Geekscape Presents: The Top-10 Best Living Food Items
You, like me, have probably sat in front of an advertisement for, say, M&Ms, and marveled at the walking, talking candy gnomes that the company has used to market itself to the masses. You’ve likely had a similar thought process to this: Why does the candy want us to eat it? Does it have this weird, cannibalistic fetish? Does it have a tragic and gut-churning death wish that can only be sated when it’s being bodily eaten by a large creature? I appreciate the bright colors and goofy cartoon characters as much as the next arrested 9-year-old, but my imagination is, sadly, too vivid to let the following scenario go: I picture a horrific grand guingol scene, wherein a happy and hungry human, zombie-like, tears into the yielding candy shell for the disturbingly unprotesting candy monster, both of them moaning in sexual ecstasy, an orgy of death commencing in front of the pleased eyes of onlookers. It’s like that short film in “May,” where we see two young lovers making out, and casually devouring one another in romantic bliss.
Yes, advertisers and filmmakers have been anthropomorphizing food for decades and decades. Ever since the old fable of The Gingerbread Man, through the smiling ice-cream and candy creatures of the 1950s, through the talking strips of jerky and heroic strings of cheese of midday TV commercials, through ‘blogs like Food With Eyes (an amusing collection of photos that can be accessed here) all the way up to late-night programming on Cartoon Network, living, thinking food items have been crawling around our consciousnesses for our entire lives. Often they are disturbing, sometimes they are amusing, but they are always going to be our friends, and always going to entreat us to eat them.
With that nightmarish image leaving a sticky residue in your minds, let’s barrel forth into a countdown of the ten best living food items from popular culture.
10) The Fighting Foodons
from “Fighting Foodons” (2001 – 2002)
I have to admit, I haven’t seen a single episode of this show. It passed through the miasma of modern Saturday morning programming about a decade ago, lasting only 26 episodes, and vanished into obscurity, where it has remained ever since, only to be dragged out by talking-food obsessed weirdos like this author. This was a re-purposed anime series, originally called “Kakutou Ryouri Densetsu Bistro Recipe,” that was dubbed into English for the American market during a glut of anime re-purposing that was, even in 2001, still riding on the coattails of the success of Pokémon.
It was indeed about people training and sending monsters into an arena for one-on-one battle, but rather than the usual formula of superpowered animals, “Fighting Foodons” featured heroic chefs who, using the right spices and recipes, created magical food monsters that would breathe fire, or use swords to destroy one another. This is a batshit crazy premise that I wish I could have seen. I can only hope that some cynical hipster someday decides to make a big-budget Hollywood feature film of this odd little forgotten kid’s show a decade hence.
9) Food Fighters
from the Mattel toy line (1988)
Nothing more than a series of immobile PVC cartoon characters, all in the shapes of various food items with faces, the Food Fighters were probably one of the lamer attempts at creating a franchise that toy manufacturers released in the late 1980s, and they tried a lot (“Wheel Warriors” anyone?). They tried to create a whole mythos for these food beings, including various characters (like the Burgerdier General, Private Pizza, and Taco Terror to name a few), and some manufactured food war they were fighting. While the toys were well-designed, it was hard to get past the fact that you, even in your more imaginative childhood fantasies, were making junk food fight itself.
The only real notable thing about the Food Fighters were the TV commercials, wherein the food characters, using stop-motion animation, would walk, talk, banter and do battle. The commercials were careful to show kids playing with the actual toy products, and even contained the verbal disclaimer “Toys do not walk and talk!”, but I do remember seeing news reports of dismayed kids who felt duped by the ads; they expected the toys to walk around and talk like in the ads. Sorry kids, but I guess you never experienced the dissonance between a cheery package and its underwhelming insides. Call it the Sea Monkey syndrome.
8) Mayor McCheese, et al
from the McDonald’s “McDonaldland” ad campaign, 1971-1985
In the early 1970s, McDonalds restaurants transformed their popular drive-in restaurant designs into a homogenized sit-down eatery. They realized that their food was popular amongst kids, and began a multi-million-dollar ad campaign to reflect that. It was in 1963 that Ronald McDonalds, the friendly burger-hocking clown began to appear in the national consciousness, and marketing for kids would never be the same. The original concept wasn’t very ambitious, but by the early ’70s, the clown had expanded. More than having a clown stand out front, entreating children to eat salty, bland burgers, McDonalds created an entire alternate dimension, ruled by big-headed food monsters, policed by Officer Big Mac, populated brightly-colored children made of french fries, and overseen by the gregarious Mayor McCheese. We also remember, it is likely, the weird purple monster, the bird, the obnoxious Hamburglar, and all the rest. Now reflect on how much of your imagination has been destroyed by these horrific monsters.
