'Der Viener Schlinger': The meat cannon that launched 20k hot dogs (flatwaterfreepress.org)

Some years back, I helped build a Twinkie cannon, which was mounted in the front of a Twinkie-decorated car, built on a dune buggy chassis. We had to remove the roll cage to fit the fluffy cake body (made of airbrushed yellow fiberglass insulation), so we made sure to drive it quite slowly, but it was a beast underneath if you wanted it to be. (I once drag-raced a pizza driver, and only afterward noticed the cop on the next streetcorner. Luckily it's hard to write a ticket while doubled-over laughing.)

The CO2-powered cannon was capable of way more power than cellophane-wrapped Twinkies can handle. Dial the regulator up past halfway, and they'd just shred on exiting the barrel, splattering anyone near the front of the car with sticky creamy filling and cake crumbs. That was both messy, and disappointing to folks down-range who'd been hoping to catch a snack. (And it immediately summoned a cleanup crew of seagulls, who then wanted more...)

So we learned to keep it modest, and developed a decent sense of pressure vs range. The car geometry allowed only limited variation of the barrel angle, so it wasn't a full-on GORILLA.BAS experience, but it was pretty close.

Culinary ballistics keeps you young. I highly encourage it.

> In German, “der” means “the.” “Wiener” means “of Vienna (Austria).” Although the English “to sling” probably traces back to Old Norse’s “slynja,” meaning “to hurl,” the German verb “shlingen” means “to wolf or scarf down,” as in food.

Yes, as a German, I was appropriately confused and expected some horrific contraption to get better in hot-dog eating contests or something like that.

But that's nice too.

i was fully expecting to see black and white pictures of some german soldiers testing a newly built weapon, was surprised to see a football player carrying a hotdog-shaped cannon.

the broken/fake german did make me suspicious, so i should've seen it coming.

EDIT: imagine a Schwerer Gustav[0] shooting a huge sausage, that's where my brain was going.

EDIT2: according to wiki Gustav can shoot 14 rounds per day, so we could deliver 14 of these sausages[1] daily. why? not sure, combating food scarcity without having to actually go there. Sausage as a Service, directly to your front door.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav [1]https://i0.wp.com/billypenn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/v...

With a name like J.J. Harder he was destined to schlinger der viener

One small step along the path to making the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel a reality.

This kind of journalism is refreshing and awesome.

My alma mater. I do love that improving it was an engineering project

>"Since 2018, a Gatling gun version mounted on a prop grill has been shooting out brats at Milwaukee Bucks’ home games at the rate of 24 per 10 seconds; each is enclosed in a foam noodle, which allows condiment packets to accompany the dog."

America.

Are you really telling me that the Hot Dog Cannon from Tyrian actually exists? o_O

This is such a great article.

time to move on to 2026 and hook it up to an automated roller grill, or some other fantastic fashion of heating up and assembling the hot dog.

Approaching middle age, I'm grateful that there still seems to be a supply in the world of such wondrous creations as this, previously unknown to me.

However, I was disappointed that the article conspicuously omitted the story of the original invention.

Anyway, here's the patent ("Process for propelling foodstuffs or the like into a crowd"): https://patents.google.com/patent/US5996568A/en

> I have a lot of German background

If you didn't read the rest of the article, that's how you always know they're american

That name is super-strange.

"Der Viener Schlinger".

So ... "Der" is german, we can translate this into "The".

"Schlinger" is a strange word; there is Schlinge in german, which could be translated as loop, snare or, better, a sling. You can see how similar sling is to Schling or vice versa here. To sling ... may also be herumschlingen, a snake may have a similar movement like that; curvy movement aka not linear or so. Makes sense for a sling that throws stuff about, see the slingshot channel or Tod's Workshop. So far this is a bit strange, but not totally strange.

But next comes ... "Viener". This is VERY strange. Where does this word originate? My first impression was it was from Vienna, a city; the german name for the city is "Wien", and if you replace the V here with a W, then it would be "Wiener" (which in english would be viennese, but in local wording). So when I first read the three words, I thought this originated from Vienna ... but that makes no sense. It's from the USA. So Viener must mean something else. But then why it is "Schlinger" rather than "slinger" or sling"? And why the name "Der"? I mean that only makes sense for a german word. Now I am very confused.

I also don't recall any meat cannon as a tradition in central Europe either, so that makes no sense either. Who coined that word here, anyway?