Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Zippy, with a candy-bar parody of Schiller’s Ode to Joy (An der Freude), used by Beethoven in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony:

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Almond Joy, Mounds, Mars bars! Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.

The relevant part of Schiller’s 1785 original text, with an English translation, from this site:

1 Freude, schoener Goetterfunken,
… 1 Joy, beautiful spark of Gods,
2 Tochter aus Elysium,
… 2 Daughter of Elysium,
3 Wir betreten feuertrunken,
… 3 We enter, fire-imbibed,
4 Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.
… 4 Heavenly, thy sanctuary.
5 Deine Zauber binden wieder
… 5 Thy magic powers re-unite
6 Was der Mode Schwert geteilt
… 6 What custom’s sword has divided

Now, the candy. This is something of a morass, since the names of the candies, the names of their makers, and the make-up of the candies have all varied over time and place. From the Wikipedia page on Almond Joy:

An Almond Joy is a candy bar manufactured by Hershey’s. It consists of a coconut-based center topped with one or two almonds, the combination enrobed in a layer of milk chocolate. Almond Joy is the sister product of Mounds, which is a similar confection but without the almond and coated instead with dark chocolate; it also features similar packaging and logo design, but in a red color scheme instead of Almond Joy’s blue.

History: Peter Paul Halajian was a candy retailer in the New Haven, Connecticut area in the early 20th century. Along with some other Armenian investors, including Dutch candy manufacturer Winjamy, he formed the Winjamy Candy Manufacturing Company in 1919. The company at first sold various brands of candies, but following sugar and coconut shortages in World War II, they dropped most brands and concentrated their efforts on the Mounds bar. The Almond Joy bar was introduced in 1946 as a replacement for the Dream Bar (created in 1936) that contained diced almonds with the coconut. In 1978, Peter Paul merged with the Cadbury company. Hershey’s then purchased the United States portion of the combined company in 1988.

… Although Peter Paul as a company no longer exists, the name still appears on the wrapper as part of the bars’ brand names.

… Bounty (produced by Mars, Incorporated) is a popular European version of Almond Joy, similar in shape and make-up, although without the almond (so more like Mounds). Bounty comes in milk and dark chocolate varieties.

(#2)

Then on Mars, again from Wikipedia:

Mars (also Mars bar) is a chocolate bar manufactured by American chocolate company Mars, Incorporated. It was first manufactured in Slough, Berkshire in the United Kingdom in 1932 and was advertised to the trade as being made with Cadbury’s chocolate as “couverture”.

In the United States, a different confection bore the Mars bar name. Featuring nougat, soft caramel, almonds, and a milk chocolate coating, the American Mars bar was discontinued in 2002. A similar bar featuring the Mars name was relaunched in the US in 2010.

… The worldwide Mars bar differs from what is sold in the US. The American version was discontinued in 2002 and was replaced with the slightly different Snickers Almond. The US version of the Mars bar was relaunched in January 2010 and is initially being sold on an exclusive basis through Walmart stores. The European version of the Mars bar is also sold in some United States grocery stores. It was once again discontinued at the end of 2011.

The British Mars is very similar to the United States Milky Way bar, which Mars, Inc. produced (not to be confused with the European version of Milky Way, which is similar to the United States’ 3 Musketeers).

There! I hope it’s all clear now.

Back to Almond Joy and Mounds, from the Wikipedia Almond Joy article:

During the 1970s, the Peter Paul company used the jingle, “Sometimes you feel like a nut / Sometimes you don’t / Almond Joy’s got nuts / Mounds don’t,” to advertise Almond Joy and Mounds in tandem. In a play on words, the “feel like a nut” portion of the jingle was typically played over a clip of someone acting like a “nut”, i.e., engaged in an unconventional activity, such as riding on a horse backward.

One of the ads can be viewed here.

The ads turn on the ambiguity of feel + like. First, as feel with a PP complement, parallel to feel ridiculous; from NOAD2:

[with obj.] experience (an emotion or sensation): I felt a sense of excitement | [no obj.]:  I felt angry and humiliated | we feel very strongly about freedom of expression.

Then as an idiom feel like; from the American Heritage Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs (2005):

To desire to do something: We all got bored and felt like leaving. I feel like ordering a cup of coffee.

To desire to have something: I feel like a cup of coffee.

This entry was posted on February 24, 2015 at 5:44 am and is filed under Ambiguity, Language and food, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Parodies. 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.