It's one thing to rip the poor guy's beak off, but then to sign your name (illegibly) in its place? For shame, Halko! Or maybe Nillo...Mouo? Dang, this Wreckerator must have written code for the NSA in a former life; I have no idea what that says.Guys, it's a sad, sad day on Cake Wrecks when a dreaded CCC is the "best" of the bunch:
Although I don't recall his beak being quite that...Popsicle-y. Hang on, lemme go grab a reference photo. [furious clickety-clicking]Ah, here we go:
Yeah, not so much a Popsicle as a banana bicycle seat. (Anyone remember those?)
From the look of that beak/mouth combo, though, at least I know I'm not the only one.And lastly, if you've ever wondered what would happen if Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird had a lovechild...
Wonder no more.
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The last one looks like one of those pinecone birdfeeder things that kindergarteners make.
...the last one looks like some kind of... shrivelled pineapple with legs :/
lol :)
Big Bird looks so sad in the reference photo - he must have seen the cakes too.
Geeeez...my badly-done knitted Big Bird suddenly doesn't look so craptastic, and at least my kid knew it was supposed to be Big Bird.
Sticking the Elmo plastic bits on shows some serious cluelessness and laziness. Gah.
first!
I saw an episode of Food Network Challenge where they did Sesame Street cakes and someone did a BADASSS Big Bird cake. He got the respect he deserved, there.
Actually, I think the third one looks more like Sponge Bob than Big Bird or Elmo! And does the first one say "Hello" maybe?
Poor, poor Big Bird.
Ouch! That last one was really bad.
We really should get that beak/mouth thing looked at by a doctor... they can do wonderful things with plastic surgery these days.
Ouch, that last is really bad!
That last one made me crack up so hard XD
That first one looks like Big Bird came off very badly in a fight. His cheek is swollen, jaw broken, and the missing beak... I think I'm going to be sick!
It's obvious by this post, Jen, that beaks are tremendous challenges to cake decorators. I mean, REALLY? A carrot and a gray strung-out blob? A garbled name? I love Big Bird and I am saddened deeply by the wreckiness. And then I laugh...
Alright, that does it!!! They crossed the line! These nitwits have butchered and mutilated the Holy Grail of my childhood! It's time to arrange for a lynching.
I'm 34 years old, grew up on Sesame Street, and got next week's TV Guide in the mailbox the other day. I couldn't help but smile at the Sesame Street cast on the cover and race home to read the article. It brought back wonderful memories.
Jen, this post almost made me cry....
The last one looks not so much like a love child but more like a genetic engineering gone wrong.
On another note, here’s an interesting twist on customer expectations from Not Always Right:
The Cake Is A Lie
I thought the second one had bacon for it's beak! No, really, go look at it again and tell me if you don't see bacon there. Bacon makes everything better after all.
It was SO awesome seeing you at the book signing last night. I'm glad I finally got a chance to meet you two. What a wonderful evening it was.
My 4 year old twins saw the 'blonde elmo' and immediately laughed and said "That's Elmo"! HAHA....too funny!!
My 2 year old saw the third cake and immediately said, "that's Elmo."
The first one: WTF.
He's looking darn good for 40.
I think the text on #1 is "Hello" ...maybe.
Im almost 30 and I grew up watching this show.
I love sesame street-big bird , ernie, bert, kermit.
I really dont care for the newer elmo and abby etc
Poor Big Bird. He's like the Rodney Dangerfield of Sesame Street.
how can the cake have a beak and a mouth.....
I'm so so happy you linked to that article, the Jervais/Elmo link at the bottom was priceless!
I'm so surprised beaks are that hard to do, but I guess if you find it challenging you shouldn't try to cover up by saying "but look! I can do mouths well!"
Blonde Elmo for sure.
Actually, I thought the last one looked more like a cross between Big Bird and Snuffaluffagus...I always wondered about those two!
I think we need to start a "Just Say No" campaign for wrecorators. They seem to be in bad shape lately!
