I wonder if KFC’s parent company gets $$ every time a comic uses its brand name? Talk about product placement!
No. Why would they?
I was being facetious – it just seems that KFC has been in the comics quite frequently lately.
I know that “pullover” and “cardigan” are sweaters, and the driver is referring to being “pulled over,” but I don’t get the cop’s statement.
beckoningchasm, The cop’s statement can make sense, in the context of the driver’s very unlikely question. The driver is asking “[Did you want for me to] pull over?” but it seems he has already done so and has no reason to ask. The cop misunderstands that as using the sweater sense, where it is still a very unlikely thing for the driver to be asking: “[Is my sweater a] pullover?]” . Given all this implausibility, there is by now a basis for the cop to answer that sweater question, correcting the driver since his sweater is indeed more like a cardigan than a pullover. (The distinction is that a cardigan will open fully in the front, and can be closed by buttons or nowadays often a zipper.)
“I know that “pullover” and “cardigan” are sweaters, and the driver is referring to being “pulled over,” but I don’t get the cop’s statement.”
The cop misunderstands and thinks the driver is referring to the sweater (or, more likely, the cop is being a smart ass). That’s all.
The way I believe must people tell the joke is: A traffic cop is doing his rounds when he says a driver (usually a blonde) driving a car while knitting. The cop pursues and calls out “Pull Over. Pull Over” and the driver responds “No, it’s a cardigan”.
So, (again referring to the sweater cartoon) it would make more sense for the dialogue to be switched between the parties. Cop: “Pull over!” Driver: “No, it’s a cardigan!”
I’m thinking the cartoonist should have flipped the drawing (and redone the “police” label obviously) so that the parties and their dialogue would flow better.
“So, (again referring to the sweater cartoon) it would make more sense for the dialogue to be switched between the parties. Cop: “Pull over!” Driver: “No, it’s a cardigan!””
Perhaps the cartoonist is trying to do a tired old joke in a new way, so it doesn’t seem like a tired old joke. Kind of like when you start with an “a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar…” joke and rephrase it as “Juan, Chase, and Levi walk into a bar…”
I liked the first one okay, until I read the caption. That turned it into a dad joke.
Well, IMO reversing the dialog would have made the joke more realistic, but in a single panel cartoon would have been harder to pull off. But I’ve got to admit, I don’t see how anyone can get the sweater connection and the double meaning of “pull over” yet not get the joke simply by who is talking.
“Perhaps the cartoonist is trying to do a tired old joke in a new way”
If the punchline is tired and well known it won’t matter who says it or what the circumstances are to get to it. It’s still the exact same punchline.
I don’t think the driver has already pulled over. I believe the intention is that they are still moving, and the cop has come along side, probably to pass. Notice the cop’s feet are not on the ground. They way the driver is pointing at the roadside looks like he is pointing at his sweater.
Given that the name was changed to KFC in 1991 (at least according to Wikipedia), does anyone under 30 know them by Kentucky Fried Chicken?
Haven’t eaten at one in YEARS, but Hubby and I call it Kentucky Fried; the ‘Chicken’ is understood.
If the chicken was understood it wouldn’t have to go to Freud.
(Boom Boom!)
Ah, but talk therapy helps you understand yourself, not others understand you
“Given that the name was changed to KFC in 1991 (at least according to Wikipedia), does anyone under 30 know them by Kentucky Fried Chicken?”
People still refer to it by Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC has to be an acronym for *something* and their product is obviously Fried Chicken. Although the name is changed their image and commercials do nothing to deny the origins.
It was take a special kind of incurious dullness to not recognize Kentucky Fried Chicken refers to them, and it’d take a special kind of cynicism and disdain for “kids this days who only know things in their immediate media networks” to assume people wouldn’t.
According to my sister-in-law, who worked there, SRI International is an acronym without an official expansion. (They had been Stanford Research Institute, but in 1970 Stanford University split them off, and in 1977 they changed the name.)
The largest professional wrestling organization in the U.S. (or the world) has been the WWE — World Wrestling Entertainment (I know; gahhh!) — since 2002, and has been “just” the WWE (e.g. acronym no longer spelled out) since 2011. However, whenever a mainstream new story or article deigns to refer to it, odds are better than average that they will still call it the “WWF” — only seventeen years out of date.
