Homicidal Little Audrey

Little Audrey, despite the billing on one of her comics, wasn't always so playful. In addition to appearing bi-monthly, she may have also suffered from an undiagnosed bi-polar disorder. See what happens when she wins a lifetime lollipop at a fair, but cynic Melvin dares to mock her.



According to Harry McCracken, Ernie Colon supplies the art on this entry. He seems to be taking a cue from Howie Post's Audrey, which stuck closer to the theatrical shorts and gave Audrey a blue ring around the black pupil. However, the blue is omitted. As a result, instead of appearing cute and winsome, Audrey appears psychopathic. I admire the zeal with which she attempts to brain Melvin with an enormous sucker. A nice touch is Melvin's sweaty terror, rendering him incapable of any utterance but a three letter "Nga!"

Another reason why a dark, dystopian Harvey film would be unnecessary.

Tired of the Everyday Grind? Go to Juarez with Jack Webb!

I've been meaning to blog about old-time radio, one of my other passions, so this seems as good a way as any to christen the first post of a new year, in addition to a raft of material I've recently acquired, been saving, or simply put off.

Anyway, let's all get close to that glowing dial, or your computer speakers, and give a listen to Escape, and in particular, the oddball entry of December 13, 1949, called "Border Town," presenting an odd-boiled view of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Some background for anyone reading this blog who isn't named Ivan Shreve: The CBS anthology series ran from 1947 through 1954, and is often thought of as a sister show to Suspense; more than a few tales wound up on both shows, and Christine Miller has a maintains the nifty Escape and Suspense! blog devoted to both shows. One obvious separation between the two was the cast; S used big name Hollywood stars, and Escape, apart from several turns by Vincent Price and the occasional guest like Victor Mature (!), relied instead on veteran radio actors and a few movie character types for its leads and supporting roles. These were people with distinctive, adaptable, or otherwise impressive *voices* if not names, though to radio buffs or animation VO devotees, it's practically a who's who roster, many of whom went on to fame of one kind or another in other realms, as even "Border Town" reveals. Additionally, content was less crime oriented on the whole than Suspense, focusing more on tales of adventure in distant lands, dark alleys, in wartime, and the old west ("Wild Jack Rhett," the best known outing on the series, essentially set the precedent for radio's Gunsmoke), plus a few forays into science fiction (with a West Coast sound and different script approach to material done on Dimension X or X-Minus 1). Endings could be twist shockers or grim inevitabilities.

In the early years especially, the show delivered several top hole adaptations of classic authors and their modern counterparts; Kipling (of course, many times), Conan Doyle, Poe ("Fall of the House of Usher" received perhaps its best adaptation to *any* medium here), Joseph Conrad, and Ambrose Bierce rubbed shoulders with Irvin S. Cobb, Bradbury, and especially John Collier, whose unique world I discovered through Escape (though the scripts took license with a few stories, they were often improvements.) However, the show inevitably needed original scripts here and there to sustain itself all those years. Some, like James Poe's complex semi-stream of conscious "Present Tense" (anchored by a superb performance by Vincent Price) or the cross-and-doublecross tale "The Sure Thing" (by the husband and wife team of Gwen and Paul Bagni) hold up extremely well in this company as classics in their own right (and as such, were redone, either here or on Suspense). However, there were also more than a few "average person falls among unsavory parts in a vaguely exotic world" shows that either fall flat or are so overripe that they need to be placed in a secure ziplock bag before depositing. "Border Town," by the Bagnis, falls into the latter class in my opinion, and I'm perhaps more critical because it's exotic locale is just miles away from home and hearth. At the present, it's an unfortunate hotbed of murder, drug smuggling, organized crime, and mass death, from the still unsolved killings of many women beginning in the 1990s to a wave of terror (over 1,600 fatalities, including several police commanders) in the past year which has garnered national attention and inevitably led to very strained relationships between El Paso and its so-called sister city, with even missionaries unwilling to cross anymore. Apparently in 1949, however, it wasn't exotic enough for the Bagnis, who mostly ignored tamales and sultry senoritas and bullfighting, and Mexicans in general in fact, in favor of importing an eclectic assortment of cliches. Jack Webb's pronunciation of Spanish words and names doesn't help,

