Hit Nick show 'iCarly' spawns hit food

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- The creator of the Nickelodeon series "iCarly" said he was shocked at how one of the show's jokes, spaghetti tacos, became a kids' cuisine sensation.

Dan Schneider, creator of the TV show about a teenage girl with her own Web series, said he did not foresee spaghetti tacos becoming a sensation, often featured on cooking blogs and parenting sites, when they were first prepared on the show by Spencer, the title character's brother, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

"It was just a little joke I came up with for one episode," Schneider said. "Then it turned into a running joke. And now it's this thing people actually do."

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at New York's Syracuse University, said spaghetti tacos seem inevitable in retrospect.

"This combination seems to be an inevitability, sort of like chocolate and peanut butter running into each other on that Reese's commercial," Thompson said. "The amazement should be only that it took 'iCarly' to bring it into our melting pot of a culture."

"Spaghetti tacos has made it possible to eat spaghetti in your car," he said. "It's a very important technological development. You don't even need a plate."