I’m pretty sure I once knew that SRI stood for “Stanford Research Institute,” but I’m also pretty sure I never particualry cared, so there’s that.
They stopped using WWF because the court ruled they violated an agreement with the World Wildlife Fund. And that led to someone creating this shirt:
I think AARP also claims their initials don’t stand for anything. Anyone over a certain age can join; you don’t have to be Retired.
@ Andréa – The reason KFC keeps showing up in the comics is probably because they have been producing an incessant series of ads with 15 different actors portraying Colonel Sanders since 2015.
I believe that DVD also officially is no longer an initialism.
P.S. If the pun is supposed to link to “tater tots“, shouldn’t Prof. Dr. Potato Head be delivering the degree to a fried cylinder of potato shrapnel, rather than just a miniature version of himself?
I was quite annoyed by the move to call them Digital Versatile Disks.
BTW, a bit of reading at Wikipedia clarified for me that the DARPA and also direct military research at Stanford Research Institute, right in the Vietnam era, was a main factor in the University wanting to separate them — political trouble for the administration with an antiwar student body.
What I had all along thought was the story was that the “remote viewing” and other “parapsychology” research was objected to by the regular science departments at the University. But that came along a little later.
On the Tater Tots one, I am a bit late to notice I don’t understand the spelling Tator. Is that to make it somewhat resemble Professor??
@ Arthur – That’s what happens when a standards organization picks a stupid phrase for a product to be marketed to the general public. They probably wanted to “expand” the “compact” disk, but after they called it “versatile”, they realized that nobody would want to get “VDs”, so the had to hang a superfluous “digital” prefix to avoid the venereal connection. With seven syllables, that’s not a name, it’s a procession.
“P.S. If the pun is supposed to link to “tater tots“, shouldn’t Prof. Dr. Potato Head be delivering the degree to a fried cylinder of potato shrapnel, rather than just a miniature version of himself?”.
Depends if your aesthetics for a pun require or find desirable a reference to what the joke is punning. As the phrase “tater tot” is big modified to “tater taught” there need not be any reference to the original phrase and all that is required is a taught potato. But some people think a visual reference to the original phrase makes for a more satisfying joke
Pa Tater and Ma Tater had cute baby girl (and she was a SWEET patater). She grew up to a fine you lady. One day she came home and said “Ma, Pa! I’m gonna get married”.
Pa was agog and said “Who are you going to marry, little Sweet Pater” and she said “I’m gonna marry Dan Rather!”
Ma said “You can’t marry Dan Rather! He’s just a common tater!”
@ Mitch4 – I didn’t notice the misspelling in the comic until you mentioned it. It could be a simple typo, perhaps influenced by “Doctor” or “Tutor“, or perhaps the cartoonist was trying to “elevate” the title from the “hick” sound of the nickname “tater”.
Kilby, they were originally Digital Video Discs. When they started being used for non-video data, they proposed Versatile. My understanding was that they decided instead to just say that DVD means DVD, but a bit of research today suggests that the V does now stand for Versatile. I sit corrected.
“I think AARP also claims their initials don’t stand for anything. Anyone over a certain age can join; you don’t have to be Retired.”
And I claim the Arlo Award is named after Arlo Guthrie, so draw your own conclusions…
“And I claim the Arlo Award is named after Arlo Guthrie, so draw your own conclusions…”
I feel good when I’m about to reply, “We have a winner”, and I notice it’s from the guy who does the work to run this crazy site.
I think in BAE Systems the BAE no longer really stands for anything but itself. BAe once stood for British Aerospace but following a merger with Marconi Electronic Systems (MES) became just BAE.
Gee, the things I miss by not watching tv . . .
I was just looking at another thread here, where ZIP codes came up. Do you’all remember that that originally was supposed to stand for something? It was the Zone Improvement Plan.
. . . and I distinctly remember it was supposed to go to 11 numbers, which I was using for some time, but then quit ’cause no one else was using it. The last two numbers were the last two digits of one’s house number; well, ours was.
