Mike Industries

Did you play with your food as a kid or perhaps as an immature adult? If so, you’re in luck, because the first episode of the Mike Industries iPod-A-Month Creativity Competition™ starts today, and it involves perhaps the least appreciated of the culinary arts: recreational food sculpture.

Conceived by Jason Anderson of Columbus, Ohio, this first competition involves the construction of an iPod Shuffle using nothing but food. Jason wins one Shuffle for thinking of the idea, and whoever posts the best photo of their shufflicious creation in the comments for this entry wins the other Shuffle. Jason’s idea was inspired by the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” where Roy Neary makes the Devils Tower out of mashed potatoes.

Even though there are already plenty of great ideas (over 200!) for the iPod-A-Month competition, I will keep the submission pool open through the end of the year. I’m trying to do a good mix of design-related, photography-related, writing-related, and music-related competitions, so don’t feel bad if you don’t feel particularly suited for any given one.

Others will follow.

Also, it’s very possible that you’ve already submitted an idea for a contest and that I plan to use it… in which case, you’ve already won a Shuffle. I just can’t reveal that stuff in advance for fear of giving people a head start on preparing entries.

So here are the guidelines for this first contest:

1. Entries must be made entirely out of food and then photographed. The term “food” may be used loosely, but it must have some legitimate nutritional value and not cause death or other debilitating injury when ingested.
2. When submitting your entry, please do so via the comments. Please first list all ingredients, followed by a standard <img> tag pointing to an image measuring exactly 418 pixels by 418 pixels. If you don’t know how to do this, simply send me an e-mail and I’ll take care of it for you. The image must be your own creation, and all cheaters will be publicly shamed. I’m serious. I have a special domain reserved for the shaming. Don’t make me use it. :)
3. Try not to get hung up on color. The average person only ingests a handful of foods which could be considered “white” and I’d rather not limit our pool of submissions to those ingredients. Pretend the Shuffle comes in a rainbow of colors… it probably will eventually. And if worst comes to worst and you just don’t feel right submitting a green Shuffle, just pour some powdered sugar on it before you take the photo and call it a day.
4. The deadline for submissions is midnight April 30th.

Note: The technical name for this competition is “Best Interpretation of iPod Shuffle as Food”, so if people want to get super-creative with that and break all of the guidelines I’ve set forth above, go ahead. Nothing is out-of-bounds here. If your submission is creative enough, you might win.