I don't find it any stranger than fudge that we had at the fair last year, which was pickle flavored.
CATHY WURZER: Yeah, that was not attractive. So, finally, speaking of unusual things, but fun, I love the llama costume contest at the fair.
MAX SPARBER: Yeah.
CATHY WURZER: I do. Was there something involving, and help my memory here, it was an event at the fair involving a group called Queer Bomb.
MAX SPARBER: That is correct. 2015. Queer Bomb was a flash mob kind of rave group. They only seem to have been active locally in 2015 for that one year. And they would go to events that were already pre-planned and turn them into parties.
And so, they attended the 4H llama costume contest, which I think is one of those things that never really got as much credit as it deserves. It's a real oddity. It's a 4H thing, and the folks dress their llamas up as, well, they put shower caps on them or sometimes they dress them as the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, which seems like a very Minnesotan llama thing to do.
And so in 2015, Queer Bomb just showed up and turned it into a party. They were an LGBTQ activist group. And it resulted in a spontaneous dance party on Dan Patch Boulevard, which took already a really distinct event, which is happening again, I think it's this Wednesday, if I remember correctly, and it turned it into something really unusual.
So, I missed that one, unfortunately. And they don't seem to have ever redone anything like that. But I think that's a great way to approach a llama costume party.
CATHY WURZER: I love that. A llama costume party with the spontaneous dance party. You just gotta love it. Max, you and I should get together, because we obviously share this love of oddball history.
MAX SPARBER: Yes, indeed.
CATHY WURZER: Thanks for joining us. I appreciate it.
MAX SPARBER: It was my pleasure.
CATHY WURZER: MPR Arts Editor Max Sparber. By the way, you can read his full story at mprnews.org.
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