In theory if you used all 11 digits of the zip code would you have to address anything else? I had a friend in college who got flak from other friends for never writing out the city and state one his letters. He insisted if he included the zip code (5 digits) he did have to. (So far as I know he never had a letter returned).
Woozy, redundancy.
Some people make ones and sevens that look similar, and the same with fours and nines. It’s easy to transpose “meaningless” digits or get one wrong. The city, state, and street names all are sanity checks that the zip is actually correct and read correctly.
Also, the person actually sorting the letters to be delivered is doing it by street and block. It’s not nice to make more work for the person you need doing something for you.
ZIP codes are used for routing by computers. If the computer can’t figure it out, then the address is examined by actual human beings.
Thing is, a lot of mail is actually delivered to the post office prepared for delivery already… major mailers get a discount for doing it that way, and it adds up if you send a few hundred thousand statements per month or a few million ads.
The Arlo Award *is* named after Arlo Guthrie, the long way ’round.
What would the Arlo award be named if the two singers had been named Elray Guthrie and Maryan Joplin?
I was considering calling it the Mark in Boston Award.
@ MiB & Bill – Would either of you care to explain the groaner pun that I just can’t reconstruct from those two names?
KFC continues to spell out “Kentucky Fried Chicken” on their packaging, in some of their advertising, and on décor at some restaurants, especially since they began the ad campaign with the rotating Colonel Sanders-es. In fact, it says “Kentucky Fried Chicken” spelled out at the very top of their website right now.
Brings to mind the urban legend that they had to change the name because the genetically-modified birds can no longer be legally called chickens.
Interesting, I read an article recently that claimed, counter to every other source that states that the name change was an attempt to de-emphasize the word “fried”, that the state of Kentucky was going to start charging companies for using the state name. I thought that sounded ridiculous and Billytheskink’s comment seems to verify that the article’s claim is not true.
“In theory if you used all 11 digits of the zip code…”
11?
I imagine KFC has to spell out their full original name every so often in order to safeguard the trademark.
@Mitch4 Yes. “Zone Improvement Plan.” We used to have just one- or two-digit zone numbers, which turned into the last two digits if the Zip code (preceded by a zero if necessary)
@ CIDU Bill – The extended ZIP code does comprise 11 digits, but the last two are normally used only by companies that presort bulk mailings, and they are only encoded in the barcode, and do not appear in numeric form.
MarkM: According to snopes, KFC claimed that “fried” was the reason, but the real reason was a trademark suit from the State of Kentucky. They further state that the name was changed back after an undisclosed settlement with the State of Kentucky.
Admittedly, it does sound like an urban legend. I’ve done no independent checks of this, although I’ve generally found snopes pretty reliable.
Kilby, I made up those two first names. No pun involved. The comic strip would be Elray & Maryan and the award would be the Elray award.
“According to snopes, KFC claimed that “fried” was the reason, but the real reason was a trademark suit from the State of Kentucky.”
The state of Kentucky wouldn’t have grounds for a suit.
As I recall, the shift from “Kentucky Fried Chicken” to “KFC” coincided with introduction of baked and grilled chicken to appeal to health-conscious patrons. They were already commonly called “KFC” before they adopted it as their trademark. Co-opting what the public is calling your business is just smart marketing.
@ JP – “Kentucky wouldn’t have grounds for a suit…”
The state trademarked the name in 1990, see the Snopes link that Winter Wallaby posted at the bottom of the previous page.
Kilby and WW: you’ve both been had, as has anyone who relied on your authority. The snopes page referred to was in fact a dubious purposely false snopes article, designed to teach you the value of not blindly trusting authority. A questionable exercise, given the current troubles snopes is having, and doubly dubious in my mind given the amount of crap and spam littering the snopes page — they should clean up the page and make obvious links to reference sections, NOT add purposely false articles!
Anyway, if you click on the very lacking citations section for that page referenced by WW, you get not citations, but a very chatty, verbose article, that if you bother to read through eventually clarifies that the state of Kentucky did no such thing, along with a bunch of other false articles not being true. Very, very poorly done.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I wonder if KFC’s parent company gets $$ every time a comic uses its brand name? Talk about product placement!
No. Why would they?
