Picture a tribe of cartoon Indians, complete with beating drums that are reminiscent of the sound of the old Hamms commercials, but the beat is faster. Upbeat you might say.
Welches Grapelade Jelly, wow!
Fruit of the vine,
um boy and how!
Woo woo Welches!
Woo woo Welches
This catchy bit of drivel resurfaces in the ear canal of my mind ever few months. That this happens 45 or 50 years after I heard it is a testimony to the power of those ancient jingles. Why, I can even discern what I’m supposed to buy from it.
By comparison, many of my favorite current commercials give me scant clue as to what is being sold. I’d appreciate nobody spilling this secret because some of them are truly entertaining.
I have a final observation about the Welches jingle. It probably could not be done today, for the same reasoning as to why the Frito Bandito is gone, and West-coast Stanford’s mascot has been changed to a Cardinal – a bird of the East coast, by the way. I’m probably in PC violation myself by using the I-word in the first sentence of this piece. Lest you misunderstand, I’m a liberal person, but I think much PC policing is over the top.
-Ed Mauget