I used to have a CD that had a whole bunch of old TV commercial jingles on it. I assume this compilation was put on the market in an attempt to capitalize on the nostalgia of baby boomers.
Somebody gave me the CD as a gift when I was age 12 or so. I had zero nostalgia at the time for the showcased ads because most of them aired in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, and I didn’t come along till the very end of that last decade.
The only jingles on the CD that I would have recognized during my first listen would have been for ad campaigns that were still running many years after launching, such as the ditty for Almond Joy and Mounds bars that explains how sometimes you feel like a nut, while at other times you don’t. (I’ll tell you what I never feel: a desire for an Almond Joy or Mounds bar. Blech.)
I’ll say this for those Mad Men–era advertising folks, though: They knew how to come up with diabolically catchy tunes. Despite never having seen any of the commercials featured on that CD, I only had to play it a couple times to have every word of all 50-something tracks permanently imprinted on my brain.
I’d wager I was the only nonsmoking seventh grader at Shiloh Christian School who knew that Winston gives you real flavor (full, rich tobacco flavor) and, further, that Winston’s easy drawing, too (the filter lets the flavor through)—for, in sum, Winston tastes good like a (clap, clap) cigarette should.
But the best songs on the commercials album, in my opinion, were Dinah Shore’s swinging rendition of “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” the fight song–esque “Texaco Star Theme,” and, my hands-down fave, the Chiquita banana song, in which a sexy banana instructs postwar Americans how best to eat and store her (“Bananas like the climate of the very, very tropical equator / So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator”).
I eventually sought out the visuals on YouTube. In the animated ad, Chiquita is basically a cartoon/produce version of Carmen Miranda, and she performs her little number for a visibly smitten, visibly human roughneck type who swoons with horniness when Chiquita kisses him on the cheek at the end of the song.
Given that Chiquita looks to me like a sentient dildo, I’d like to know how her roughneck admirer thinks the two of them are going to have sex.
During my arts journalism days back in Chicago, I once reviewed a musical stage adaptation of the Frog and Toad books. In one song, some woodland creature asks Toad if he knows what the funniest fruit is, and I immediately thought, Bananas, which turned out to be the correct answer.
It’s highly likely, of course, that the banana’s supremacy in this regard had already been well established, especially since the notion had filtered down to a stage show for children. But I, for one, had never contemplated the matter before.
I suppose bananas owe their hilariousness to their appearance (bright yellow, penile) as well as to their associations with monkeys and with pratfalls caused by discarded peels. I would argue that raspberries, melons, ugli fruit, and kumquats have certain humorous qualities of their own, but let’s face it: They’re not a patch on bananas in the comedy department.
Not to mention that, as Chiquita says of her kinfolk, any way you want to eat them, it’s impossible to beat them.
Indirect Objects 