You Can’t Make i t up: Chapter i ii

trails to you, until we meet again.

Happy trails to you, keep smiling until then.” I had such a crush on Roy Rogers! Also on Robin Hood. But he didn’t have a theme song.

How about other entertainment. “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks. I don’t care if I never get back.” Or the iconic “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid.” Then there are all those classic folk songs that get stuck on repeat whenever you hear them. “If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning.”

“ Brylcreem, a little dab

‘ll do ya!

If that weren’t bad enough, when I cut the banana onto my cereal, I saw that it had a Chiquita sticker on it. I didn’t even try to suppress that classic ditty. What was worse, I started to remember additional popular jingles from the past, starting with other Colgate products. “Use Ajax, the foaming cleanser. B-b-boom. Floats the dirt right down the drain.” Then I moved on to nonColgate ones. “Mr. Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute. Mr. Clean will clean your whole house and everything that’s in it.” I wish.

Fortunately, not every brand I worked on in my ten years in marketing there had a jingle. But that didn’t stop my tumble down the rabbit hole of earworm memories.

Colgate marketed Hebrew National hot dogs, but “I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener” is what got stuck in my ear. And I don’t even like hot dogs. After eating one, I’d probably need Alka-Seltzer: “Plop plop fizz fizz. Oh, what a relief it is.” (Except when it has become an earworm.)

Not all of these jingles are tied to products. Some come to us from TV shows, especially ones from our youth. “It’s Howdy Doody time; it’s Howdy Doody time… It’s time to start the show; so kids, let’s go!” Or how about the still popular: “M-IC-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E! Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse. Come along and sing a song and join the jamboree!” Or “Happy