The King Cake Delivery Service That Has Reddit Terrified
Each year, New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras with great pomp, pride, music, picnics, parades, and, of course, carnivals. As the city gets a purple, green, and gold makeover, the city's NBA team, the New Orleans Pelicans, gets a new seasonal mascot: The infamous King Cake Baby.
According to SBNation, the King Cake Baby debuted in 2014 and joins the New Orleans Pelicans' year-round mascot, Pierre the Pelican, around the time of Mardi Gras. The mascot is inspired by a special food eaten during the Mardi Gras celebrations – the king cake. Traditionally a simple ring of dough with little decoration, king cakes have a baby made out of plastic, gold, or porcelain hidden inside. The cake is sliced and served at parties and gatherings where the lucky guest who gets the slice with the baby hidden inside, is handed the responsibility of hosting the next king cake party (via Mardi Gras New Orleans).
This king cake tradition has resulted in a mascot that is the giant personification of a newborn baby for the city's NBA team. Now usually, mascots are cute, entertaining, and adult-like versions of cartoon characters except, the King Cake Baby is a bit terrifying and has a long history of scaring the people of New Orleans. In early January, the mascot's official account sent out an eerie tweet informing the world that the King Cake Baby was back after an 11-month nap and the internet is both tickled and terrified.
Reddit is having nightmares about the King Cake Baby
While the King Cake Baby pops up at various places in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, a recent video on a Reddit thread shows the scary mascot personally walking up to a house and delivering a king cake to a family as a part of a cake delivery service. "Well I know what I'm having nightmares about tonight," writes one baffled user and another points out that the mascot "looks like he came out from the movie the Purge." Others are suggesting just how terrifying and amusing it might be to surprise someone else with a king cake delivery carried out by the creepy toddler mascot.
As much as the googly-eyed King Cake Baby is unsettling, people are also pointing out that it's a person working under the creepy costume after all, and probably at minimum wage. "Making a human being get in that thing should be illegal," and "that's the most terrifying thing about it. This is someone's job." To this, a Redditor has one creepy sentence to let people dwell on — "bold of you to assume there's a human in there."
And while on the topic of strange things, the king cake is one item that should be safe from current food shortages.