I was being facetious – it just seems that KFC has been in the comics quite frequently lately.
I know that “pullover” and “cardigan” are sweaters, and the driver is referring to being “pulled over,” but I don’t get the cop’s statement.
beckoningchasm, The cop’s statement can make sense, in the context of the driver’s very unlikely question. The driver is asking “[Did you want for me to] pull over?” but it seems he has already done so and has no reason to ask. The cop misunderstands that as using the sweater sense, where it is still a very unlikely thing for the driver to be asking: “[Is my sweater a] pullover?]” . Given all this implausibility, there is by now a basis for the cop to answer that sweater question, correcting the driver since his sweater is indeed more like a cardigan than a pullover. (The distinction is that a cardigan will open fully in the front, and can be closed by buttons or nowadays often a zipper.)
“I know that “pullover” and “cardigan” are sweaters, and the driver is referring to being “pulled over,” but I don’t get the cop’s statement.”
The cop misunderstands and thinks the driver is referring to the sweater (or, more likely, the cop is being a smart ass). That’s all.
The way I believe must people tell the joke is: A traffic cop is doing his rounds when he says a driver (usually a blonde) driving a car while knitting. The cop pursues and calls out “Pull Over. Pull Over” and the driver responds “No, it’s a cardigan”.
So, (again referring to the sweater cartoon) it would make more sense for the dialogue to be switched between the parties. Cop: “Pull over!” Driver: “No, it’s a cardigan!”
I’m thinking the cartoonist should have flipped the drawing (and redone the “police” label obviously) so that the parties and their dialogue would flow better.
“So, (again referring to the sweater cartoon) it would make more sense for the dialogue to be switched between the parties. Cop: “Pull over!” Driver: “No, it’s a cardigan!””
Perhaps the cartoonist is trying to do a tired old joke in a new way, so it doesn’t seem like a tired old joke. Kind of like when you start with an “a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar…” joke and rephrase it as “Juan, Chase, and Levi walk into a bar…”
I liked the first one okay, until I read the caption. That turned it into a dad joke.
Well, IMO reversing the dialog would have made the joke more realistic, but in a single panel cartoon would have been harder to pull off. But I’ve got to admit, I don’t see how anyone can get the sweater connection and the double meaning of “pull over” yet not get the joke simply by who is talking.
“Perhaps the cartoonist is trying to do a tired old joke in a new way”
If the punchline is tired and well known it won’t matter who says it or what the circumstances are to get to it. It’s still the exact same punchline.
I don’t think the driver has already pulled over. I believe the intention is that they are still moving, and the cop has come along side, probably to pass. Notice the cop’s feet are not on the ground. They way the driver is pointing at the roadside looks like he is pointing at his sweater.
Given that the name was changed to KFC in 1991 (at least according to Wikipedia), does anyone under 30 know them by Kentucky Fried Chicken?
Haven’t eaten at one in YEARS, but Hubby and I call it Kentucky Fried; the ‘Chicken’ is understood.
If the chicken was understood it wouldn’t have to go to Freud.
(Boom Boom!)
Ah, but talk therapy helps you understand yourself, not others understand you
“Given that the name was changed to KFC in 1991 (at least according to Wikipedia), does anyone under 30 know them by Kentucky Fried Chicken?”
People still refer to it by Kentucky Fried Chicken. KFC has to be an acronym for *something* and their product is obviously Fried Chicken. Although the name is changed their image and commercials do nothing to deny the origins.
It was take a special kind of incurious dullness to not recognize Kentucky Fried Chicken refers to them, and it’d take a special kind of cynicism and disdain for “kids this days who only know things in their immediate media networks” to assume people wouldn’t.
According to my sister-in-law, who worked there, SRI International is an acronym without an official expansion. (They had been Stanford Research Institute, but in 1970 Stanford University split them off, and in 1977 they changed the name.)
The largest professional wrestling organization in the U.S. (or the world) has been the WWE — World Wrestling Entertainment (I know; gahhh!) — since 2002, and has been “just” the WWE (e.g. acronym no longer spelled out) since 2011. However, whenever a mainstream new story or article deigns to refer to it, odds are better than average that they will still call it the “WWF” — only seventeen years out of date.
