Jolly Green Giant in a dickie

The Jolly Green Giant was always the most ambiguous and slightly threatening of the tinned food mascots. Tilt your head and squint and this is a cruel titan who's toying with the mortals at his dinner table before turning them loose for the Wild Hunt. Plus: Mexicorn!

Mexicorn!

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: ad • Food • not food • Old school • wide

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Wisconsin Platt

Nice of him to wear a Sombrero on the Mexicorn can.
- Shibi_SF
  
  Mexicorn has always been my favorite “flavor” of canned corn. (It’s tasty and I like the cultural enrichment on the label!)
smallteam

Jolly Green Giant 2012
http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

It was at about this time that the decision was made (for TV ads) to just let the giant stand (specifically, to not walk) and ho ho ho, as not to trample the villagers. And then the little green sprout was created to get things moving again.
Guest

Hello cannibalism!
lknope

Dickie? I bet that family is just grateful for the large napkin covering the Green Giant’s lap. That’s a mighty short toga.
- rattypilgrim
  
  Actually, I think the napkin isn’t quite draped properly to do the job hence Mom’s admiring gaze. She’s thinking “they don’t call you Green Giant for nothing”.
  - Halloween Jack
    
    That’s when Mom developed a taste for cucumbers.
teknocholer

“Special ways of making rich earth richer…”
OK, I want that explained before I buy another can.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  If someone wrote that today, I’d say they were doing something interesting with compost.
  At the time from which I assume this ad originates, I’m guessing we’re talking synthetic fertilizers. ”Making the rich earth richer” could mean dumping a pile of urea on it.
- Culturedropout
  
  Well, he’s gotta take those Jolly Green Dumps somewhere, doesn’t he? And I’ll bet there’s corn in it…
grimc

“What’s for dessert? Funny you should ask, Billy…”
http://www.jimdraws.com Thorzdad

That’s not a dickie.
That’s a formal board front and collar, normally worn with a dress shirt. Way back in the day, shirts came collarless. Men actually wore separate, starched collars. For formal occasions, the collar was joined with a starched board front, which gave a flat, un-wrinkled look under a tuxedo or formal attire.

If you ever watch old cartoons where a character pulls on the front of another character’s shirt, and the front of the shirt suddenly rolls-up like a window shade, this is the sort of attire the gag is lampooning.
t3kna2007

After striking out on Pollux VI, Apollo tries again in a different setting.

Him: “You will gather laurel leaves! Light the ancient fires! Kill a deer! Make your sacrifices to me! Apollo has spoken!!”
Them: …
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: The Pagan Years.
mesocosm

That one Green Giant spot has been a real monkey on my back. I’ll tell you one thing: If they ever ask you to put on a pair of green tights, no matter how much they offer you, you just walk away. Walk away.
http://libraries.unl.edu dross1260

Jolly Soylent Green
Mujokan

The most interesting thing about this pic is that you used to be able to move product on the conceit of being “high class”. As opposed to just “rich”.
vonbobo

Look at those GREAT BIG TENDER SWEET PEAS! Just look at em’!
Antinous / Moderator

I’d pay good money for some JGG porn. It’s too bad nobody thought of it while Ted Cassidy was still alive.
- Halloween Jack
  
  Oddly enough, the Rule 34 site is bereft of JGG porn, probably because it’s an older ad series. (The site does feature dirty versions of various ad characters; there’s a whole bunch with Progressive Flo getting it on with Erin Esurance, for example.)
jimh

Always keep a huge fork around, just in case Mr. Popular drops by.
Donald Petersen

What a world. Crystal stemware, tuxedoes, diamonds, fine table linens, silver candlesticks… and canned peas & Niblets for dinner. Probably washed down with Bubble-Up.
Layne

They are plying him with alcohol so as to get him good and roaring drunk.

Then, and only then, they can blind him with the sharpened stick and escape from his house of death by clinging tightly to the undersides of his sheep…
hogan

ho ho ho green giant! i grew up that jingle on the TV between wild wild west and the jetsons.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

I love their depiction of the typical family. A perimenopausal woman got herself a much younger man as a husband. They had a son who is now 13 and her hubby is in his mid to late thirties while she is nearing sixty.

Not a criticism. Wish it had happened to me.
- maryn
  
  No, see, it happened like this: That’s the rich matriarch. Her son scandalized her by falling in love with the housekeeper’s beautiful but low-class daughter. But she died in childbirth, depriving her son of a mother and the household of a cook, hence the canned food. Also, given the look passing between the guy and the Giant, Sonny is suddenly reframing his sexuality, and Mumsy is secretly relieved.
http://repeaterband.com skeletoncityrepeater

They still make Mexicorn, it’s good for what it is.. In my opinion, corn is one of the few things that tastes good from a can.
TheMudshark

Guess who´s going to finish ALL of their veggies this evening.
http://twitter.com/MagicTony Tony Barnhart

Fun Jolly Green Giant fact: The guy who voiced the Jolly Green Giant was also the bass in a group called “Singers Unlimited.” http://www.singers.com/group/Singers-Unlimited/
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GVKHNINUD55NXFN4TRNHMBRDB4 Alexandros

I love Mexicorn! Cooc some rice and mix it with Mexicorn and you have an awesome side dish!
Frank Diekman

He’s got his ascot and his dickie.
Frank Diekman

(Horror movie trailer voice) “Tonight – there will be no leftovers.”