Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Zippy, an elaborate burlesque on the Beatles, their music, and their albums:

It begins with a version of the album cover for Meet the Beatles (1963):

From left to right, that’s John, George, Paul, and Ringo — corresponding to the Giggles Quisp, Nauga, Snappy, and Choo-Choo Charlie, respectively. The names of the Giggles are all allusions to brand names of the 50s and 60s:

Quisp (sugar sweetened) breakfast cereal, which debuted in 1965;

the Nauga doll (made of Naugahyde) of the 1960s (photo below);

Snap! Crackle! and Pop!, advertising Kellogg’s Rice Krispies (together for the first time in 1939, first appearing on tv in 1960);

Choo-Choo Charlie, advertising Good & Plenty candies in the 1950s (YouTube video here).

Then there are the burlesqued quotations from Beatles songs: “I am the Mole Rat” (rather than the Walrus), a version of “Norwegian Wood” with Big Mac for girl, “Hoboken” instead of “Kansas City”, ketchup for love, squeeze for please. And 40% Bran Flakes Boulevard for Abbey Road (there’s a definite cereal theme in there), with a version of the Abbey Road cover. And of course, the “Snappy” — er, Paul — “is dead” rumor.

Still trying to imagine Sir Snappy.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2012 at 7:39 am and is filed under Language in advertising, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.