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| Airport Meeting |
 Title text: Although it was a setback for physics, I'm glad the particle naming rights issue led to the cancelation of Pizza Hut's Superconducting Super Collider in the early 90s, so the Double Stuffed Extra Cheese Topping Quark ended up just being named 'top quark.' |
Explanation
Michelin is a company that manufacture tires for cars and heavy machinery. However, they have also created the Michelin Guide, originally a guide for motorists in France that eventually branched out into dining and travel and spread across the world.
Red Bull is a company that manufactures the eponymous energy drink. However, they have also invested heavily in motorsport events, competing as a team in NASCAR and Formula One. "Red Bull Supercar" might refer to upcoming Red Bull RB17.
This comic implies that this is because two employees, each working for one of the companies, accidentally swapped briefcases at an airport, suggesting that originally one had information that Michelin was using in support of the motorsport business and other possessed information that Red Bull was meant to identify restaurants, which better fits with the companies' existing specialties. By leaving with each other's paperwork, both companies found themselves with departments pursuing opportunities to pivot into the technically quite different fields more closely related to the other. It seems strange that they would both remain unaware of the switch, and keep going with the plan anyway. Possibly they actually intended to take the other person's briefcase all along, in a version of the common spy bag swap trope, but this seems unlikely from the comic.
In reality, the Michelin Guide originated as a way to encourage early automobile owners to drive more and therefore need replacement tires more often. The early guide included maps, automobile maintenance instructions, and listings of hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and auto repair mechanics across France - information which was not easily found elsewhere at the time. The popularity of the restaurant listings led to greater investment into the section, and the classification of two-star restaurants being 'worth a detour' and three-star being 'worth a special journey' to tempt motorists into driving to them.
Red Bull's motorsports sponsorships are part of a larger strategy of owning or sponsoring numerous sports teams and individual athletes as a means to advertise their brand, placing their logos on uniforms, in stadiums, or on race cars. Besides its racing teams, the company owns or has stakes in over a dozen soccer clubs, along with ice hockey, rugby, and bicycle racing teams, and regularly sponsors various extreme sport competitions. These sponsorships are more unrelated to the actual company, but still make sense as advertising.
The title text introduces the concept of even stranger specialization-swapping between a fast-food franchise and particle physics. Quarks are a type of sub-atomic particle (which come in six 'flavors': up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom) but it is also the name of a type of cheese. The claim that the top quark was originally named the Double Stuffed Extra Cheese Extra Topping quark, before being shortened to top quark, suggests it was used as a pizza topping. In reality, the top and bottom quarks were originally named truth and beauty quarks, and are still occasionally referred to as such.
Transcript
- [Cueball and Ponytail are standing together and talking to each other. Cueball holds a black briefcase, while Ponytail has a grey briefcase in front of her.]
- Cueball: I do restaurant analysis for a beverage company.
- Ponytail: Neat! I work in the automotive industry, developing parts for specialized vehicles.
- [Same as first panel, but Cueball has put down his briefcase next to Ponytail's (partly obscuring it from view) and pulled out his boarding card]
- Cueball: Oh, my flight is boarding. It was nice to meet you!
- Ponytail: You too!
- [Ponytail and Cueball walk off in opposite directions, carrying each other's original briefcase]
- Header: Years Later:
- [A book with a star on it that reads:]
- Michelin Tire Company
- Star Restaurant Guide
- [A fancy sports car, facing to the right. On the body of the car, it says:]
- Red Bull Supercar
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