Ever wondered if your tongue would actually stick to a freezing pole, just like in A Christmas Story? Well thankfully that’s a mystery that’s been solved already.
WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT INVOLVING A PIG'S TONGUE... YOU'LL SEE
Anyone who’s seen 1983’s A Christmas Story will remember the moment Schwartz (R.D. Robb) triple dog dares Flick (Scott Schwartz) to lick a frozen flag pole.
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“Stick my tongue to that pole?” Flick says. “That's dumb!”
It turned out it was a very dumb idea, indeed, with Flick left ‘Stuck! Stuck! STUCK!’ on the pole, desperately begging the others not to leave him.
The scene proved to be a cautionary tale that would be etched in the minds of 80s kids for decades to come - not that it stopped them letting their curiosity override common sense, I’m sure.
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And if you’re wondering if it’s something that could legitimately happen in real life, just bear in mind that that Flick’s panicked reaction was probably pretty accurate.
The team at Discovery Channel's MythBusters have actually already done the research, having carried out a series of tests a few years back to see if a person’s tongue really can instantly stick to a freezing metal pole when touched, in turn making it difficult to remove.
The experience turned out to be ‘one of the grossest tests ever’ on the show, as Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci tried it out.
The team took two approaches, using both Tory’s tongue and a pig’s tongue to see what happened.
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To warm the pig’s up to human body temperature, they inserted tubing inside it and pumped it with hot water.
Various people then donated saliva into a large beaker over the course of a week, which would serve as the necessary lubricant for ‘Frankentongue’.
They then brought in a frozen metal pole and pressed the pig tongue onto it, finding it stuck instantly.
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“Chunks of the tongue are staying on the pole,” Belleci said.
“So at 32 degrees, your tongue will stick to a frozen pole.”
Next up was the human test, with Belleci serving as the human guinea pig.
“Hey!” he exclaimed as he pressed his tongue against a different pole. “It’s stuck!”
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Thankfully, he was able to pull his tongue away – although not without leaving some traces on the pole.
A summary on the Mythbusters website concluded: “Using both Tory’s tongue and that of a pig, it was determined that a human tongue can be frozen to a cold metal pole substantially enough to risk pulling some of the skin and muscle off of the tongue.
“Kari jokingly suggested that a person could free his/herself by peeing on the contact point between pole and tongue.”
As for how they managed to create the scene in A Christmas Story without ripping the actor's tongue off?
Scott Schwartz, now 48, recently revealed it was all down to clever trickery.
Speaking to NorthJersey.com in 2018, he explained how the props team had painted the pole to make it look old and rusty, before masking a piece of plastic wrapped around it.
A hole in the plastic then connected to a suction tube, which led down to a motorised vaccum hidden in the snow below.
“Think of a vacuum cleaner, but the hole [in the plastic] was the size of a pinky nail,” Schwartz said.
The vacuum gave a little tug to his tongue, but he could easily remove the tongue, painlessly.
Topics: Film and TV, Science, Christmas
Jess Hardiman