No Shit: "Ivar's undersea billboards a hoax devised as marketing ploy"

I knew this was hokum the second I saw the TV spot with the "aged" Ivar's billboard being pulled out of Puget Sound. Any marine biologist is going to tell you that the accumulation of animal life on this billboard is not consistent with being underwater for 50 years.

And it gets better - long time bitter hippie and historian Paul Dorpat lied about the hoax. This guy has been making his living writing a three hundred word weekly column for the Seattle Times for thirty years. The baby-boomer free-ride party is over, dude!

"Times Executive Editor David Boardman says that while he can appreciate the initiative behind the marketing ploy and had suspected it was a hoax, he was distressed that Dorpat, whose "Now & Then" column has appeared in the newspaper's Pacific Northwest magazine since 1982, would lie to a Times reporter."

"Dorpat's continued freelance relationship with the paper is "under review," Boardman says."

Ivar's undersea billboards a hoax devised as marketing ploy
By Erik Lacitis - Seattle Times staff reporter

And hey - this story came out October 23 but nobody in Seattle noticed:
Ivar's admits to underwater billboard prank
Nation's Restaurant News
"Donegan said the campaign was planned and conceptualized over a three-month period, with the on-water video shoots lasting two days. The campaign was executed in less than two weeks, he said, thanks, in large part, to creative contributor Terry Heckler, who has worked with the company for 24 years and created its iconic TV spot, “Dances with Clams,” a spoof of Kevin Costner’s Academy Award-winning movie “Dances with Wolves.”

Jack Barrett of WackoFilms “knew us and was very effective and efficient,” and publicist Tamara Wilson aided and abetted the effort through her “good relationships with the media,” Donegan added."

Also: Seattle PostGlobe - Top News: Group plans boycott of Ivar's