In its time it was a well-known “parlour ballad” in the UK (good for family singalongs) and George Formby Sr/s parody of it was a popular music hall number: but we just didn’t have the likes of Johnny Cash reviving it for a later generation.
Lots of people my own age don’t know the meaning of the Swedish words orv and rubank, although one would presume the film would have given them a second chance to learn it.
Did you get the double entendre of my username?
I’m 45 and know the song.
I’m over 60 and never heard the song the OP refers to.
I was sure that he must be mistaken about the origin of the name, but it seems corroborated by multiple trustworthy websites. I love the edirorial comment from etymonline:
Highlight mine. (I saw that Exapno cited this too, but I found it independently and posted this before I read his comment. and he doesn’t call out the “and loathed”)
I’ve seen all the old Twilight Zone episodes, so, if this was featured in one, I must have heard it. But I have no conscious memory of it.
I don’t remember ever hearing the grandfather’s clock song, but I knew the punch line. I don’t know how that counts.
I never heard Bunny Foo Foo as a kid, but did hear it when my kids were little.
And I’m well over 50 and grew up in the Northeast and never heard of Teddie Peanut Butter or its song.
I know Little Bunny Foo Foo, I know what a grub is and what grub is also, I know who Johnny Cash is. The rest of the stuff y’all are talking about is utterly unknown to me, so, I’d say, regional knowledge maybe, but cultural knowledge generally? I have to disagree. I’m nearing 50 years of age.
It’s a sure-enough real brand and it’s still made in a rundown plant in Everett MA. I drove by it recently and stopped in and asked if I could take a tour. They looked at me like I was nuts - Peanuts! Yuh huh.
Okay, I really didn’t want to do this, but here goes:
Teddie Peanut Butter
First with Vitamin A
For good health and for your life (?)
Have some everyday
Kids love it for parties,
Snacks and mealtimes too
Teddie Peanut Butter
So good and good for you.
There. Preserved on the Internet forever, and saved from oblivion.
Here’s the Robert Shaw Chorale version which is the one I grew up listening to.
ETA: Dang it, rowrbazzle!
I can tell you where I was the one left out in the cold. Wedding etiquette. Growing up in a rural, working class, Midwest environment I don’t think I ever attended a wedding that middle class people wouldn’t declare “tacky” in some way… During the precious few times I attended weddings. They were mostly a courthouse affair in my environment. I married at 23 which seemed positively ancient relative to my peers, and we paid for everything ourselves and aimed for something really nice. It was a lovely day, but I’m sure we made numerous errors out of sheer ignorance. I think it was Etiquette Hell where a bunch of middle class people were declaring as “rude” stuff I’ve seen all my life and never once questioned.
It certainly raised the question, for me, about whether these rules of etiquette really only function to serve as a gatekeeper for poor people.
I’d never heard of Teddie Peanut Butter until I started working at Textron Defense Systems, formerly the Avco Evertee Research lab, literally across the street from the Teddie Peanut Butter factory. On many days the smell of peanut butter permeated the air.
I’d lived in the Boston area for four years , several years earlier, and don’t recall seeing or hearing of Teddie Peanut butter before that. It clearly didn’t make a big impression on me until it was literally under my nose.
Manners is the art of making people feel comfortable. Etiquette is the science of debilitating class distinctions.
Absolutely. I saw a programme on British etiquette one time, populated with frightful snobs pontificating on the proper use of the proper utensils for eating the proper food. Then they asked a proper toff what he thought. It would be a terrible thing to make one’s guests uncomfortable at dinner was his response. Top man 
Going to a foreign country on holiday? Keep your mouth shut in the shower. It’s not like at home, that water is likely to bother your tummy.
How do people not know this one very simple and useful piece of information?
They return with stories of how ALL the food made them sick, etc. When you ask you discover it never occurred to them to not let the shower water into their mouth! Doh!
And here I thought it was the street food.
I would have guessed using ice in beverages. I know I try to ask for “no ice” even when just going into town simply because the chlorine tastes so yucky to me now. In a foreign locale there will be foreign beasties in the water and freezing doesn’t kill them. And I don’t mean foreign as in countries but rather outside your normal area.
I never heard the song about the clock. Nor Teddy Bear peanut butter. Bunny Foo Foo yes both the song and the drink. I know grubs and I hate seeing them when we till the gardens up (which is why I finally started wearing gardening gloves vs feeling the dirt in my hands and under my nails.) I love Johnny Cash… especially his last years when he was doing covers of rock songs.
Age 50, never heard the Grandfather Clock song, I know what grubs are, had a Drill Sergeant who referred to others as L’il Bunny Foo Foo quite often. From Chicago so I have no knowledge of Boston peanut butter or Cleveland celebrities.
This absolutely stunned me when I read it, an ESPN article on the New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.
I’m 58 and I never heard the OP’s song. I figured it’s because I was raised in The South, but I see from other posters that it doesn’t hold.
Naw, it was named for the Hoagy Carmichael song.