Becky
I believe the first cake is definitely promoting Hulu, the online video site. At least that's what it looks like to me...
Big Bird is an icon in any age group, no respect.. no respect..
If you can't give a bird the respect he deserves.. don't attempt to create him..
The last one scares me..
That first one looks angry (look at his eyes!), but I suppose I would be too if someone ripped off the top part of my beak.
You nailed that last one. That's exactly what that looks like. I had to explain to the woman in the next cube why I was laughing so hard.
I think the name in the first one is Holly.
WV: stalin. No comment
Yikes. Just yikes.
If they do this to Big Bird, imagine what would happen to Mr. Snuffleupagus?
Can I point out that on the last cake, the inscription looks like "Happy bistlxlay"? It's a Wreck even without the creepy Big Bird.
That last one makes me think of "Loafy" on (I can't remember which station's...) morning cartoons.
"Sit Loafy, sit." And then the amorphous blob would kind of shuffle his fat around. PLEASE tell me someone else remembers this, ha ha!
Yea, not sure who they were trying to fool with the third one. My 3 year old son was on my lap and the first thing he said was "That's a yellow Elmo! That's silly!"
Ouch. Poor big bird. This makes me wonder if I can pull off a big bird cake in my kitchen. If I can do Guitar Hero, surely I can do a bird, right?
Here's what I think happened with the third one. It was meant to be an Elmo cake, but someone called for a Big Bird cake. So they said, well crap, we don't know how to make one of those. I know! Just color the Elmo cake cream and add a beak. Voila! Massive Fail.
Am I the only one who thinks the last one is kinda cute??!
The kindest thing I can think of to say is that perhaps these are modern "interpretations" of Big Bird's image? In...cake?
Oh, who am I kidding-- I would weep all through dessert at the sight of any one of them.
Perhaps Big Bird wandered too close to a poultry farm, where I understand beak removal is often a common practice... No wait! I see that Elmo has it! In that case, a message to you, Elmo: any self-respecting bird's mouth is found INSIDE its beak. Think on that next time you try to sport this look.
Big Bird/Elmo looks more like Sponge Bob to me. These cakes make me cry inside ... and laugh hysterically outside.
lol@Julie-- The first one doesn't say, "Hello." He can't anymore!
Look out! The Big Bird/Herry Monster/pinecone monstrosity has had its wings clipped and its legs bolted to the surface of the cake!
I guess so it can't get loose to take revenge on its creator, Dr. Frankenstein.
I think the third one looks like blonde Elmo with the swine flu--that beak definitely looks more like he just sneezed!
I can't help it, I laughed the hardest at "I always wondered what would happen if..."-Hilarious. Poor Big Bird, he was my favorite as a child too, I made my poor Great Aunt carry my great big stuff Big Bird all over "the loop" (downtown chicago) when we went to see Santa and eat at Fields when I was 3.-Yes, she still complains.
Good gravy!
Maybe Elmo dyed his hair and stuck on a beak for Halloween... Just wanted to have a Big Bird costume. Right? Right??
WV: blesu. What sweet old ladies say when they see these wrecks - "Oh, blesu, sweetheart. You sure did try"
the first one looks like a big bird and snuffalufagus love child!
What's the second word on the love child cake? "2 Nch"? "2 McR"?
Am I the only one who thought the text in the first image was perfectly positioned to represent a Hitler mustache?
I'm crossing shows a bit here but I'm ok with anything as long as they don't screw with the swedish chef (and his rubber chicken ;)).
So i can laugh at these... alot. Anyone else thinking of the ugly duckling story for that last one and hoping, DESPERATELY, that it applies?
You amaze me with your witty repartee! Where do you come up with this stuff?? You have a gift.
Oh, and I thought that last second to the last "cake" of BB had a "snotty nose" look to it. Is it me? Does anyone else see it? Maybe it's the color..I don't know. A clothespin, perhaps?
Ew - that last one! Big Bird, or Big Turd? You be the judge!