Anyway, time to get close to that glowing screen and give a listen to "Border Town". A partial, spoilerish breakdown for those otherwise inclined follows, beneath this very brave but poorly-phrased billboard urging El Pasoans, and Americans in general, to come back to Juarez:




Ah, the famous opening signature! This preamble (delivered by Paul Frees in this and countless other broadcasts, alternating with William Conrad frequently, and occasionally Lou Krugman and others), set the tone of, well, escapist literature, or listening in this case, often in a soothing "Does your spouse snore at night?" tone: "Tired of the everyday routine? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all?" Then cue the CBS announcer (usually Roy Rowan): "We offer you.... ESCAPE!" A little more from Roy ("designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure!"), but instead of the bit of prose and explanation of the source story which generally followed, we leap right to the voice of Joe Friday (who Jack Webb had been playing for a few months at this point, with hardboild PIS Pat Novak and Johnny Madero in the past had the jazzy bluesman Pete Kelly to come). Webb narrates in his best sardonic, hardboiled first-person manner, riding on a bus and noting the fat guy who got on at Dallas, "overflowed into my side of the seat, and for sound effect, he ate one apple after another." Jack (his character identified as Evan in the closing, but otherwise unidentified) moans about his lot, an actor on his way to Hollywood but with an "insignificant stock contract with short options and shorter dough." He has a spudnut when they stop, by the way. Mmmm, potato doughnuts. I'd like to try one someday.

Anyway, fat guy is arrested (leaving Jack/Evan's coat on the floor) and the plot finally moves, as does the bus, into El Paso! Standard radio gossipy woman talk about the man, with Bea Benaderet in faux-snob mode informing all and sundry that the man is a notorious counterfeiter. So it's pretty clear where this is leading now. Evan gets off and an El Paso bellhop (Jerry Hausner, aka Magoo's nephew Waldo and lots of baby cries, notably on I Love Lucy) suggests he spend the night at Juarez (mispronounced differently throughout, heard here as "Wha-Res"). Evan discovers "the dough" has been planted on him. Now stirred up and with nothing to do, he decides to go over into "War-Ez," taking a funny fifty with him. The Bagnis at least include tequilla and those vendors who come up to you with little dolls and the like.

Around this point, having tried to pass the bill at a dive called "El Serape" (!!), the sleazy American owner Chuck Rice (Tony Barrett) warns our hero "This is Bordertown," presaging Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson by several decades. We get some "Yeah yeah, sure sure" talk before Rice points Evan (via a cabby he calls "Mi-gell," in what sounds like a Judy Canova drawl) to the mysterious Nieves. He finds Nieves, a canny woman played by Jeanette Nolan (our second genuine fake Mexican!), after stumbling past pigs and chickens in front of a broken-down hacienda. (Geeze, these places went to pot once Zorro grew tired of defending them!) She wants no part in the dubious dinero but directs him to another possible buyer named.... O'Toole! O'Toole turns out to be "a handsome Chinese in a dinner jacket smoking a long black cigar," and played by British actor Ben Wright, who specialized in dialects and gives out with a slightly sub-Warner Oland accent. After the payoff, we delve into more intrigue, a seemingly sympathetic floozy (Bea again), mickey finns, "squint-eyed" thugs, and Bing Crosby, Burns and Allen, and Jean Hersholt as the beloved Dr. Christian! (Oh wait, that's a CBS promo).

