Jolly Green Giant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Jolly Green Giant is a symbol of the Green Giant food company of the United States, appearing as a smiling green-skinned giant wearing a tunic, wreath and boots made of leaves. In 1973, JGG teamed up with "Little Green Sprout", the diminutive young green giant. Created by Leo Burnett, the Giant first appeared in advertisements in 1928; the name originally came from a variety of unusually large pea called the "Green Giant" that the company canned and sold.
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[edit] Pop culture
- The mascot became so well-known that the name came to be used for other sorts of things that were large and green in color.
- The CH-3 and HH-3 rescue helicopters the United States Air Force used during the Vietnam War were called Jolly Green Giants and the larger HH-53 helicopter received the nickname "Super Jolly Green Giant."
- The green superhero monster, The Incredible Hulk, is often described in jest as "The Not-So-Jolly Green Giant."
- In 1978, the town of Blue Earth, Minnesota, paid $43,000 to erect a 55-foot (16.8 m) fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant to commemorate the linking of the east and west sections of Interstate 90. It was permanently erected on July 6, 1979.
- There is a large billboard of the Green Giant in Le Sueur, Minnesota, with the Green Giant's companion Little Green Sprout (though trees are in the way).
- In an oft-replayed bit from The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson is dressed as the "Little Green Sprout" and is standing between the lower legs of the Giant. He looks up and says, in his "Art Fern" voice, "Ho-ho-ho, Jolly Green Giant! Show us your Niblets!" whereupon he is showered with gigantic kernels of corn. He then looks up and mouths an obscenity at the Giant while the audience roars.
- In the film Full Metal Jacket Crazy Earl says, "We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns."
- The giant was the subject of several questions on the popular 1970s game show Match Game.
- In the film Demolition Man the green giant gets mentioned in a song sung in a Taco Bell restaurant.
- The Kingsmen, the Royal Guardsmen, and several other groups recorded songs titled The Jolly Green Giant.
[edit] Portrayal
Len Dresslar, born 1925, provided the voice of the Jolly Green giant in television commercials, saying only "Ho, ho, ho."[1] Dresslar was also a successful as a jazz and popular music singer in Chicagoland entertainment circles. Despite being over 6ft (1.82m) tall, Dresslar never portrayed the Giant in TV commercials. The figure viewers saw on screen was Keith Wegeman, an Olympic ski jumper and father of soap opera actress Katherine Kelly Lang from The Bold and the Beautiful.
[edit] References
- ^ Washington Times, October 25, 2005.
[edit] External links
- History of Green Giant
- Lyrics and more info on the song
- Jolly Green Association for Jolly Green Giant pilots and crewmembers
