Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 18!
In this edition of Five Retro TV Commercials, you’ll see everything from old pizza to old action figures to old cough drops. That’s my pitch.
Pizza Hut’s “Great White” Pizza! (1993)
I’m low-key obsessed with Pizza Hut’s discontinued specialty pies. By “low-key” I mean I’ve written songs about them.
There rarely seemed to be any strong impetus. Pizza Hut would just throw a bunch of shit at the dough and figure out a theme later. Good for them. I never pencil before I ink, either.
Everything about this particular pizza sounds amazing. Correlating it with Jaws might seem as if Pizza Hut was making mountains out of molehills, but I prefer to think of it as making Great Whites out of Gruyère.
FYI: The four-cheese Great White was sold at the same time as Pizza Hut’s more famous Bigfoot Pizza, which was like 42 feet long and I guess covered with fur. Just imagine calling a pizzeria to order a shark and a Sasquatch and ACTUALLY GETTING THEM. Read More…
The Purple Stuff’s Sharkstravaganza!
I love sharks, you love sharks, everybody loves sharks. Let’s spend the whole day obsessing over sharks!
The Purple Stuff Podcast has finally returned, thanks to the peeps who demanded it with pitchforked pleas. (And we appreciate that — you guys rule.)
This week, me and Jay from The Sexy Armpit spend one full hour talking about SHARKS. It’s our sharkstravaganza, covering everything from Shark Bites fruit snacks to Skeletor’s Land Shark. Pretty sure we dish about Jaws: The Revenge in here, too.
Many thanks to everyone for not giving up on the show during its hiatus. Listen to the new episode by clicking the giant, ugly play button down below!
You can also download this week’s episode by right-clicking here.
Hope you enjoy! Read More…
Six Delicious Facts about Hawaiian Punch.
Hey, how ‘bout a nice Hawaiian Punch?
I love Hawaiian Punch. Everyone does. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying.
As a kid, I adored those huge canisters of the powdered mix. As I recall, Hawaiian Punch’s mixes came sugared, so while trying to eat “raw” Kool-Aid would leave you puckering, Hawaiian Punch’s powder was like naked Fun Dip. So good!
Drinking it always felt like such a big occasion. I’d savor each sip like a good wine. Sometimes I’d pretend it was energon and do my bad Soundwave impression once I finished. Life was better, then. I still had Snake Mountain.
Below are six delicious facts about Hawaiian Punch. I don’t know why I’m writing this.
Hawaiian Punch was born as an ice cream topping!
As the story goes, Hawaiian Punch was invented by three guys in a garage as an ice cream topping. Sold as Leo’s Hawaiian Punch, the syrupy goop became a popular condiment at certain 1930s ice cream parlors.
Eventually, kids realized that they liked Leo’s Hawaiian Punch even better when they mixed it with plain water. The parlor owners took note and started offering it that way, usually as a lure to get kids to buy their more expensive ice cream. (Meaning that they wouldn’t sell glasses of Hawaiian Punch directly, but would make you a glass if you ordered two scoops of vanilla first.)
Incredibly, it wasn’t until 1946 — more than ten years after Hawaiian Punch’s debut — that it was finally marketed as a beverage. Read More…
Zima is back for the summer of 2017!
Zima is back, baby.
From now through the end of summer, you can find six-packs of Zima — yes, honest-to-goodness original Zima — wherever bottles of happy juice are sold.
The “clearmalt” beverage debuted in 1993 and was immediately popular, thanks to a look and taste that were altogether novel at that time. In Zima’s heyday, there wasn’t much else like it.
I was not legally old enough to drink Zima during its best years, but that didn’t stop me. I was just entering high school when it hit stores, and the drink seemed tailor-made for kids who wanted to experiment with alcohol but hadn’t yet developed any sincere taste for it. Read More…