Now Evan wakes up, having been pressganged (next to a mostly unconscious Mexican, that makes three; this one makes William Conrad groans and murmurs) after being rolled first. For the first time, we almost get into a realm which could easily have taken place in Juarez (then and now), though most such smuggling of unwilling persons goes the other direction. Here's Mexican number four, still outnumbered by los gringos y hombres de China: a fellow-sufferer named Gonzalez explains that this is what happens "when you fall drunk." The part is played, in drunken Spanglish, by Ted de Corsia, an old hand at Mexican accents who later appeared on TV's Zorro;though playing the stereotype of the drunken Latino, De Corsia does invest "muy feo" with proper pronunciation and feeling. They're taken to yank foreman Jake (Conrad again) who uses the captives as a road gang (thus saving the expense of actually hiring workers for Hensler Construction). The rest is mostly more narration and lead-up to the inevitable fugitive from a chain gang escape, Evan gets back to "Wore Ez" for some more tough talking and a fairly lame "twist." I should probably note here that I can't roll my r's properly and my Spanish pronunciation in general can be wonky at times, but even I can do better than that. It seems like nobody involved in this show had been anywhere near El Paso or Juarez, which isn't a surprise, but still jarring; a friend of mine has the same reaction whenever people speak alleged Russian on US sitcoms.

It's not the worst thing I've ever heard on radio, but if I never hear Jack Webb mispronounce Juarez again, I'll be happy. Also, as far as I can determine, men of Chinese-descent with Irish names have never been a significant underworld force in Juarez. Maybe I'm still miffed that nobody mentioned tamales, though.

Cigareets and Whiskey

Been a topsy-turvey holiday period (we got the tree up barely a week or so before, Mom fixed cookies just yesterday, we didn't even have a meal together), plus stress and such (though I finally submitted my chapter for the upcoming Kermit Culture anthology of Muppt essays to the editors). Anyway, we'll see if I can blog more in the coming year (certainly stockpiled plenty of subjects and images), maybe even take a stab at this here "daily blogging" fad.

For now, no cigareets, but have some whiskey:


I'm often fascinated by vintage advertising, especially pertaining to products where public perception has changed considerably in the intervening years. In this ad, which appeared in newspapers in November 1936, the first element that stood out, thanks to the text on the coin, is a very clear "Hey, prohibition ended three years ago! Yay for legal booze!" statement. Secondly, I don't trust "Silver Dollar" Brady in his pilgrim outfit and that unnerving grin, carving the turkey with a little too much zeal. He might be trustworthy sober, but no possible good can come from adding quantities of bourbon whiskey to the equation.

I did some further digging on this artifact. "Silver Dollar" Brady, real name Tom Brady, is not actually a pitchman created for the brand. He was a wealthy and reasonably high-profile (and colorful) Dallas racehorse owner and rodeo organizer. He earned his nickname through his passion for silver dollars, amassing a collection of same and, according to newspaper accounts, paying in same (and urging others to do likewise to increase their circulation over all that cumbersome paper money). Clearly Seagram's (the owner of the brand) saw a good thing and hired him as their public face (supposedly there was "79 years of whiskey making experience" behind the product, but I can't find anything on it prior to 1936, shortly before Brady came on board). In the whiskey ads, supposedly penned by Brady, he comes across as a low-rent, thirsty Will Rogers, dispensing homespun wisdom, dropped d's and g's, and of course liquor with equal equanimity.

As for the product, David Shea, an expert on such matters, tells me 90 proof provides "a pretty good kick in the pants."
In 1936 ads in this series, Brady compared Silver Dollar Whiskey to prize-fighters like "Gentleman" Jim Corbett: starts out nice and polite but then doles out a powerful punch. By the fall of 1937, the tactic had changed, focusing on affordability, history, and how it suits everybody." They were also tied to Rogers-esque subjects such as politicians and Congress. Don't worry your head about parties and elections and all that high-falutin' stuff, just get yerself a nice shot of Silver Dollar Whiskey! (Does that thing come in its own glass flask? Certainly what the bottle looks like to me.)

Silver Dollar Whiskey appears to be long gone, though Seagram's is still around.

