MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And now, a story about making lemonade out of lemons.
AMANDA MCMULLEN: We like to say here in New Bedford and at the whaling museum, we have big things.
KELLY: That is Amanda McMullen, president of the New Bedford Whaling Museum in coastal Massachusetts.
MCMULLEN: So we have five very sizable whale skeletons. We have one humpback whale, a teenage blue whale.
KELLY: Also, a full fiberglass replica of a blue whale heart. Visitors can actually climb into it.
MCMULLEN: The most has been nine teenagers have been able to actually get within the entire whale heart.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
You could say they have got a lot of heart. There's also one of the largest replicas of a ship in the world, a significant collection of scrimshaw art, artifacts from all over the Atlantic and the Caribbean regions. You know, it's kind of something for everyone, or almost everyone.
MCMULLEN: It was in 2020. It was actually during the pandemic, and this review actually landed on our Google review. And it was an individual who gave us one star, and they said, simply worst aquarium ever. And we immediately thought it was hysterical.
KELLY: Hysterical because the New Bedford Whaling Museum did not have an aquarium. Then about a year ago, the museum's visitor experience manager had an idea.
MCMULLEN: The pitch was I'm going to put this one-star review on a T-shirt. She pitched it, and we all said, you got to run with that.
CHANG: Genius. The T-shirt became a viral hit on social media. Orders are now in the thousands and growing.
MCMULLEN: We have had orders from all 50 states, except for Idaho.
CHANG: What's up, Idaho? And the city of New Bedford seems on board as well. Recently, museum staff marched in a local parade.
MCMULLEN: We had everybody on the side of the street with big grins calling out to us, saying worst aquarium ever.
KELLY: Yeah. But plot twist, the museum has since added a 250-gallon saltwater tank with local marine life - think crabs, sea stars, puffer fish - technically, you know, a small aquarium. When the museum recently posted a restock of its worst aquarium ever merch, it wrote, so this is awkward.
CHANG: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF BOBBY DARIN SONG, "BEYOND THE SEA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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