OMG. The "blonde" Elmo is terrifying. What color is that they used for the "beak"? Shiver.....
That second to last one is the secret Seasame Street character, Albino-Elmo. You get bonus points for finding him in each scene...
Elmo and Cookie were on the today show; they had a cake. It's fine I suppose, but it's really BORING. Fondant, a couple of little faces... blecchhhh.
I took a picture on my blackberry and blogged it...
http://goingon40.blogspot.com/2009/11/crummy.html
the "blonde elmo" cake looks like they had a smiley face cake laying around then someone mentioned sesame streets anniversary and they were like "hey lets throw a beak on here" .. "tadaa! big bird! check em' out!" thats horrible.
secondly- yes banana seat bikes used to be the shizzzz... my cousins and i used to fight over my grandmas banana seat bike when i was little. haha
thanks for the actual photo of bigbird- cuz i cant figure out for the life of me what that blue crap on his face is on the first cake. theres no beak? .. im confused.
I, too, think that the word on the first one is "Hello"... though why someone thought it was appropriate to replace the top of his beak with a word is beyond me.
And the one with a beak AND a mouth?! Has that guy never seen a bird before? LOL Poor, poor Big Bird!
- Kelly R.
How difficult can it be to butcher Sesame Street cakes? A bakery I used to visit always had Elmo and Cookie Monster cookies for sale (which were delicious), and they were very simply made. However, you actually could tell which character they were supposed to resemble!
WV: horid. How incredibly appropriate.
Blonde Elmo--love child of Elmo and Miss Piggy?:p
Amy B-H
how is it possible for anyone over the age of 4 to think that a bird's face includes both a beak and a separate mouth? i weep for our sorry-ass species.
-helenwheels74
Eeew! That third one looks like a smiley face with a bad head cold. Think I'll need to skip lunch today......
That is definitely Elmo, dressed up as Big Bird for Halloween.
I think that first one says "Holly"... ummm, or "Hello"... or perhaps, "Hurry".
Poor bird.
I believe the mysterious inscription to be seen instead poor Big Bird's beak may actually read "Hello"...
The best part about your last caption is that Caroll Spinney played both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch
To Natballs:
Mike McCarey, whom I consider to be the GOD OF CAKES, made the Big Bird cake on Challenge. He used a heat gun to make modelling chocolate look fluffy. Un-frickin-believable.
Here's his website (warning, it has music set to default on, but can be turned off): http://www.mikesamazingcakes.com/
I just signed up for his showcase demo at the Austin cake show (http://thattakesthecake.org/) in February and I'm positively giddy to see him in real life. He's even going to be teaching classes before the show, including one on modeling chocolate techniques, but I'll be too busy making my entry that he and some other awesome folks will be judging...meep, I have to work extra hard when the GOD is coming to see our work!
oh my gosh!
The last cake actually looks a bit like Little Bird: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-tvNsDboP4
Also, my 1st or 2nd birthday cake was actually a very good Big Bird. I wish I had the photo online!
Maybe the first Big Bird is yelling, "Help!" Or maybe, "Hell!" Either would work. Can't blame him.
Lucky the recipient in the last one is only 2 and might not know how un-Big Bird like that looks.
BTW, awesome meeting you and John last night at the Bethesda signing! :-D
What Not to Bake...Yike. Poor Bird.
My son was looking at these with me...when we came to the "Blonde Elmo" - unprompted he goes "there's a yellow Elmo!" Then when we got to the grouch and Big Bird love child he says "It looks like Grouch!" So, whether we adults like the integrity of the cakes or not at least 5 year olds get it. ;-)
Actually, that last one says "Happy Birdclay!"
So it's not a wreck; it's pretty guano-tastically accurate!
--Nonie
Awesome cakes! And great video! "I like eggs" LMBO
I'm not sure why you think #3 is either Elmo or Big Bird, as it is clearly a rejected smiley face clock depicting 8:37.
Gawd, why do people still say FIRST?
