Nobody remembers the breast milk craze. It has been less than a decade, but already breast milk has passed out of the national consciousness. We Americans used to drink breast milk the way we screwed around with Rubik’s Cubes, Simon Says handheld games, and Teddy Ruxpins. But no one drinks breast milk anymore, not even the babies.
It all started with world-class coach and athlete “Herc” Broadsides. After Broadsides’ Cleveland Spartans won the Ultimate Bowl over the hapless Allentown Ionians, “Herc” seized the opportunity to extol the virtues of breast milk. “Me and my Soda House Gang owe it all to breast milk!” he barked in his trademark gravelly tone. “Rain or shine, I drink five liters of this gunk a day.”
Sports Drinks Incorporated (hereafter “SDI”), which had been casting about for a new useless health supplement ever since its best-selling Androgenizing Maxidron 5000 PlusRIPPED! had been banned by an act of Government, noticed the media coverage that breast milk was receiving and decided to corner the market.
“We’ve been in talks with various important athletes to endorse breast milk,” SDI’s then-CEO Rogers Rackenby told FLEX magazine. “Our studies show that breast milk has significant glutaminic agent interactions, which in turn release prototestosterone precursors. The effects of breast milk are similar to the effects of powerful steroids like Deca-Durabolin, but without the estrogenic, reifieric, and atrotonic consequences.”
The bodybuilding community, a curious subculture composed of rockheads and morons who are willing to shorten their life expectancies in exchange for killer quads and rad lats, fell for Rackenby’s scientific-sounding sales pitch. Sales of breast milk skyrocketed. For several months, demand outpaced supply. A thriving black market in breast milk developed around the so-called “hardgainer” gyms of Southern California, with cash-strapped weightlifters milking lactating wives and girlfriends out of the backseats of their Pontiac Firebirds and Geo Trackers.
SDI expanded its breast milk operation, partnering with agribusiness giant Fake Foods International (“”FFI”) to run huge milking farms in Belarus, Latvia, and the Ukraine. Millions of cash-strapped Slavic women auditioned for a few thousand milking slots; only the heartiest among them were chosen. Rackenby’s unofficial hiring criterion was “If you don’t have 46Ds, you’re not working for me.” SDI’s breast milk, distributed in glass bottles with rubber nipple caps, became a worldwide phenomenon on a par with Starbucks Coffee, Nalgene water bottles, and “Live Strong” bracelets.
Other suppliers soon joined the race to the bottom. Owing to various African dictators’ willingness to ignore human rights and trade conventions, breast milk became as cheap and available as cow’s milk. Celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Dana Delany attributed their extraordinary weight loss to consumption of breast milk. Diet books—most notably Rich “Fit” Fitler’s platinum-selling The Nine-Week Breast Milk Plan For Better Living, Better Health, Better Credit, Better Orgasms, and Better Erections (for Ladies Only!)—filled the shelves of the chain booksellers.
The breast milk movement began to lose steam when news of breast milk’s deleterious effects leaked to the public. The backlash started with a story on Rosie O’Donnell Investigates! in which a prominent dietitian claimed that over-consumption of the dairy beverage would cause kidney stones. The Harvard Medical Journal followed with a lengthy report on the negative side effects of breast milk, among them elephantiasis, Wichita Lineman’s disease, and wharf toe.
Pressured by consumer groups, the United States banned the importation of breast milk from the African continent. “We can no longer countenance the possibility that our children and our children’s children will be exposed to contaminated breast milk,” said the bill’s sponsor, Senator Robert Byrd, who had months earlier attributed his extraordinary longevity to the anti-aging properties of breast milk.
SDI, still the North American leader in breast milk sales, changed its marketing and production strategies. “Our farms produce breast milk that meets organic standards,” explained CEO Rackenby at a 199X press conference. “Our sows aren’t penned up in tiny cells and milked to the point of exhaustion by unsafe milking machines. Instead, we allow them to roam free across green pastures and have our technicians milk them the old fashioned way, with their hands. Hands, I should add, that have been softened with the use of expensive lotions provided by Bath & Body Works.”
But SDI’s attempts to clean up its flagship supplement’s image proved unavailing. The world market became glutted with breast milk. Although the gallon price of breast milk dropped below the gallon price of water, subsequent attempts to exhort consumers to save water by bathing in breast milk failed to generate much interest.
In 199X, SDI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Rackenby stepped down as CEO, leaving behind several billion dollars of debt as his legacy. In his memoir Nursing My Wounds, he condemned the public’s fleeting attention span and sought to justify his own managerial misfeasance:
“Twenty years ago, you could count on consumers to use an ineffective product for a long time. How else can you explain the success of mouthwash? Mouthwash does nothing for the mouth. Well, I suppose that it does tingle a little when you gargle with it, and it can be used in a pinch when you’re out of whiskey. But that’s the extent of it.
Anyway, I thought breast milk could be the new mouthwash. I staked the SDI’s fortunes on this belief. For a little while, we were as successful as Jim Plunkett’s Oakland Raiders or Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Championship Wrestling. But our success was not to last. From niche product to forgotten fad, such is the life cycle of the market for a worthless good.
Nevertheless, I take considerable comfort in the fact that breast milk’s placebo effect helped many amateur athletes reach their competitive peaks. I am also proud to say that SDI employed thousands of women. We paid these women well. They were able to send their kids to college.
Do I feel guilty? Sure. But only for the embezzlement, and I think the four years that I served at New Castle Prison were sufficient atonement for my crime. I do not, however, feel guilty for marketing breast milk.
Thomas Lennon refused to say he was sorry for writing Herbie: Fully Loaded. Ted McGinley never begged forgiveness for playing Jefferson D’Arcy on Married with Children. Rob Lowe may or may not have apologized for his infamous sex tape; I can’t remember how that one turned out. Anyway, breast milk was one of the great ideas of our age. Each living woman has two breasts that, when pumped to capacity, can contribute to feeding the entire world.
It is not my fault that breast milk was found to be unsafe. SDI did not know. No one knew. The space shuttle Challenger wasn’t safe, but NASA still shot that roman candle into the atmosphere. Like NASA, SDI just wanted to make the world a better place. And for a while, we did—one gallon at a time.”
The internet website www.breastmilk.com constitutes the most comprehensive tribute to this ignored era in world history. Maintained by “Specs” Lucdonald, breastmilk.com receives thousands of hits per month and counts ALF funnyman Max Wright and the legendary “Herc” Broadsides among its regular readers.
“I know what ‘they’ say, whoever they are,” Lucdonald writes on the site’s Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQ”) page. “But I believe in my heart of hearts that breast milk won that World Bowl for ‘Herc’ and his Soda House Gang. And it’s the belief that matters, not whether the breast milk actually helps you run a 9.69 in the 100 meter dash. The breast milk craze gripped this nation in a religious fervor—a fervor the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Charles Grandison Finney led his revivals in antebellum America. We cannot forget, my dear friends, we cannot ever forget.”