In the late seventies, there was a sitcom called WKRP in Cincinnati which centered on a struggling radio station (WKRP) and the unique characters who work there trying to keep it afloat after switching formats from easy listening to rock and roll. In the “Turkeys Away” episode, which premiered on October 30, 1978, WKRP’s station manager believed that he had come up with what was “the greatest promotional idea of all time” for Thanksgiving. This promotion involved hiring a helicopter to drop live turkey’s at a local mall, but apparently, nobody involved was aware that turkeys are flightless birds, something we all picked up on from WKRP’s newsman in his live remote coverage:

“Something just came out of the back of the helicopter. It’s a dark object. Perhaps a skydiver. A second. A third… No parachute yet. Oh my God! They’re turkeys!” They’re crashing to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! This is terrible! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! The crowd is running for their lives!”

Needless to say, the promotion was a bust, but it did garner the station some attention, albeit not the kind that they had wanted. While WKRP wasn’t a routinely stellar show by any means, the cast clicked well and it definitely had its moments, the “Turkeys Away” episode being one of them as more than four decades later it’s still has a place in the collective pop-culture memory of Americans of all ages.