Willy Wrongka.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I hate Willy Wonka. I don't know why others like him so much. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory scared the hell out of me as child when we read it in second grade, and the Gene Wilder movie was even worse.

That new Wonka movie that came out last year seemed to make a pretty good bit of money ﹘ $511 million worldwide against a $125 million budget, according to Wikipedia, And yet Kellogg's went with O.G. Wonka on its Froot Loops tie-in. 

Why? Did Timothee make a separate deal with General Mills? 

Poor Post -- stuck with the Johnny Depp Wonka.

My wife thinks I'm nuts for disliking the Gene Wilder movie, but she didn't grow up being told she was a spoiled brat all the time. I was certain that if Wonka lured me into and trapped me in his awful factory, I'd wind up squirrel food, or drowned in chocolate, or turned into a giant cantaloupe, or suffer some other bizarre and cruel fate. And my parents would figure I had it coming. Well, he was a spoiled brat.

Nothing against Wilder, mind you, who did a great job in the movie, and most assuredly has had a great post-life career as Wonka in the wide world of memes. For example:

Wonka has gotten far removed in many ways from Dahl's conception, I guess. And yet, while I have heard word-banning idiots want to alter his text so they can continue to milk it for dough without offending anyone (except, I guess, oversensitive kids like I was), I suppose the books will be with us for some time. 

Author Roald Dahl made a fortune writing children's books, but I think he despised children. However, I think he despised adults more. He killed enough of them in his stories for grown-ups (although "Lamb to the Slaughter" seems to be the only one of those anyone reads anymore) and I suppose he killed a few of them IRL as a fighter pilot in the war. He won three Edgar Awards for his mystery stories, and hosted a show called Tales of the Unexpected, which ran in the US in syndication. It was an anthology show that featured adaptations of adult mystery and crime stories by him and other writers like Robert Bloch and Saki.  

A couple of years before he died, Kingsley Amis wrote his Memoirs, which in addition to telling his own story devoted chapters to various people including other writers. It was an excellent job of dumping a chamber pot over the heads of his fellows as he headed for the final curtain, very much in Amis style. Roald Dahl gets his own chapter--he had died in 1990, a year before Memoirs came out. 

Amis describes the fabulously wealthy Dahl descending in a helicopter at a Tom Stoppard house party in Iver. This was the 1970s, when Dahl's kids' books were at their hottest and he flush with Hollywood cash. It was the only time Amis recalls meeting the man. 

     "What you want to do," he said, "is write a children's book. That's where the money is today, believe me." ("Today," as I said, was quite some time back.)
     "I wouldn't know how to set about it."
     "Do you know what my advance was on my last one?" When he found I did not, in fact had no idea, he told me. It certainly sounded like a large sum. 
     "I couldn't do it," I told him again. "I don't think I enjoyed children's books much when I was a child myself. I've got no feeling for that kind of thing."
     "Never mind, the little bastards'd swallow it."
     Many times in these pages I have put in people's mouths approximations to what they said, what they might well have said, what they said at another time, and a few almost-outright inventions, but that last remark is verbatim.    

Seems like a long way from Dahl to Froot Loops, but frankly, I have found most British authors of the twentieth century to be rather Froot Loops in various ways. So maybe not such a stretch.

Just how laffy is Laffy Taffy?

Still getting through the last of the Halloween candy (thanks for not eating it all, you little brats) and I got to wondering about Wonka. I guess we've all had questions about Wonka over the years, like: How did Wonka run the only factory in England in the 1970s not completely overwhelmed by the unions? You know the Oompa Loompas weren't union.

Never mind that for now. What I was specifically wondering about was: What makes Laffy Taffy so laffy? And, in fact, IS Laffy Taffy really laffy? (And should it be Laughy Taughy?)

Let's have a look:

Okay, here's a Halloween fun-size type Sour Apple-flavored piece. Not too funny yet. But wait: In the upper right-hand corner of the package it says "Joke! In every wrapper!" Now we're getting somewhere! Let's check out the joke:

Two jokes! Or actually riddles. Okay, riddles can be funny. Well, not really. Maybe these will be. It looks like they were sent in by readers---Joe B. of Milwaukee and Kace L. of Grand Rapids. Whatcha got, kids? "What has a head, a tail, but no body?" and "What do you call an owl that has armor on?"

"A coin" and "a knight owl," respectively.

Nothing against the kids---these are about as funny as riddles get. Gollum and Bilbo weren't yukkin' it up telling riddles down there in the goblin tunnels. The only ones I ever laughed at were the pickle jokes, because they were so stupid ("What's green and robs stagecoaches? Billy the Pickle!"). Banana jokes, too: same reason. Hell, same jokes. ("What's yellow and robs stagecoaches?") So my hat is off to Joe B. of Milwaukee and Kace L. of Grand Rapids.

Maybe it's the taffy (or taughy) itself that contains the laughs. Here it is naked:

Kinda funny. Reminds me of me coming out of a shower into a cold bathroom. Never mind. Forget I said anything.

On the whole: Not very laffy, Mr. Wonka. Bazooka Joe is laughier. (At least its stupid cartoons used to have funny fortunes, like "You will never turn into a giant shoelace"---which was not only funny, it has proved thus far to be the most accurate prediction I have ever received.)

Someone's got to look into Wonka's operation. I think OSHA should investigate these Oompa Loompas, for one thing. They have no reputation for safety. There's probably a big sign on the factory floor that says THIS PLANT HAS WORKED [1] DAYS SINCE SOMEONE WAS TURNED INTO A GIANT BLUEBERRY.

And someone there is swiping a lot of the laffs, I'll bet.