Little Crib of Horace

One of the saddest fates that can befall a cartoon or comics character is when, in an attempt to revive a "franchise" or push merchandise or follow a trend, they are fundamentally altered, most often by just switching their ages. Juvenilization is seldom pretty, and it's often seen as a 1980s thing (Muppet Babies was quite the hit). As far as I'm aware, however, the earliest example, discounting one-shot cartoons where Bugs or Woody Woodpecker become babies or flashback, is Little Archie. The main reason Little Archie, at its best, holds up is because it had a kind of logical basis (even if it had to skip continuity issues and assume that Veronica has always lived in Riverdale), it added new characters, and frankly it was more open about the often harsh nature of childhood than the wholesome scrubbed teen Archie stories were (in particular, Archie and Jughead, the "good" guys, routinely joining Reggie to humiliate, exploit, or pummel picked-on classmate Ambrose).

These approaches generally homogenize characters and simplify their personalities. It hasn't died out, alas, as Baby Looney Tunes attests. It can become even weirder, however, when the characters in question have already been stripped of most or all of their gumption, as with Mickey Mouse in the 1980s, when the "Disney Babies" first surfaced. They still appear on and off, and serve only to fulfill a "Look how cute" function, in a world where the Disney Babies (actually called that in one book) have no discernible personalities whatsoever outside of being cute and nice and emotionally fragile.

And this was worse when they went beyond Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, et., in search of more characters. To wit, gaze at the image below:


At least Baby Horace retained his collar (this book, picked up for sixty cents, has Horace missing his blanket, but he's quickly comforted when his newfound daycare pals let him use the daycare's teddy bear. The end.) While revivals of Horace and Clarabelle are generally a good thing, this is just sad.

Moments ago, I took a closer look at the endpapers, however, and found this, which is even worse:


No doubt somewhere out there, they also have an infant Phantom Blot (the shy Blotty, who feels self-conscious because he looks different) or a Baby Scrooge (Booge?) who likes money only because it's shiny. Sheesh. (This is still less disturbing than that Baby Popeye image that circulated awhile back, though, with a teeny tiny Baby Baby Swea'pea hung around Baby Olive's neck).

"Horses and dogs were growing shaggy-haired like never before."

You know, 1960s films sometimes fascinate me. Mark Harris' book Pictures of a Revolution, focusing on 1967, is a good study in general, sort of summing up a time when TV was well established and the theatrical short was dying and the old studio system falling by the wayside. So movies tended to become either more experimental, more tradiitionalist, or pushed for more spectacle without quite succeeding. The "bigger is better" approach really showed in terms of those monster 1960s comedies (and their close cousins, the musicals): Cinemascope (introduced in the 1950s) had become a near standard and was used for most of these, running times grew out of control, huge casts, enormous stunt scenes, and plots which were "epic," or tried to be. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is the best known of these (and my least favorite), along with several Blake Edwards efforts, the infamous Casino Royale(a mess, but one which captivates), and things like Those Magnificent Men in Your Flying Machines(a kind of combination eic comedy qand quintessential 1960s Euro-American co-production with an "international all-star cast" and another favorite). These movies were big, loud, colorful, overstuffed, uneven, and seldom came in under two hours and tended to involve either disparate groups or disparate individuals competing or quarrelling for a McGuffin of some kind (a fortune, a racing prize, etc.). Anyway, last night I rewatched a personal fave which I hadn't re-examined critically in ages: The Hallelujah Trail (1965).

The Hallelujah Trail (or Trail as I shall probably shorten it for most of this post), like many of its brethren, was helmed not by a noted comedy director, but by John Sturges, the man who brought you The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven. The stirring score is by Sturges' old colleague Elmer Bernstein, the cinematography is majestic, and it's not just an epic comedy but a period Western too (I'm also a sucker for funny Westerns, and will write more about some others later on). There's a rousing jaunty title theme with a full chorus and lots of handclapping, an incredble roster of talent (including a slew of character actors), nice title caricatures of the stars, and later on, some grapic maps from DePatie Freleng, and the whole thing clocks in at a whopping two hours and 39 minutes (much of the flabby second half in particular needed reducing and a few laps around the gym). Top-billed is that unsung comic genius.... Burt Lancaster?! Well, not quite (and easily parallel to Spencer Tracy in It's a Mad, Mad World), but he mostly plays it straight and succeeds, having fun as the cigar comping, scowling, by the book cavalry veteran Thaddeus Gearhart (the character names are more Preston Sturges than John Sturges at times). And what's the driving element, the big McGuffin (which is not quite the Real McGuffin here, as it's a constant presence): Whiskey!

