PEEK FREANS!! - Or, at what age did you develop a sense of irony?

[robardin]

<sarcasm> Assuming you have one, of course… </sarcasm>

Seriously though - I read somewhere recently (Scientific American, IIRC) that children develop a sense of irony or sarcasm around the age of six, with (sadly common) abusive sarcasm or ironic ridicule (“oh, that was a real smart move!”) being the first to register due to the tone, and more deadpan or subtle irony the last.

The reason I suddenly thought about this today was in recalling an old jingle for Peek Freans cookies from when I was a kid. I tried looking it up on YouTube for a link but surprisingly couldn’t find one - so those of you unfamiliar with this jingle will have to take my word on the insufferable snottiness in the intonation.

I may have the lyrics a bit garbled from memory but it went kinda like this:

*Peek Freans are an extraordinarily serious cookie,
They’re made for grown-up tastes,
Peek Freans are much too good to waste on children, oh!
They’re serious, veeee-rrrry serious!
…
**Peek Freans are an extraordinarily serious cookie,
*If you’re or a grown-up, or plan to be one, you’ll know what we mean!
Peek Freans are a very serious cookie!

I was just about 6 or 7 years old when I first heard this jingle and it quite incensed me at the time. WHAT? Cookies WERE for kids! Too SERIOUS to WASTE on children? How DARE they? Who do they THINK they are? Who BUYS cookies except for KIDS? And what do they mean, PLAN to be a grown-up? What’s the alternative here? ARRGH!!

Of course the drawn out “serious… Veeerrrrry serious” was meant to be funny, and the “snottiness” was meant to be over the top enough to be “obviously” humorous, except when you’re seven years old and feel like you’re being snubbed.

It also doesn’t help that eventually I had some Peek Freans as a teenager, and found them basically on a par with Social Tea biscuits but slightly more sweet. Not bad at all, but also nothing particularly special. For this I was snubbed?

As for what made me think of it: I had cause to type the word “extraordinarily”, a word which for several years I thought was “extrordinary” (which was how I heard it in the jingle as a 7-year-old) until I was old enough and educated enough to parse the parts of speech, “extra-” meaning “beyond” and “ordinary” + “-ily” adverb ending conversion = it’s spelled “extraordinarily”. So every single time I go through that brief mental exercise to spell the word correctly, I think of the Peek Freans commercial. It drives me nuts, it does!

[Ludovic]

Don’t have an answer to the question, but a certain De La Soul lyric just made sense to me.

[samclem]

OP reported his own post, says he meant for MPSIMS. I agree. Moved.

samclem Moderator

[robardin]

@Ludovic

Don’t have an answer to the question, but a certain De La Soul lyric just made sense to me.

Holy crap. Not sure what lyric you meant here, I went to Google and entered “De La Soul Peek Freans”… And turned up your post on the SDMB on this very thread from “13 minutes ago” as the #1 hit. DAMN they’re fast.

[Ludovic]

[hijack]It was on the same album as Me Myself and I, I forget which song. But it contains a lyrics that goes “Very serious…like a Peek Frean”. (ETA: Google tells me it’s “Buddy”.)

I wasn’t even sure what the words were until this thread, but now it all fell into place. I didn’t even like that song, I just remembered it because they really emphasize that line and I really had no idea what words they were saying. but yeah, Google is freaky.

[Gagundathar]

They have a huge array of web-crawlers ready be deployed whenever anyone who is a member of SDMB posts anything anywhere on the entire Internet.

They are waiting
…
lurking
…
but we trust them, so its OK…
…
right?
…
…
Right?

:eek:

[Larry_Mudd]

I think I was nearly fourteen before I understood the intent of Randy Newman’s Short People.

[Sparkina]

@robardin

<sarcasm> Assuming you have one, of course… </sarcasm>

Seriously though - I read somewhere recently (Scientific American, IIRC) that children develop a sense of irony or sarcasm around the age of six, with (sadly common) abusive sarcasm or ironic ridicule (“oh, that was a real smart move!”) being the first to register due to the tone, and more deadpan or subtle irony the last.

The reason I suddenly thought about this today was in recalling an old jingle for Peek Freans cookies from when I was a kid. I tried looking it up on YouTube for a link but surprisingly couldn’t find one - so those of you unfamiliar with this jingle will have to take my word on the insufferable snottiness in the intonation.

I may have the lyrics a bit garbled from memory but it went kinda like this:

*Peek Freans are an extraordinarily serious cookie,
They’re made for grown-up tastes,
Peek Freans are much too good to waste on children, oh!
They’re serious, veeee-rrrry serious!
…
**Peek Freans are an extraordinarily serious cookie,
*If you’re or a grown-up, or plan to be one, you’ll know what we mean!
Peek Freans are a very serious cookie!

I was just about 6 or 7 years old when I first heard this jingle and it quite incensed me at the time. WHAT? Cookies WERE for kids! Too SERIOUS to WASTE on children? How DARE they? Who do they THINK they are? Who BUYS cookies except for KIDS? And what do they mean, PLAN to be a grown-up? What’s the alternative here? ARRGH!!

Of course the drawn out “serious… Veeerrrrry serious” was meant to be funny, and the “snottiness” was meant to be over the top enough to be “obviously” humorous, except when you’re seven years old and feel like you’re being snubbed.

It also doesn’t help that eventually I had some Peek Freans as a teenager, and found them basically on a par with Social Tea biscuits but slightly more sweet. Not bad at all, but also nothing particularly special. For this I was snubbed?

As for what made me think of it: I had cause to type the word “extraordinarily”, a word which for several years I thought was “extrordinary” (which was how I heard it in the jingle as a 7-year-old) until I was old enough and educated enough to parse the parts of speech, “extra-” meaning “beyond” and “ordinary” + “-ily” adverb ending conversion = it’s spelled “extraordinarily”. So every single time I go through that brief mental exercise to spell the word correctly, I think of the Peek Freans commercial. It drives me nuts, it does!

I was a kid when I had a Peek Freans cookie (The Fruit Cremes) and thought they tasted DIVINE and that jingle always did kind of crack my crystal. Like, they were saying that kids didn’t deserve the best, like you had to be an adult to be really human. For crying in Manhattan!

[BigT]

I always assumed they were using irony as a marketing strategy. It was humorous for the adults, sure, but it was also a way to get kids to want them. I’ve seen adults use it on kids to get them to eat their vegetables.

As for the OP: I unfortunately can’t remember that far back. I remember things that happened when I was that young, but not how I thought.

[Beware_of_Doug]

I figured irony out at about the same time I figured out Peek Freans could be rearranged to Peen Freaks.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

I teach 6-8 year-olds, and I use a little bit of irony and sarcasm in my teaching, along the lines of, “Okay, this next question is going to be really difficult, really hard…what’s 5+5?” Anything more complex than that is likely to be misunderstood and lead to hurt feelings; as it is, it’s pretty fun to watch shocked faces as they try to figure out why I thought that question would be hard, and then process my grin. Some of them figure out why it’s funny (or at least why their teacher thinks it’s funny), while others are never quite sure. But at least I amuse myself.

[Mona_Lisa_Simpson]

My son just turned seven and he is just getting sarcasm and irony and making little forays into using it. Of course in the time between hitting reply and actually composing this I have forgotten any cute examples.