targuman sends (and provides the title above):
On the gocomics site, various folks suggest there’s a fart joke in there, but my inner five-year-old can’t make that work either.
Meanwhile, https://inflatableblast.com/inflatable-men-car-dealerships/ suggests that those waving inflatable things have a host of names:
- air dancers
- tube guys
- inflatable guys
- tall boys
- fly guys
- sky dancer
- tube men
- air rangers
Creepy by any name. Though I did see a desktop-sized one once that was kinda cute.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Doesn’t it pretty much have to be a fart joke somehow?
The customer (in green) emits so much gas, so forcefully, that it momentarily inflates the air dancer. The salesman (suit at left) meanwhile does not retreat to the office but stands his ground because he is intent on a sale.
I thought it made a microscopically larger bit of sense if the guy in green was the salesperson (he’s on the side where the cars are located, and the sign appears to be aimed toward the left), but I have to agree with Dana that the suit is a more reliable indicator of “who’s who?”
P.S. Even allowing for a suspension of comic disbelief, the physics doesn’t work at all. Methane is (much) lighter than air, so the sky dancer would tend to sink (rather than rise) when surrounded by a copious quantity of the stuff. That would have been a better joke in any case: show the “live” dancer for all the panels except panel two, which would show the deflated dancer (the gag then being that his fart temporarily stunned it).
P.P.S. The author was presumably thinking that a strong burst of wind would be able to lift one of those things off the ground, but they don’t work that way. They rise into the air because of the fan that keeps them inflated (from the inside). No amount of external gas will do anything like that.
Okay, so now we understand what’s presumably going on. But the artist should’ve probably done better. My first assumption was that the inflatable thingie was broken, and wouldn’t stay up, and that’s why he’s apologizing. But even to make that stretch you must assume the guy in green is the salesman.
Fart Joke.
Obligatory: Wacky Waving inflatable arm waving tube men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHXvMcLrLSY
Ah, I like Dana’s better.
Before reading any comments, I had thought the fart appeared between 2 and 3, disabling the device. But that makes the inflation between 1 and 2 problematic.
I suppose it is a fart joke but it still doesn’t work for me…
Yer overthinking it.
Nice clip, Raymond!
I think the artist mistakenly thinks that the tube guys are wind-powered, rather than having a fan in the base.
To me, the tube guy’s eyes are more googly than “oof!”-y I say he got the normal lightheadedness that many get (those who’ve had particular kinds of experiences around odors)
There are many comedies where people pass out after, … as George Carlin referred to them,… a “Silent but deadly” passing of gas near by. (I’ve never believed that a passing of gas can be called a “fart” if it didn’t make any noise. It’s onomatopoetic)
In an early episode of Mythbusters, the term used was “flatus” because apparently “fart” wasn’t scientific enough for TV.
Our own Lord Flatulence was here with a comment on the Saturday OYs, but doesn’t appear to have checked in for this thread.
One of those blowy things around here annoys me. It has a collar or such around its “neck” and when drive past it, it looks more like a giant penis than anything else. I wonder whenever we drive past it if this was done on purpose or just nobody bothered to look at it after if was made.
As noted in the article, sometimes mondegreens get recorded. Not mentioned, but pretty famous, with “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”. Joan Baez learned it by listening to the original by The Band, and made several mistakes. Notably “Stoneman’s cavalry” became “so much cavalry”.
@ Brian – The mondegreens are over in the Fourth of July thread.