Here’s an interesting pop culture footnote: In 1971, McDonald’s approached Sid and Marty Krofft, of “H.R. Pufnstuf” fame, to license the Pufnstuf character for marketing purposes. The Kroffts refused, and McDonald’s went ahead with with McDonald land campaign instead, which, as can easily be seen, very strongly resembles “H.R. Pufnstuf;” big-headed puppet monsters Mayor McCheese looked almost identical to the mayor H.R. Pufnstuf. The Kroffts ended up suing the restaurant chain for ripping off their idea, and, after years of legal battles, McDonald’s settled with the Kroffts in 1977, giving them a million dollars. If you’re wondering why some of the canonical characters from McDonaldland never appear in the ads anymore, that would be why.
7) Twinkie the Kid, et al
from the Hostess ad campaign, c. 1973
These food people, as far as I know, never appeared on TV (apart from snarky references on “Family Guy”), being relegated to that magic place of the in-comicbook comics, wherein Spider-Man would take a breather for a page or two, and you’d have a self-contained, one-page mini-story about a brave Twinkie sheriff or a mystical Fruit Pie magician fighting off some imaginary assailant, and blessing a group of onlooking children with the gift of Hostess pastry products. I liked to think that a human-sized Fruit Pie was, by handing out regular-sized Fruit Pies to children, actually distributing its own eggs. Later in the day, surely the Fruit Pie eggs would incubate in the warm abdomens of the tow-headed children who ate them earlier, only to hatch, and burst forth, like the creature in “Alien,” out of the children’s abdomens. Am I the only one who had this fantasy?
There were only a few extant characters I clearly recall. There was Twinkie the Kid, the town sheriff. Fruit Pie the Magician, the ultimate showman, and Captain Cupcake, with a Colonel Blimp mustache and the coily ribbon of frosting down his chest. That these characters were rarely seen in action only added to their mystique. I prefer to imagine that they were capable of a lot.
Incidentally, “Twinkie the Kid” and “Fruit Pie the Magician” are dandy nicknames for your lovers’ genitals.
6) The Singing Burger
from “Better Off Dead…” (1985)
Lane Meyer (John Cusack) is depressed because his girlfriend left him. His little brother seems better at picking up sleazy women than he is, and his family can only console him wit lame advice, and horrible food. His job sucks, too, as he has to wear a demeaning pig snout, and sling rancid-looking burgers for a tyrannical boss. Savage Steve Holland’s 1985 cult hit plays like a typical teenage comedy after drinking way too much soda way too late at night. It tips from the clichéd teen archetypes into an alternate world of slapstick surreality. It’s also very sweet, mind you, but is probably more beloved for how weird it is.
And in a movie that’s already kind of strange, Holland, in an utterly bugnuts decision, features Lane, in a fit of escapism, briefly hallucinating that his work burgers are dancing and singing to him. A 10-lb. Frankenstein burger, with nightmarish eyeballs, leaps up from its work bench, grabs a nearby burger-sized guitar, and begins wailing loudly to Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some.” Lane smirks oddly, and the audience claps along in strained incredulity. In a movie that’s already dangerously close to surrealism, this scene pushes us over the edge. What an awesome burger. Don’t you wish your minimum-wage job food sprang to life to sing obscene hair metal at you? I do.
5) The Talking Sandwich
from “The State” (1993-1995)
I’ve talked about the glories of MTV’s “The State” in the pages of Geekscape before, so I won’t bother reiterating too much, only to say that it was probably one of the funniest sketch comedy shows pretty much ever produced. It combination of MTV-hipster-skewers, knowing satire, and forthright absurdism gave it a weird quality that marked it both as a) definitely a relic of the 1990s, and b) simultaneously a timeless show for the ages. Each of the cast members has moved on to other sketch comedy shows and feature films since, but none of their subsequent pieces could match the magic.
One of the markers of the magic was an interim performer who only ever provided link material. I refer, of course, to the talking sandwich. The sandwich was, well, just a sandwich, complete with thrift store googly eyes, and some pretty good puppetry. It would speak in a laidback, unaffected voice, and often claim that it was just there to fill some time until the cast was ready to do the next sketch. It was as if the sandwich was an uncredited member of the troupe who only rarely got to perform on camera. Heck, the sandwich had about as much screentime as Michael Patrick Jann. What a nifty sandwich. I can relate to it.
4) The Gingerbread Man
from “Hansel and Gretel” (1982)
In 1982, quirky proto-Goth Tim Burton was still firmly ensconced at Disney, where he was quickly growing a resentment for the company’s unfortunate tendency to squelch the creativity of the individual artist in favor of the overall Disney aesthetic. This general attitude, however, didn’t stop him from making one of the company’s most disturbing and oddball 30-minute specials to come out of the “The Wonderful World of Disney” camp. Burton directed a version of the old fable Hansel and Gretel, which bore the visual cartoonishness that would come to mark his later works, and featured a pair of Japanese actors as the title characters, and a scenery-chewing (sometimes literally) and cross-dressing Michael Yama as both the wicked stepmother and evil witch, who had a candy cane for a nose.
