Luckily (I suppose) that we’ve been de-emphasizing “synchronicities”, or I would be slapping my forehead at not being able to re-find the one I saw in the last couple days with an apparently British guy approaching a band practice and asking “Mind if I sit in on your marmalade?”.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Freddie Mercury – definitely retro
The Falco has been done many times in a similar manner. My favorite is still the one with a caption of John Lennon as a child and the mom saying “All we are saying is give peas a chance”.
John Lennon famously never really lived with his Mom. He lived with his aunt as a child.
But the joke still works.
If the joke is what I think it is, I’m not sure it really works. Jam is a very common term in the UK and would rarely, if ever, be confused with marmalade, which is almost considered a seperate beast entirely.
I think it would work better if it was an American guy approaching some Brits and asking if he could sit in on their jelly.
“Envision whirled peas.”
Thanks, Stan. I haven’t re-found that “marmalade” cartoon, so the nationalities could well be my excess of interpretation; but what I’m more sure of was seeing “marmalade” in the caption, wondering if this was going to be about the song “Lady Marmalade”, and then realizing it was about a “jam session”.
I thought the Tom Falco was masterful in its construction. It is an excellent and powerful use of the rule of 3 (in this case, setup, familiar familial build-up, and switch). [I can’t say whether the drawing helps; I’m glad the whole thing could be read in the upper left corner of the panel, and that the jar of jam was so big that I didn’t notice that the sandwich looks like something I’d never want jam on.]
Aha, here it is! Reality Check for November 16 (last Tuesday).
Note that the key word “marmalade” (for “jam”) is being used as a verb here, not a noun as I was reconstructing it mentally.
From the drawing (and maybe the “gents”), I can’t blame Mitch for calling the speaking guy British. This looks like it is set in 1967, with an ersatz Beatle encountering an ersatz Grateful Dead.
All I could think of was, “Wait… you want grape more than peach? You’re nuts!”
@Chak My go-to flavor of preserved fruit in recent months has been Smucker’s brand “Simply Fruit” in blueberry. I noticed I was running low, and on four different shopping trips I was unable to find that, or the same in blackberry, or any plain-looking brand of blueberry jelly or jam or preserves. Rows and rows of grape of course. Today at Mariano’s I ended up getting something blueberry in an opaque crock with script-printed label. Oh well, here’s hoping it’s good.
Actually, I think that Reality Check does work. However, I think the joke plays on the assumed ‘posh-ness’ of marmalade over jam…the trope of the clean-cut, snooty Brit vs the laid-back, common Yank. Of course the former would prefer marmalade to jam under any circumstance.
“All we are saying is give peas a chance”
And of course, “Give pizza chants.”
And for those of us who don’t approve of dairy products walking around naked, “Give cheese a pants.”
And when we see the spider plant on the wall has grown offshoots that are covering up the crucifix on the wall, we wonder who had to “Give Jesus plants.”
How common is jam (as opposed to jelly) in the USA? For me the cartoon is odd:
It would surely work better if the jar said ‘Jelly’ not ‘Jam’, and I’ve never heard of /seen grape jam. Only grape jelly (in the USA)
Certainly grape jam exists (see below), but in the comic the jam jar seems to be the peach. So they could be out of grape jelly and the mother is suggesting peach jam instead.
https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_34c7de5a-7fff-45ca-96f9-bf637bf94637?wid=325&hei=325&qlt=80&fmt=webp