Sometimes, the internet really comes together — like in our shared amazement at a Willy Wonka-themed immersive experience so horrible it made children cry.

And as more details emerge, it reminds us of the pre-pandemic “immersive” cash grabs, but with a new 2024 bonus: AI.

So, how bad was this thing?

Advertisements for “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” in Glasgow, Scotland, promised an enchanted garden of giant candies, “optical marvels,” and a “paradise of sweet treats” — all for ~$45 per ticket.

Unfortunately, AI-generated artwork depicting a colorful wonderland gave way to a sparsely decorated warehouse.

• One parent said his children received two jelly beans and a half-cup of lemonade.

Because the event was not an officially licensed Willy Wonka experience, the nonsensical AI-penned script — which actors said they were given two days to memorize — included candymaker Willy McDuff and his Wonkidoodles (clearly Oompa Loompas, but okay).

The story involved an evil chocolate maker who lived in the walls and coveted an “Anti-Graffiti Gobstopper.” (Gizmodo has the whole 14-page monstrosity here.)

The event organizer, House of Illuminati, has since promised refunds, blaming the disaster on a series of last-minute letdowns.

As bad as this thing was…

… it reminds us of those halcyon pre-pandemic days when everyone wanted to replicate the Instagrammable success of The Museum of Ice Cream.

That buzz resulted in some truly terrible cash grabs and some godawful branded experiences — take it from someone who once covered a Jack in the Box with a sad ball pit half-full of foam nuggets, which was at least free.

Now, it appears the industry’s capacity for bullshit has increased due to AI’s ability to generate bogus pictures, copy, and scripts at the drop of a purple tophat.

The event’s organizer, Billy Coull, has apparently self-published several novels on Amazon, also likely generated by AI, per Rolling Stone.

On the one hand: This is all very funny. But it’s not great for parents who paid to have their kids traumatized by a wall-dwelling chocolate thief, or legit event organizers who now have to deal with bozos like this.

If you’ve ever come home to a chewed up leather shoe, you already know that some dogs will eat anything.

Their owners, however, are pickier, and are increasingly focused on what they’re putting into their pet’s bowl each day.

Market research company Mintel has found some clear trends emerging in the pet food space, per Pet Food Processing:

• Personalized offerings: Whether targeting weight loss, increased protein, or added fiber, personalized pet foods are becoming more popular, to the point where it’s overwhelming — 54% of US consumers say there are too many options in the pet food aisle.
• Natural ingredients: An increasing number of US pet owners (38%) want all-natural pet foods, with 23% specifically looking for limited ingredient lists.
• Sustainable practices: In the US, 61% of pet food buyers want brands to limit environmental impacts and 74% believe companies should be more transparent about farming practices.

As it turns out, priorities in the pet food industry closely mirror those in human food — with even more innovation happening in the pet product space.

Of new product launches between 2019 and 2023, a third came from entirely new brands and companies, a significantly higher rate than in human food.

Pawsitive outlook

Owners are increasingly willing to splurge on food for their pets as they would for a family member.

Over the past decade, US owners increased the amount of money spent annually on their pets by 54%, up from $631 in 2011 to $969 in 2021.

Plus, global pet food sales hit ~$134B in 2023 and 66% of US households own at least one pet — that’s ~86.9m households.

And pet parents might have even more options soon to spoil their cats and dogs: Pet DNA testing is gaining steam with 45% of French owners ages 16 to 34 willing to pay for testing to find the healthiest diet for their pet.

We learned that Apple rejected Bing in part because it whiffed on an Annie Lennox factoid. Buried in newly released court documents from the blockbuster Google v. USA antitrust case was this gem: In 2018, Apple was weighing a deal with Microsoft that’d make Bing the default search engine on Safari. But during an evaluation of Bing’s search quality, Apple exec John Giannandrea typed in “Annie Lennox first band” and Bing brought up Eurythmics —while the actual, correct answer is The Tourists. It wasn’t the only reason Apple passed, but Giannandrea documented the Lennox flub at a key point in the deliberations: “This worries me a lot.”

Klarna taught everyone a valuable lesson about inside thoughts. The Swedish buy-now, pay-later company is understandably proud of its AI assistant, which handled 2.3m customer service interactions over its first month, and scored high customer satisfaction marks in the process. That’s great. But Klarna’s press release proudly hailing that “it is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents” was viewed by many as tacky, especially considering the firm laid off ~700 people in an unrelated 2022 reorg. We all know AI is replacing gobs of human jobs, but that’s a fact that maybe doesn’t need to be celebrated out loud, you know?

Family Dollar made history in the worst possible way. Look, this is a gross story about a rodent infestation of a stunning scale, so let’s focus on the nicest part we can find: employees at the American discount chain and federal employees are going to spend a lot of quality time together. Family Dollar will pay $42m, the largest-ever penalty in a US food safety case, and be subject to three years of government monitoring at its Arkansas warehouse, which… uh, let’s put it this way: its inspection report included the line “~1.1k rodent carcasses were removed from your facility” — and there were still another ~10k words worth of violations beyond that.