Category:
Clowns

Sugar Rice Krinkles

You will of course detest the word "krinkles" by the end of this commercial, especially since it's pronounced "kuh-rinkles."

Posted By: Paul - Sun Sep 04, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Clowns, Advertising, Cereal, 1960s

Glurpo the Underwater Clown

The aquatic jester's exact origins are also a little mysterious. Perhaps the idea for Glurpo came to Aquarena Springs's owner and developer, Paul Rogers, in a dream...

According to Maggie Younger, 91, who helped develop the show with Rogers and her then-husband Don Russell, Glurpo was created because "it seemed like clowns would be an interesting and entertaining element to enhance the underwater ballets."

More info: Texas Monthly



Posted By: Alex - Fri Apr 08, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Clowns

Relax With My Horns

Not an album for those suffering from coulrophobia.

Info from mps-music.com:

Recorded in 1966, Relax With My Horns and Vision are companion albums set in trio. [Hans] Koller shares some of the compositional and arrangement work with Viennese Hans Rettenbacher, who was one of the most sought after bassists on the European scene, as his work with the likes of Eric Dolphy and Don Ellis can attest.



Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 03, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Clowns, Music, 1960s

Cho-Cho the Health Clown


Cho-Cho was a "health clown" who toured the USA during the 1920s, visiting classrooms, and trying to encourage kids to eat more vegetables, take baths, and brush their teeth. In a way, he was like the opposite of Ronald McDonald (Ronald being a clown who encourages children to eat junk food).

CHO stood for "Child Health Organization," which was the group that dreamed him up and sent him out. Some more info from the book Children’s Health Issues in Historical Perspective:

The clown Cho-Cho was trained to "teach health, sugar coated with all the nonsense and fun of the sawdust ring." The Health Fairy, a public health nurse, told "delightful stories," and a cartoonist drew "a white loaf of bread into a sour-faced boy,... a brown loaf into a round-faced smiling boy," and "vegetables weeping great tears because children do not eat them."

All three travelled to elementary and secondary schools, as well as exhibitions, fairs, and "any place where children were gathered together. A less traditional figure was CHO's pseudo-professor Happy (played by Clifford Goldsmith), who entertained child and adult audiences with snappy health maxims.

Happy, the Health Fairy, and the cartoonist worked well within the boundaries of CHO's program, but when the clown who played Cho-Cho began to regard himself "as a real authority on diet, hygiene, and even the morals of childhood," and deviated from his "carefully learned lines," the organization had to find a new Cho-Cho.


Popular Science Monthly - Feb 1920

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 22, 2018 - Comments (2)
Category: Clowns, Health, 1920s

Frontier Circus




In 1962, variations on the popular Western genre reached new and unlikely permutations.

Wikipedia entry here.

Posted By: Paul - Sat May 13, 2017 - Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Clowns, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Regionalism, Television, 1960s

When the Circus Comes to Town



I have no idea of the provenance of this half-hour compilation. Shown at cinemas before the main feature? Whatever the case, it has everything. Cornball music, girly cheesecake, animated cartoon, stop-motion cartoon, narration by a chimp. Also, the highly disturbing image reproduced below. Somehow I feel it relates to the "horse fondling" theme of yesterday.

image

Posted By: Paul - Wed Sep 16, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Clowns, Dreams and Nightmares, Music, Sex Symbols, Cartoons, Stop-motion Animation, 1940s

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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