Nothing turns a guy on more than a baked Idaho potato!

SUBMITTED BY: Darren Garnick    LOCATION: O’Leary, Prince Edward Island (2009)

Home of Canada’s largest artificial potato, the PEI Potato Museum respectfully honors potato pin-up models, potato guns and even Mr. Potato Head.  But perhaps its most meaningful contribution to Canadian culture is its mournful documentation of diseases and pests that are deadly to the potato crop.

Reminiscent of the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Graveyard, the museum morbidly places potato carcasses in cute little potato coffins!

There are many ways to kill a potato. The Swine Flu (H1N1 virus) is not one of them.

You have to give the museum curators credit. There’s no better way to scare kids about the perils of Bacterial Soft Rot than to present the cold, ugly reality in a spud coffin — which are perfectly sized for serving French fries, by the way.

Potato-munching monsters will inherit the earth. But only if we let them.

Because Tacky Tourist Photos seeks to educate as well as entertain, the potato on the left died from Potato Warts, “a serious and destructive fungus found only in Newfoundland and Labrador where the cool rainy weather favors its development.” These warts, not treatable with Compound W or other conventional means, range in size from a pea to a full potato.

The potato on the right was a victim of the insidious Potato Scab Gnat, which lays its eggs in the soft spots of a spud.  Those eggs become insidious potato-eating maggots.

For the record, the PEI Potato Museum does not serve thickly cut steak fries or any kind of fries, claiming that the oil from the Frialator would damage the antique potato harvesting wagons.

Not to mention the arteries of the scab gnats.

(Coming soon… The Potato Disease Photo Gallery, including Bacterial Soft Rot — only at TackyTouristPhotos.com!)