The Ballad of Analtech

Published by greggkirk on April 2, 2019April 2, 2019

In the spring of 1996, Big Shout staff writer Tom Dougherty pitched a story idea for our April Fool’s issue. Everyday on his way to work, he drove by a non-descript, industrial-looking building that had a sign posted at its entrance… Analtech. Tom wanted to find out what they did there. The butt jokes were obvious, but what exactly was transpiring behind those brick walls? Was it anything lower-intestinal related or was this a case of someone unwittingly naming their business after one of the more hilarious parts of the human anatomy?

As it turns out, it was the latter. Here is Tom’s very well-written and underplayed article that gives the details of how Analtech came to be, including an interview with the executive vice president and general manager … “ANALTECH: No Butts About It.”

At the end of his interview with then-general manager Matt Lamkin, Tom asked if the company had plans to change the name because of them literally being the butt of jokes and recipients of endless prank calls. To our surprise, Lamkin said they planned to keep it because it would be too expensive to change it.

And that’s the way things stayed for 21 years. But on May 23, 2017 the bottom began to fall out of Analtech, so to speak. An auto accident, involving two pickup trucks sent one of the vehicles careening into the back entrance of the Analtech building, releasing some sort of foul odor. The puns and double entendres were too perfect.

A nationally-released article posted by the NY Daily News read “Truck plows into Delaware company AnalTech, releasing odor that leads to HazMat situation.” For the impact it had, the headline might as well have read “Truck Penetrates Backend of Analtech, Releasing Noxious Gas.”

Two years prior, Lamkin and partner Kenneth Rainin had sold the company to Steven C. Miles. Miles had planned to continue with the name, but when the national spotlight hit Analtech where the sun didn’t usually shine, it apparently became too much for the new owner to bear.

Analtech is now Miles Scientific and that wonderful sign that used to appear in Newark, DE on Rt. 72 just south of Rt. 4 with that strange blue-flame image is no longer there. In its place is a very non-controversial and decidedly unhilarious sign with the new Miles Scientific logo on it.

So long, Analtech. We’ll never forget you. For a glorious period of time, you proved that fact can be much funnier than fiction and that there’s almost no end to any joke involving the opening at the end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste matter leaves the body.