Great. JUST great. Now I'm going to be singing that song all day. With Peter Griffin dancing around in my head. Oh boy....
Oh, man, that last one is a classic. With the Bigbird-Elmo one, I thought it was Big Bird wearing a black fanny pack for a moment. And the one with the popsicle nose looks wrong, but I bet that pretzel tastes delicious.
Honestly Jen, I didn't think you were old enough to remember banana seats. I used to have a cool purple sparkle seat. Also the matching streamers in the handlebars...
I had to laugh @ Natalie's comment about Big Bird 'getting no respect.'
Big Bird was always my favorite. I never understood the Elmo fervor. I always thought he was annoying and whiney. Big Bird's mah man!
ACK! Now I'm going to have Peter Griffin and that awful song in my head all day!! Must. crank. up. "It's a Small World" ;)
Am I the only one that thinks "love child" might have some mental problems? He looks like he's in a straight jacket and his legs are strapped down...
I scrolled down to the third cake and my 3 year old yelled, "Elmo!" He paused a moment, then started cackling, "Hahahaha, Elmo has a big nose!"
I think it says "Hello" although it would surely be hard to say with only the bottom half of a beak. And those last few? By the color, I'd say they're not larks, they're Poo-Poo birds!
8:37! Haha, Dakota!
OMG, I just realized the WV here is actually "cakerear," which I'd hate to waste. I never do these, but this time, I'll try...
WV: Cakerear-- What an overworked baker gets after sitting too many hours, churning out wreck after wreck.
Not so much? I'll try again...
WV: Caker-ear: A baker's condition that keeps him/her from properly understanding orders taken over the phone.
Example:
[Baker, to self]: "They wanted a cake with Elmo OR Big Bird? How about both combined?"
[Customer, picking up order]: "What's wrong with you? You got caker-ear?"
That last one is fabulous!
Incidentally, I didn't realize Big Bird wasn't a girl until about halfway through elementary school. And then came the thoughts of "Why bother giving them genders in the first place, since they're just puppets." Ah, childhood.
i feel bad for the "John" who got the cake. what will he think when he sees pictures of his second birthday?
The first one is actually pretty good (Except the beak of course).
The last one... scares me. *shudders*
A beak and a mouth? These decorators need to take another look at a bird sometime! Also, the icing for the face and the beak don't match!
Creative idea for a blog! I'm rating blogs today. I give it a 9.5! Not sure why, but I love it!
More confusing than the big bird cake are the tears that came to eyes from laughing at it.
I almost feel guilty... poor big bird.
Poor John . . . that is one saaad cake to get on your 2nd birthday!
The first one actually looks like a yellow Snuffleupagus to me!
This makes me cry...I had 2 awesome Big Bird cakes as a kid. These are a disgrace!
Carly said...
Elmo and Cookie were on the today show; they had a cake. It's fine I suppose, but it's really BORING.
________________________
Sesame celebrating 40 yrs and they have elmo and abby on the show. ( Yes cookie was there too)
Elmo was there from only the 1980s (?) and Abby is a very recent new character.
Why not send b. bird or bert or oscar.. the REAL 40 yrs old muppets
OMG the second "Big Bird"...I thought that his beak was a hot dog cut in half or something!
I can't believe several people found the Oscar-Big Bird love child more disturbing than the first cake, where somebody ripped off BB's beak!
Blonde Elmo looks like the icing bag erupted on his face. That can't qualify as a beak, can it? And it looks like his mouth and eyes are plastic flotsam! ya think they'd have a plastic beak, too. Maybe it was en Elmo kit modified for Big Bird. I wonder what they'd do to Snuffaluffagus. They would have been better off doing a beak/nose/trunk-less Cookie Monster.
That last one looks like an angry pine cone with heavy blue eyeshadow...or a pineapple ticked his greenery got cut off. Little Mr. candy cane legs with talons...
And number one's beak--popsicle? Carrot? unmentionable suggestive "prop"? (think fireman cake)
*shudder* hope the kids weren't traumatized
"how can the cake have a beak and a mouth....."