When Hansel and Gretel are in the clutches of the evil witch, held prisoner in her pastry house, they are, as we all know, overfed with sweet, but in this version, the sweets come mostly in the form of brightly colored frosting that pours, pus-like from the walls. At one point, Hansel is sucked into a secret underground antechamber, and is tormented by a mean-spirited little gingerbread man, who mocks him and laughs at him, and emotionally abuses him for not committing the very natural act of gingerbread man cannibalism. The gingerbread man had a few expressions, and they’re all fucking creepy.
This special is no available on home video (which is kind of understandable, given how unsettling it is), but you can see it at the Tim Burton art exhibit at LACMA through Halloween. If you’re going to be in L.A., it’s worth the trip.
3) The California Raisins
From the California Raisins Advisory Board ad campaign (1986)
It’s odd that such a successful and ubiquitous marketing campaign should come from something as common and as innocuous as raisins, but the popular brand of ads – featuring animated raisins singing and dancing to Marvin Gaye’s famous “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” – reached a height of popularity previously untold for a simple food product. The campaign was so popular, in fact, that toys and records began to hit markets to feature the anthropomorphized little buggers, which was the first time, mind you, that this had happened for any ad campaign. Forget the recent days when Baby Bob can warrant a short-lived sitcom. The raisins were the first ship in those waters.
The raisins themselves actually looked really cool. They were designed and animated by Will Vinton’s famous Claymation studio, and they were all animated in an expressive and dynamic way, which made them all look like sweaty soul singers from the 1970s. Indeed, they’re wrinkle, purple skin and egg-shaped bodies started to drift from a definite raisin shape after a while, until they were just another vague cartoon character in the pop culture firmament. I was always fond of Will Vinton’s Claymation growing up, so I was especially entranced by the TV commercials with the raisins in them.
2) The Aqua Teen Hunger Force
From “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” (2000 – present)
While it’s already pretty absurd to animate and give personality to a food item as it is, the warped minds behind “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” did absurdity one better, by making a sitcom spoof featuring a talking meatball (named Meatwad), a talking order of French fries (named Frylock), and a talking Styrofoam cup full of milkshake (named Master Shake), and never called attention to the fact that these characters were food at all. Aside from the details that Meatwad slept on a grill, the three characters were essentially weird, callow, kleptomaniac losers, and the fact that they were food was only an absurd visual pun that carried the show to dizzying heights of weirdness. It’s likely many readers of this article have seen late-night reruns of the show, perhaps in an altered state of mind, and blissed out to the hilarious, dumb exercise in Dada television.
They do not live underwater, I don’t think they’re teens, and while they do have an unknown source of cash, some vague superpowers (Frylock can use his fries as radar), they’re hardly a “force.” It’s like the creators of the show pitched an anthropomorphic food ad campaign to a fast food restaurant, and were rejected, and, in their bitterness, kept the same characters alive, albeit in slack-jawed asshole form, in their new show. They folded pop culture in on itself with this one.
1) The Blancmange
From “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”(1969 – 1974)
On the planet of Skyron, in the galaxy of Andromeda, something foul is afoot. We don’t know what they’re up to, but the aliens on this world have been using a superpowered ray to transform all the world’s British people into Scotsman; they grow red bears, kilts appear on their bodies, and they become incredibly stupid. They also lose their ability to play tennis. And, as we all know, Scots are dangerously bad at playing tennis. And what to make of the sightings of gigantic, man-eating blancmanges stalking the British countryside by night, quietly devouring the populace? What could they be up to?
They mean to win Wimbledon.
The giant, man-eating blancmange is a particularly strange invention from the Monty Python boys, known for their strange inventions. It comes from one of their early episodes which was one of their odd, one-off episode (the episode was devoted, largely, to a single sketch, rather than their usual variety). I can’t imagine what they boys wrote on their request slip to the BBC costume department,but they got something special. Watching the large, goopy blancmange lumber about a tennis court is a marvel to behold, and a hugely funny sight.
A blancmange, by the way, is a gelatin-like desert, similar to flan, and flavored of almonds.
Witney Seibold is a gigantic living cheesewheel living in an enchanted castle perched precariously on top of the Seattle Space Needle. He leaves his home at night to fight crime, collect weird movies on VHS, and train his secret army of lobster minions. He owns a wicked collection of celebrity dentures, and can mend your pants like the Dickens. He has his own movie review ‘blog called Three Cheers for Darkened Years! where you can read nearly 900 of his published articles to date. He is the ersatz film professor of Crave Online’s Free Film School, where he walks you through obscure corners of the cinema world, but in an education context, and nothing like the weirdness you just read through. He is also half the voice of The B-Movies Podcast, also for Crave Online, wherein he talks about movies on a weekly basis with William Bibbiani. Read the ‘blog, learn the lessons, and subscribe to the podcast, because his little cheesewheel heart needs the validation.
