This week’s video is sponsored by Ye Olde Proppe Shoppe!
If you’ve been to the Disney parks within the last few decades, you’ve probably seen,
and maybe even enjoyed, one of the now iconic giant turkey legs.
They’ve gained their own unique fandom that has resulted in everything from t-shirts and
hats to key-chains and even air fresheners.
They are a theme park snack staple, partially because they’re so unusually large.
Why are those turkey legs so big?
If you’re looking for a quick answer, I’ve got one for you.
The short and simple truth is that the turkey legs that Disney and other theme parks sell
are the turkey legs from male turkeys, which are typically larger than the more common
female turkeys we’re accustomed to.
According to an Orlando Sentinel article, the turkey legs first made their way to Disney
in 1898 thanks to a man named Dave Jarrett.
Jarrett got his start at Disney in 1977 as an oyster shucker at the Disney Village Marketplace,
which is today known as Disney Springs.
He rose the ranks at the company, and eventually became the Magic Kingdom convention manager.
According to Jarrett, he came across the turkey legs being sold at a fair while traveling
for Disney, and brought the idea back to management.
He allegedly was almost laughed out of the meeting but eventually convinced them to give
the snack a try.
They were a quick success.
Now that we know what they are and where they came from, let’s talk about what they aren’t,
because I’m sure there's somebody writing the comment right now as I speak: The Disney turkey legs are not emu.
This is actually a pretty long running urban legend that just recently popped back up in 2017
when actor Zachary Levi brought it up on an episode of Conan.
Levi: Don't know if you know this, the turkey legs at Disneyland- I've come to find out, are not actually
turkey. They're emu! They're emu legs!
Conan: No they're not!
Levi: Shocker, right?
This myth has been dispelled a number of times by a number of publications, including Snopes.
There are a few different ways to debunk the idea.
The first is that it’d simply be illegal.
FDA regulations forbid the mislabeling of meat products.
Simply put, selling emu and calling it turkey would get Disney in quite a bit of hot water.
But hey, it’s not like it’d be the first time a major corporation broke the law right?
So instead, let’s look at the numbers.
According to the US Department of Agriculture’s 2017 census, only 3,854 emus were commercially
sold over the course of the year.
According to Disney, they sell around 1.8 million pounds of turkey leg every year, at
an average of 1.5 pounds per leg.
That comes out to 1.2 million turkey legs or 600,000 turkeys at two legs a bird.
For comparison, that same USDA census cited the sale of 285 million turkeys in the United States that year.
That’s a lot of turkeys.
So essentially what this means is that Disney is either miraculously and illegally selling
over 15,000% of the country’s emus every year or they’re legally selling 0.2% of
the nation’s turkeys.
You could argue that they’re importing the additional 1.19 million emu legs, but considering
the costs of emu meat and the cost of importing overseas, you definitely wouldn’t be getting
that leg for just $12.50.
Lastly there’s the size to consider.
Emu’s are much larger than turkeys, with a typical height range of 5.2 to 6.2 feet,
and a weight of anywhere from 66 to 100 pounds.
So an emu leg would actually be about five to eight times the size of a turkey leg.
Meaning it would look less like this, and more like this.
I actually tried to find a place to buy a full emu leg and I couldn’t.
The closest I was able to find was a farm that sold one-pound steaks that are cut from
an emu leg drum.
That’s just how big they are.
You can literally cut steaks out of the legs.
So the next time you hear from somebody who knows a guy whose brother's sister's roommate works for Disney
and is 100% sure that the turkey legs are emu legs, you can point out that: No, they aren't.
It is a pretty clever myth however.
As the census shows, emus are not common in the United States, so tourists who visit the
parks and hear the rumor probably wouldn’t know how big an emu leg actually is and just
accept the factoid at face value.
That said, it’s not the wildest of ideas either.
Briefly in the 90’s emus were actually considered by some to be the next red meat.
Since their meat contains myoglobin, the same proteins that make red meat red, they look
closer to beef than poultry.
Emu meat typically has lower fat content than beef and requires less land to farm.
However for a number of reasons, including the beef lobby, the costs to process the birds,
and the general public's lack of interest, emu never did catch on.
Even though they’re not emu, the Disney parks turkey legs are obviously bigger than
what most people imagine when they think of a turkey leg.
Wild male turkeys, also known as toms or gobblers, for the sound we all think of when it comes
to turkeys, weigh around 16 to 22 pounds.
The females, or hens, by comparison, weigh around 8 to 12 pounds.
However those are wild turkeys.
Farm raised turkeys can weigh considerably more, with toms sometimes surpassing 50 pounds in weight.
That wasn’t always the case though.
Back in the 1930’s the average turkey size had climbed from around 13 pounds to 15 pounds.
Today they’re over 30 pounds.
While there are a number of factors attributed to this growth, the most prominent for turkeys
was the adoption of selective and artificial breeding.
So who knows, maybe at this rate one day they will be emu sized, but they’ll still be turkey...
and probably really expensive.
Turkey legs aren’t the only aspect of the Disney Parks with a fandom.
Disney signs have become iconic as well.
But you can’t take those home with you because you’d get in quite a bit of trouble.
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