Radio great John Dehner provides voice-over narration (and translates several exchanges between Indian characters), moving deftly from pompous splendour and "Oh pioneer West" to wry, dry documentarian descriptions, and often finding himself at a loss to describe certain of the cruder or more absurd happenings or attitudes. As a kid, due to the tonal similarity, I actually confused Dehner in this (he's uncredited) with John "Mr. Slate" Stephenson! Anyway, the Frontier Gentleman, in his most dulcet tones, informs us that in the year 1867, panic grips the city of Denver.

The local miners, led by the always fun Dub Taylor, are worried since all the signs point to a long harsh winter, and in a matter of weeks, the city will be bone dry, with not a drop of booze anywhere. To remedy this, a massive shipment is ordered, to be rushed from the Wellingham Freighting company. Oowner Frank Wellingham, played by Brian Keith at his best and angriest, is a taxpayer and a good Republican (one of the better running gags in the film). Wellingham has his entire company tied up in the venture (40 wagons) and demands cavalry protection.

Of course, there are other conflicting interests: those pesky Injuns, of course. A very funny (and unusually brief) scene explains why only one tribe ran out, a band of Soux led by Chief Five Barrels (Robert J. Wilke from Sturges' The Magnificent Seven and Sirk's Written on the Wind). Wilke's task is basically to just "look Indian" and have a funny character name. More effective is Martin Landau in a mostly nonverbal role as the chief's sidekick, Walks Stooped Over (and of course, he does). Next we have a group of Irish teamsters, driving the precious cargo and threatening to strike (a subplot which never gels and mostly just adds to the running time.) The biggest threat comes from a mob of temperance ladies, led by Cora Templeton Massingale, played by a terrific Lee Remick as a charismatic, sexier ancestor of Carrie Nation (but just as determined and eager to destroy intoxicating spirits). The miners themselves later start out, anxious to see that their drinkables arrive. The positions of all parties are displayed on maps, with Dehner deftly doing his best to keep track of who was where and when (reaching a high point at the Battle of Whiskey Hills).


Absolutely priceless, and probably the aspect of the film which has worn best (outside of the narration from radio's Paladin) is Donald Pleasence. Pleasence was always a quirky screen presence, to say the least, and while he was in a few comedies, never this kind of comedy, nor this kind of role. He earned screen immortality in my young eyes as "Oracle" Jones, accurately described by Keith as a "sooth-saying sot": a revered trail scout who sees visions and portents of the future and the correct path... but only when suitably braced with whiskey With his bald head, red flannel underwear, and those blue eyes which conceivably *could* see into realms unknown to mere mortals, Pleasence's Oracle is a true oddball. Nearly all parties (save the temperance ladies) respect Oracle, either due to his experience, his visions, or possibly just his iron-cast liver. Whenever he takes a sip or a swig, a heavenly chorus sings "Hallelujah!" Pleasence bugs his eyes out before announcing "Now I see it!"

To Serve Man

Ah, cannibal jokes! They never get old! Or do they?

There was a period, from probably the 1920s through the early 70s or so, when cannibal jokes in cartoons and comics were commonplace. The cannibals were often tied to black stereotypes and wore skimpy native garb and had bones in their hair and so on. The best such can be enjoyed in the context of the time or because of the ingenuity of the artists involved; the Betty Boop entry I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You takes a basic cannibal situation and turns it into a brilliant fever dream, helped more than a little by the oddball inclusion of Louis Armstrong singing his famous jazz tune about wanting his wife's lover to drop dead. But in general, it seems to me that the "Look, it's a cannibal! Laugh!" era is dead, slightly outlasting the "Look, an Indian! Funny" and "Look, a black person eating watermelon" cliches.