I’m pretty sure I once knew that SRI stood for “Stanford Research Institute,” but I’m also pretty sure I never particualry cared, so there’s that.
They stopped using WWF because the court ruled they violated an agreement with the World Wildlife Fund. And that led to someone creating this shirt:
I think AARP also claims their initials don’t stand for anything. Anyone over a certain age can join; you don’t have to be Retired.
@ Andréa – The reason KFC keeps showing up in the comics is probably because they have been producing an incessant series of ads with 15 different actors portraying Colonel Sanders since 2015.
I believe that DVD also officially is no longer an initialism.
P.S. If the pun is supposed to link to “tater tots“, shouldn’t Prof. Dr. Potato Head be delivering the degree to a fried cylinder of potato shrapnel, rather than just a miniature version of himself?
I was quite annoyed by the move to call them Digital Versatile Disks.
BTW, a bit of reading at Wikipedia clarified for me that the DARPA and also direct military research at Stanford Research Institute, right in the Vietnam era, was a main factor in the University wanting to separate them — political trouble for the administration with an antiwar student body.
What I had all along thought was the story was that the “remote viewing” and other “parapsychology” research was objected to by the regular science departments at the University. But that came along a little later.
On the Tater Tots one, I am a bit late to notice I don’t understand the spelling Tator. Is that to make it somewhat resemble Professor??
@ Arthur – That’s what happens when a standards organization picks a stupid phrase for a product to be marketed to the general public. They probably wanted to “expand” the “compact” disk, but after they called it “versatile”, they realized that nobody would want to get “VDs”, so the had to hang a superfluous “digital” prefix to avoid the venereal connection. With seven syllables, that’s not a name, it’s a procession.
“P.S. If the pun is supposed to link to “tater tots“, shouldn’t Prof. Dr. Potato Head be delivering the degree to a fried cylinder of potato shrapnel, rather than just a miniature version of himself?”.
Depends if your aesthetics for a pun require or find desirable a reference to what the joke is punning. As the phrase “tater tot” is big modified to “tater taught” there need not be any reference to the original phrase and all that is required is a taught potato. But some people think a visual reference to the original phrase makes for a more satisfying joke
Pa Tater and Ma Tater had cute baby girl (and she was a SWEET patater). She grew up to a fine you lady. One day she came home and said “Ma, Pa! I’m gonna get married”.
Pa was agog and said “Who are you going to marry, little Sweet Pater” and she said “I’m gonna marry Dan Rather!”
Ma said “You can’t marry Dan Rather! He’s just a common tater!”
@ Mitch4 – I didn’t notice the misspelling in the comic until you mentioned it. It could be a simple typo, perhaps influenced by “Doctor” or “Tutor“, or perhaps the cartoonist was trying to “elevate” the title from the “hick” sound of the nickname “tater”.
Kilby, they were originally Digital Video Discs. When they started being used for non-video data, they proposed Versatile. My understanding was that they decided instead to just say that DVD means DVD, but a bit of research today suggests that the V does now stand for Versatile. I sit corrected.
“I think AARP also claims their initials don’t stand for anything. Anyone over a certain age can join; you don’t have to be Retired.”
And I claim the Arlo Award is named after Arlo Guthrie, so draw your own conclusions…
“And I claim the Arlo Award is named after Arlo Guthrie, so draw your own conclusions…”
I feel good when I’m about to reply, “We have a winner”, and I notice it’s from the guy who does the work to run this crazy site.
I think in BAE Systems the BAE no longer really stands for anything but itself. BAe once stood for British Aerospace but following a merger with Marconi Electronic Systems (MES) became just BAE.
Gee, the things I miss by not watching tv . . .
I was just looking at another thread here, where ZIP codes came up. Do you’all remember that that originally was supposed to stand for something? It was the Zone Improvement Plan.
. . . and I distinctly remember it was supposed to go to 11 numbers, which I was using for some time, but then quit ’cause no one else was using it. The last two numbers were the last two digits of one’s house number; well, ours was.
