The Sandwich War
In 1958, this sandwich was illegal. Economy class has just been born over the North Atlantic, and the rule is set: cold, simple, no garnish, cheap.
- 35 s
- Narrated archive
- History & archives
- Reconstructed archive
- FR · EN
- 4 October 2026
The true fact
Fictional airline, true facts.
- TIME, « How the Great Sandwich War of 1958 Changed the Way We Eat » — Date of 1 April 1958, the “cold, simple, unadorned, inexpensive” rule, the list of banned foods, the $20,000 fine.
Behind the scenes
The idea.
A forgotten, verifiable fact: the day economy class was born, the sandwich got its own rulebook. We wanted to tell it like a newsreel, in under forty seconds.
What was hard.
The punchline, the caviar, took three versions: without a cause it fell flat; with too much caviar it became a caricature; the scale had to be bounded. And the recorded narration ran thirty-five seconds instead of the planned twenty-two: two shots were redone at ten seconds to carry the voice. Several image defects (doubled sandwiches, an empty cabin behind the inspector) were fixed in the still image, never in the video.
What we learned.
Sound first: the voice sets the length of the shots, not the other way round. It became our rule.
Generated
- images
- shot animation
- voice-over
Done by hand
- historical research and sources
- writing
- editing
- archive design
- mixing
Go further
Transcript
April 1958. This sandwich is illegal. Economy class has just been born over the Atlantic. And for the sandwich, the rule is set: cold, simple, no garnish, cheap. Banned: smoked salmon, oysters, lobster, asparagus, foie gras… and caviar. One airline was even fined twenty thousand dollars for mocking the sandwiches across the aisle. The caviar, though, stayed in first class.
Images, animation and voice generated by AI. Fictional airline, true facts.
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