One cartoonist continues to rely on them, though, in a way that isn't especially offensive racially or politically so much as it's just cliched, dull, poorly executed, and unfunny. The strip is Reality Check a one-panel Far Side/Bizarro rip-off which began in 1995.


It's one thing when newspapers continue to carry comic strips which are past their prime but were once genuinely funny and creative and inventive, and which still may have occasional flashes of either wit or insanity. It's another when a strip has *never* been amusing or well drawn. The "artist" may be a very nice person, but it amazes me that this strip is still fairly widely carried, when the artwork has always looked fairly amateurish (most webcomics these days are more appealing visually) and the jokes are either incomprehensible or cribbed from old Clean Jokes for Kids books or from Joe Miller's attic. For some reason, cannibals show up frequently in his strips (as do aliens, superheroes griping about their lives, Frankenstein, and the Pillsbury Doughboy, plus lots and lots of generic people and talking animals). Yet this past week, *every* daily strip was a cannibal "joke." Some involved old and very basic puns (some of which he's used before) about how some names or phrases used to describe people also apply to food. OH THE HILARITY!



Cannibalism humor doesn't have to be tasteful (ahem ahem), but it requires more than ancient puns or the sight of severed limbs. Too many of these strips involved randomly detached feet and hands, and the joke below doesn't even make any sense!


Now, to cleanse the palate, here's how Harvey tackled the subject. The connotations may have been somewhat unintended; the story is "Deliciously Disguised" from Little Dot in Dot-Land #43, in which Little Dot disguises herself as a rabbit, haystack, and tree, only to find that animals constantly wish to consume her edible-looking outfits. The capper comes with the arrival of Little Lotta:



So we learn that Little Lotta's appetite is so rapacious that the thought of consuming human flesh, even that of a close friend, does not disconcert her. Lotta was probably attempting a joke (a variation of the "I could eat a horse" cliche), but I can't help feeling that Dingly Dell has been spared a Lotta Rampage only due to the lack of giant sandwich bread and condiments. Little Dot, good for her, asserts her rights as a woman and an individual not to be devoured, and her righteous wrath propels her into the air. You go, girl!

Of Marmite and Marmalade

Well, after months out of action (due to depression and other issues), I'm taking yet another stab at this whole blog thing. I have a few more things planned (involving comics, movies, animation, radio, and yes, finally some things in Spanish).

So, for my return entry, I decided to tackle an interesting (or at least unusual) new take on one of my favorite characters: Paddington Bear. I loved Paddington as a kid. I loved the books, I ate marmalade sandwiches because of him (though I liked all orange byproducts anyway), but I especially loved the original British TV cartoons. The cartoons were produced by the UK outfit Filmfair in the 1970s, but I came to them on home video, released by Disney, in the early 80s (three specials from the 80s later made their way to video from HBO, who also put out Cosgrove-Hall's Wind in the Willows series and way too much Filmation). The Disney Video label at that time was releasing an assortment of European characters, also including SuperTed, Asterix, and Lucky Luke, and they also inexplicably put out the stop-motion Pogo for President (more on that one some other time).

The Paddington cartoons were wonderful, faithful adaptations of the book contents, which made sense since Michael Bond wrote each episode himself (he'd previously worked with FilmFair on two made-for-TV series called The Herbs and Parsley the Lion). Bond also wrote some new episodes. Ivor Wood designed and directed the series, and it could truly be called an early experiment in mixed-media TV aesthetics. Paddington was a stop-motion puppet, but without the Gumby clay look or the Rankin-Bass stiffness, he seemed like a teddy bear come to life. His world was a mostly drab cardboard cutout city, of the kind kids tend to make from pastboard and markers, and the human characters were all cut-outs. However, the people were animated frame by frame and drawn so it was like a mesh of traditional cel drawing in a three-dimensional world. The characters all had an inky, drawn look, with action lines remaining, which really fit. The early Paddington books in fact were illustrated in a considerably different manner (and as often as not, Paddington would be drawn sans dufflecoat early on), but later, Bond had Ivor Wood create some Paddington one-page cartoons and other books, especially the covers, followed that aesthetic.