In theory if you used all 11 digits of the zip code would you have to address anything else? I had a friend in college who got flak from other friends for never writing out the city and state one his letters. He insisted if he included the zip code (5 digits) he did have to. (So far as I know he never had a letter returned).
Woozy, redundancy.
Some people make ones and sevens that look similar, and the same with fours and nines. It’s easy to transpose “meaningless” digits or get one wrong. The city, state, and street names all are sanity checks that the zip is actually correct and read correctly.
Also, the person actually sorting the letters to be delivered is doing it by street and block. It’s not nice to make more work for the person you need doing something for you.
ZIP codes are used for routing by computers. If the computer can’t figure it out, then the address is examined by actual human beings.
Thing is, a lot of mail is actually delivered to the post office prepared for delivery already… major mailers get a discount for doing it that way, and it adds up if you send a few hundred thousand statements per month or a few million ads.
The Arlo Award *is* named after Arlo Guthrie, the long way ’round.
What would the Arlo award be named if the two singers had been named Elray Guthrie and Maryan Joplin?
I was considering calling it the Mark in Boston Award.
@ MiB & Bill – Would either of you care to explain the groaner pun that I just can’t reconstruct from those two names?
KFC continues to spell out “Kentucky Fried Chicken” on their packaging, in some of their advertising, and on décor at some restaurants, especially since they began the ad campaign with the rotating Colonel Sanders-es. In fact, it says “Kentucky Fried Chicken” spelled out at the very top of their website right now.
Brings to mind the urban legend that they had to change the name because the genetically-modified birds can no longer be legally called chickens.
Interesting, I read an article recently that claimed, counter to every other source that states that the name change was an attempt to de-emphasize the word “fried”, that the state of Kentucky was going to start charging companies for using the state name. I thought that sounded ridiculous and Billytheskink’s comment seems to verify that the article’s claim is not true.
“In theory if you used all 11 digits of the zip code…”
11?
I imagine KFC has to spell out their full original name every so often in order to safeguard the trademark.
@Mitch4 Yes. “Zone Improvement Plan.” We used to have just one- or two-digit zone numbers, which turned into the last two digits if the Zip code (preceded by a zero if necessary)
@ CIDU Bill – The extended ZIP code does comprise 11 digits, but the last two are normally used only by companies that presort bulk mailings, and they are only encoded in the barcode, and do not appear in numeric form.
MarkM: According to snopes, KFC claimed that “fried” was the reason, but the real reason was a trademark suit from the State of Kentucky. They further state that the name was changed back after an undisclosed settlement with the State of Kentucky.
Admittedly, it does sound like an urban legend. I’ve done no independent checks of this, although I’ve generally found snopes pretty reliable.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kfc-and-fried/
Ah. Thanks, Kilby, now I know.
Kilby, I made up those two first names. No pun involved. The comic strip would be Elray & Maryan and the award would be the Elray award.
“According to snopes, KFC claimed that “fried” was the reason, but the real reason was a trademark suit from the State of Kentucky.”
The state of Kentucky wouldn’t have grounds for a suit.
As I recall, the shift from “Kentucky Fried Chicken” to “KFC” coincided with introduction of baked and grilled chicken to appeal to health-conscious patrons. They were already commonly called “KFC” before they adopted it as their trademark. Co-opting what the public is calling your business is just smart marketing.
Cardigan not-really-funny . . .
https://www.comicskingdom.com/beetle-bailey-1/2019-06-11
@ JP – “Kentucky wouldn’t have grounds for a suit…”
The state trademarked the name in 1990, see the Snopes link that Winter Wallaby posted at the bottom of the previous page.
Kilby and WW: you’ve both been had, as has anyone who relied on your authority. The snopes page referred to was in fact a dubious purposely false snopes article, designed to teach you the value of not blindly trusting authority. A questionable exercise, given the current troubles snopes is having, and doubly dubious in my mind given the amount of crap and spam littering the snopes page — they should clean up the page and make obvious links to reference sections, NOT add purposely false articles!
Anyway, if you click on the very lacking citations section for that page referenced by WW, you get not citations, but a very chatty, verbose article, that if you bother to read through eventually clarifies that the state of Kentucky did no such thing, along with a bunch of other false articles not being true. Very, very poorly done.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-authority/