It’s the 1960s. An American couple is seen waking up to breakfast. When the husband tastes the coffee his wife has prepared, he recoils, claiming it tastes like glue. She belts him (with a rolling pin?) and the scene ends.
This starts happening all over America, reaching crisis levels.
It is eventually learned that the bad guys were putting a chemical in coffee which caused trading stamps (which at the time some coffee companies were including as premiums, in the coffee cans) to dissolve into the coffee, making it taste like glue. They were doing this to sabotage America by getting couples to fight over the morning coffee, and would use the distraction to carry out some dastardly plan.
I think this was on “Roger Ramjet”. It’s the kind of 60’s-like spoof of espionage that cartoon did so well.
I think the only detail you got wrong was that the glue in the coffee was due to a dastardly plot by enemy agents rather than an innocent misunderstanding.
RR has got a theater organ, and a children’s club singing the club song. It very much reminds me of what I’ve read about pre-TV English Saturday morning entertainment for kids. But it’s an American program. What were they referencing with the organ music and the kids singing?
Roger Ramjet and his Eagles
Fighting for our freedom
Can’t remember the rest, but the last time I heard that song was 50+ years ago. I’ll have to watch as much of an episode as I can stand for nostalgia’s sake.
…
Fly through in and outer space, not to join 'em but to beat 'em
Chorus:
Roger Ramjet, he’s our man, hero of our nation
For his adventures just be sure and stay tuned to this station
Verse 2:
So come join us all you kids for lots of fun and laughter
As Roger Ramjet and his men get all the crooks they’re after
Verse3:
When Ramjet takes a proton pill the crooks begin to worry
They can’t escape their awful fate from proton’s mighty fury
What might I have done with those wasted brain cells?
Incidentally, I find it interesting that the theme song uses the melody of “Yankee Doodle”, but the wiki entry on the show lists one Charles Koren as the composer of the music of the theme song.
Ok, the theatre organ was just a random choice. But the Micky Mouse Club had a club and a song for the kids to sing: even in the USA, “just a theme” was part of some kind of tradition, which I’d be interested in seeing teased out.
TV came to Australia and PNG later than the USA, so I caught the tail end of children’s radio programming. I wonder if, in the USA, the Howdy Doody Show (and RR) were continuing/referencing a radio tradition? The theater organ could easily have been a radio feature: the old ‘radio school’ building at one of my universities included the ‘radio theatre’ with, as it happens, a theater organ.
Aha. The heyday of radio was before my time, but yeah, I think organ music was used in a lot of show intros. Can’t think of any vocals, though, other than The Ovaltineys, and I’m pretty sure they were never heard in the US.