The crowning touch was the soundtrack: a soft piano accompaniment and the voice of the late, great Sir Michael Hordern, a man who had a long film and stage career, but whose best work was perhaps voice-only. For BBC Radio, he played everything from Jeeves to Gandalf (though when you think about it, the gulf isn't that wide; "Gandalf, you know those orcish spats you so dissaproved of?") He was later in the Cosgrove-Hall Willows (as gruff Badger) and other animated productions, but Paddington represents his best work in the cartoon field. He was the sole voice, serving as narrator and loosely characterizing all the other roles: a certain innocence for Paddington, the throaty grumbling of Mr. Curry (raised to a bellow to shout "Bear!"), a gentle Hungarian accent for Mr. Gruber, and a Dame Edith Evans-esque falsetto for the formidable housekeeper Mrs. Bird.

Later, Hanna-Barbera got their clutches on Paddington for a new 2D syndicated series, tossing in an American cousin, with a horriblly loud theme song, and Charlie Adler as the voice of a mushmouthed Paddington, a portrayal that must have made Dick Van Dyke feel a lot better about himself. Though Mr. Curry was, fittingly, voiced by Tim Curry. I have little memory of this incarnation, which is just as well, and the more recent series from Cinar (though with authentic British actors) failed to attract my interest.

Well, as of last year or so, Paddington is back. His newest book, Paddington Here and Now (in which the bear falls afoul of immigration), came out in the states in May. But before that, he became the new TV face of Marmite. When I first heard of it, I assumed the product was a brand of marmalade. But no, it's a variation of Vegemite, a yeast-spread substance whose flavor is, ahem, an acquired taste. In fact, for several years now, Marmite has poked fun at that fact, with the slogan "You either love it or hate it."

So, someone got the clever idea to create a series of TV commercials for Marmite's squeeze bottles (in particular, encouraging folks to try it in sandwiches and not just on toast), so they picked Paddington. This raised a few hackles on both sides of the Atlantic, as Paddington's first commercial endorsement and seemingly a violation of his very character. But Paddington has never lived on marmalade alone (just like Cookie Monster, despite his name, has always eagerly consumed fruits, vegetables, hubcaps, and typewriters, to name a few). Bacon and eggs for breakfast, buns for elevenseses, birthday cake, soups, etc. So the basic idea of Paddington deciding to try Marmite and liking it (Darkest Peruvian bears have unusual tastes) made sense, and he was always given to whims and sudden enthusiasms.

So anyway, here's the first spot in the series, which apparently debuted in September '07 in the UK [Edit: okay, clip embedded now, thanks to Harry McCracken's reminder of how to do this]



The spots capture the look and feel of the original cartoons, even with the same theme music. Only the narrator has changed, with BBC radio personality Paul Vaughan replacing the late Hordern. The thrust of the gag is a little surprising, though it fits into the overall campaign concept: while Paddington likes Marmite, birds will gag on it and cause a chain reaction of chaos. The fact that the narrator points out "Paddington, who you'll remember from childhood" or some variation is a bit dismaying, but apparently the ad agency wanted that to more clearly position the ads as nostalgia spots aimed at adults, not kids.

Subsequent spots took the notion to further extremes, with Mr. Curry and others becoming visibly ill as a result. Actually, even that fits into Paddington canon; in Paddington Goes to the Movies, which was the first time I heard or saw any part of Singin' in the Rain, Paddy innocently makes toffee but uses a glue mix instead, and when he hands one to a gruff movie doorman, the gent appears to break several teeth! The ads also, however, seem to be part of a general trend in advertising, away from tact, euphemisms, and class and towards graphic images and blunt descriptions of what the product does or might do to you. Compared to many US spots, at least these spots are funny, well-made, and have a charm, even when gastric distress is involved. So, buy Marmite, which might make you sick, but hey, your sandwich will never be dull!