A few days ago I was struggling to brush my teeth. My dominant hand is still partially paralyzed. The toothpaste kept rolling off the brush. When I was in marketing at Colgate Palmolive, one of my assignments was in oral care. I learned that the brushing action and flossing are actually more important than the product. Put another way, I remembered that a “little dab will do you.”
Suddenly, I became captive of an earworm from the past, with the jingle: “Brylcreem, a little dab ‘ll do ya!” burrowing into my ear. “Brylcreem, you look so debonair! Brylcreem, the girls will all pursue ya. They love to get their fingers in your hair.” That wasn’t a Colgate brand, but as it happens, another of my product assignments included Wildroot, which had its own jingle. “Get Wildroot Cream oil, Charlie! It keeps your hair in trim.” Now I had two competing earworms. And they were fighting for ear time with a jingle that’s all over TV that I can’t un-hear: “1-877-Kars-4-Kids.”
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 non-Colgate 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’s 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-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E! Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse. Come along and sing a song and join the jamboree!” Or “Happy 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.” “Where have all the flowers gone?”
Lots of pop songs from the past can become earworms. Who can forget “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock… Gonna rock around the clock tonight.” Or drift off to “Wake up, little Susie, wake up.” Meanwhile, we were “Wasting away in Margaritaville. Looking for my lost shaker of salt.” Notice that the pop songs that become earworms are seldom ballads. We aren’t meant to fall asleep while we’re being tormented.
More likely than not, your vintage earworms vary with the seasons. In the summer, songs by the Beach Boys blanket your brain; “Under the boardwalk” and “Surfin’ U.S.A.” Around the holidays, songs about Christmas, Santa Claus, and “Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer” have your ears ringing. Even in Spring, you’ll have “…Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail.”
By now you are probably being tormented by earworms of your own. I’d apologize for doing this to you, but misery loves company. The only advice I can offer you is to pass them on to someone else. Everyone must have a jingle lurking in their past, waiting to be set free. If not, give them one of your own. Or just remind them that a little dab will do them.
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