So I am uploading dozens of shirts per week now, and am really falling behind on my descriptions. I am going to commit to doing at least one per day from now on, but since I have such a selection to go for I feel like I can be more discriminating as to which ones I am going to work with. I will try to stick with shirts that catch my imagination and give me an idea of what I can be clever with. You know, quality over quantity.

So King Ding Dong seems like a pretty obvious choice. I am going to spare us all the pain of hitting any of the obvious sexual innuendos that come to the surface early like the scum on the surface of a swampy pond. Instead, I am going to have some laughs talking about the big Ding Dong/Ring Ding feud that went on from 1967 until 1998. That's 31 years. Apparently Ring Ding was a similar confection that had limited distribution in the country and was released before Ding Dongs. In areas where they were butting heads with the powerful Ring Ding cartel Hostess called their treats King Dons, which was also the name for King Ding Dong in those areas. These days Ring Ding is pretty much gone from the fields and the name Ding Dong reigns supreme, although for some reason they still use the name King Dons in Canada. Not sure why, although like most mysteries north of the border I suppose it could be answered with the statement "Hey, it's Canada."

I found a video of an original King Ding Dong commercial which features some of the worst animation I have ever seen. Seriously, Steamboat Willie was better drawn and animated. I said I wasn't going to get into the obvious and creepy innuendos, but I have to say I laughed out loud when the one kid said "Look at all the Ding Dongs!" I guess I just have a junior high school mentality. That whole commercial had a couple lines and images that tread on the creepier side of the room, if you know what I mean.

Wow this is a weird one.  I was looking for an image of a fanboy dressed as King Ding Dong and come across this fail image:



The strange thing about that image is, during the course of what I laughingly call my career at one point I had a full time job as a inline skate instructor. No joke. I'd go to different towns and areas in Los Angeles county and teach between 5 and 30 people how to skate and, more importantly, how to stop. I had a weekly class in Hermosa Beach, yet another of the 500,000,000 dopey little California beach towns I have had to stomach during my life of hating the surf industry (did I start off hating surfing and therefore beach towns, or did I learn to hate surf culture and by extension surf towns? It is a conundrum). Anyway, the only two cool things Hermosa had was a ton of hot girls in bikinis and, for some reason, an Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile. I guess the guy who drove it lived nearby. I would see it parked on the beach, or on a street in front of a 7-11, or wherever. It is like 14th on my list of dream vehicles I would love to have, but it is on my list.

Oof. I just refined my search for a King Ding Dong costume and ended up with some really disturbing images. Some people really have too much free time. If you are looking for a cool costume to do for Comic Con I don't think you could get more obscure and unusual that King Ding Dong, and I promise to post your image up here on this site. I think Twinkie the Kid would work well too.

Wow. I'm pulling up nothing. Any search with the term Ding Dong in it gets a bunch of weird celebrity sites and/or creepier stuff. Even searching for King Don ends up getting me a bunch of stuff for boxing and hair icon Don King.

I did find this kind of interesting taste test comparison between King Don, Ring Dings, and something called Devil Squares done by celebrity judges Sir Snackalot, Figaroo, Paddy O'Poppycock, and Kid Nougat.  Good to know there are qualified researchers working on this stuff.

Dave
May 22nd, 2011