--Good point, Twinbeaks! *shudder*
I think the name on that first cake is Holly!
At least that is what I am seeing! LOL
That "Elmo" one looks like he had a bad sneeze and no one had a tissue. EWWWWWWW
My daughter (she's 2) recognized the first cake as big bird. Then as I scrolled down she saw the blonde elmo and said "Elmo cake mommy! Elmo!" hehe
Having seen the truly amazing Big Bird cake that Mike McCarey (of the appropriately named "Mike's Amazing Cakes") made on food network's "challenge" only makes these wrecks all the more wreck-y. That yellow Elmo cake also only furthers my belief that there should be some kind of test before bakers are allowed to buy cake kits.
Is it just me, or did the last one remind anyone of the talking garbage pile from Fraggle Rock too?
I like the third one amazing I wish I could make these kinda cakes on my birthdays :)
Yuck, the yellow color on that last big bird!
Bwah, ha, ha, ha! That last one is GREAT! Love child indeed!
My 3 year old saw the first 2 and excitedly said, "Mom, it's Sponge Bob Square Dance!" I told her it was supposed to be Big Bird and she just shook her head.
My 6 year old said that the 3rd one is Elmo, but I think the plastic mouth looks like Cookie Monster's.
Excellent revenge for people who were always a little put off by the bird.
#2 looks like he has a brightly colored speculum for a nose...
So sometimes I read things wrong. And sometimes what I THOUGHT it said is fairly amusing.
At the end, I thought you said "...if Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird had a loveshit."
So there you go.
it is pretty sad when my 10 year old has to ask who that is.
Just to prove your point....my 3-year-old was viewing these with me and made some great comments.
1st cake: "SCARY!!!"
2nd cake: "What's that?!"
3rd cake: "Elmo?"
I think the third one is Big Bird and Elmo's love child!
Is that frosting or mini-cobs that the legs are made from?
On the last picture my 2 year old sees the picture and goes "oh that's big bird" (he is scowling) then he says "That's Yuck"
I had to come back to this post to let you know that when I had my 4-year-old daughter in the cake supply shop the other day, she saw bags of the Elmo faces on the wall and immediately knew that it was Elmo.
Let me make this very clear: she saw just the plastic bits of the eyes/nose and the mouth with no red icing or other identifying marks, and in fact they were all sideways in the baggies, and she knew it was Elmo.
So wtf was the decorator smoking when they thought an Elmo face could pass for Big Bird? PUT THE GUMPASTE CRACKPIPE DOWN!
wv: potins
As in, when you smoke tins of fondant instead of pot and get so wrongly baked that you think Elmo looks like Big Bird.
Oh man! These parents that lovingly tried to make these cakes for their children are such idiots for failing so miserably! Why didn't they just pay some superstar cakemaker an exorbitant amount of money to do it? Geeze -- if you can't do something better for your spoiled two-year old who doesn't know the difference anyway, then why even bother trying to show your love? I mean, don't these people who tried to make someone else happy (but failed miserably, obviously) know that their neighbors, friends, and families are laughing at their earnest efforts? And don't they know that they should have been trying to impress their peers rather than make their child happy?
Some parents...really.
Hey Blue,
I feel like you're being sarcastic...
The cakes on Cake Wrecks are all made by professional cake decorators. We try very hard to never post a picture that was done by a non professional as that wouldn't be fair. If you know that one of the cakes in this post wasn't made by a professional or a bakery, please let us know so we can remove it.
Just so we're clear, no one is making fun of mothers making cakes for their kids. If, however, one does this for a living and still manages to churn out these poorly made confections, then we believe their creations are fair game.
Cool beans?
john
I can sympathize...I tried making a "Clifford the Big Red Dog" cake and it turned out pink (red is quite tough to get) and look more like a bunny than a dog.
It's Broucho the Lovechild!!!
XD
1st cake: why does big bird ahve a moustache?
last cake: thank goodness that will never happen!!!!!!!