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New Article: The Polly-O String Cheese Commercial!

I'm not sure how many of you will remember this commercial, but around these parts it's one of the longtime faves. There's only one place in the world where kids call for extra cheese and held crusts, and it's the Polly-O String Cheese Ad, famous for its wacky pizza parlor, strange customers, John Capodice and an assault on everything holy as Schjimi and the audience ponder life's greatest question: how can you have a pizza with nuttin? There's a download with the review, of course.

Posted by Matt on 02/19/2004. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 119 comments

Watching how short the commercial is, and how much Matt got out of the commercial, I want to say thank you very much, Matt, for the hard work you put into entertaining us. As for the nerdy kid, how old is he? He sounds 44 in the commercial…

Chestnuts roasted by Lando Fett @ 02/20/2004 12:27 PM

What DO you do with a Pac-Man playing robot, anyway? Besides play Pac-Man with it.

Chestnuts roasted by Kev @ 02/20/2004 12:37 PM

Complete World Domination, Kev.

Chestnuts roasted by Stilewalker @ 02/20/2004 12:53 PM

Holy mother of God ,Pizza Party?? I remember that damn game! Anyone remember this funky cereal that were in shape of scoops of ice cream and lil ice cream cones?

Chestnuts roasted by Josh @ 02/20/2004 1:33 PM

Speaking of PacMan… -
Just a side comment… watching Futurama last night, when Fry asks the What-If machine what the world would be like if it was more like a video game. Well, when the Nintendoo64ians land and all the old school video game icons climb out, I totally geeked when I realized, among the other recognizable characters, the obscure, Mars Attacks!-like creature was a creature from the old arcade classic, Robotron 2084. How I could pick that out from memories of a few pixels, I don’t know. But I geeked… like a true dork, I geeked.
Ok, side comment end.

Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 02/20/2004 1:44 PM

I like that Mario was the rep for Italy. Think I’ll run my Mario Bros. cards through my e-Reader and kick a few crabs.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 02/20/2004 2:33 PM

Oh man, I didn’t remember anything about this ad except those three Italian expressions of approval at the end…I must have seen this a thousand times.

Chestnuts roasted by JC @ 02/20/2004 2:33 PM

Hey, I noticed an error in the commercial, did any one else? Yes, the kid asks for the extra cheese, and yes he asks for no crust or sauce.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TOPPINGS?

Technically the kids should have received a box of Polly-O with some pepperoni or mushrooms thrown in there.

But still, the commercial is pure gold. I’ll give it that.

Chestnuts roasted by gerigrrl @ 02/20/2004 3:02 PM

Ah, string cheese. I hardly knew thee. Thee I consumed in moderation back in the early ’90s, before it dawned on me that there are better things to do than gnaw on a bland, waxy post of mozzarella. And it wasn’t Polly-O either. It was a store brand.

Chestnuts roasted by Andrew T. @ 02/20/2004 3:54 PM

Wow…I had forgotten all about this stuff… Not sure if I want to remember.

Oh, and I was both a chunk biter and a string puller.

Chestnuts roasted by Cameron @ 02/20/2004 4:04 PM

Secretary of Defender.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 02/20/2004 4:27 PM

Matt – You seriously need to review "Pizza Party" board game commercial from the late-80′s.

Best.Commercial.Ever.

"Party! Pizza Party!"

Chestnuts roasted by Harv @ 02/20/2004 4:52 PM

I definitely remember Ice Cream Cone cereal! I loved that stuff when I was growing up. It was awesome, but not as awesome as Count Chocula. I think they might have brought it back last summer, but I never bought any. :(
I also remember the game Pizza Party. My sisters and I had that game!

Chestnuts roasted by Andrea @ 02/20/2004 5:05 PM

MG, they still make Dunkaroos, or at least did until fairly recently. Now they have all the old shapes, from the sports to just the various Kangaroo poses. (I think the contest was how we got that kanagroo. If not, he was never replaced.) Never cared for the vanilla frosting on that. It was pure sugar cream.

Cheese the best part of the pizza? I’m a cheesecake addict and I put cream cheese on my Ritz crackers (3-ply, baby! Three crackers held together by Philidephia cream cheese). But the best part of pizza is the dang crust! Why do you think fried dough is the food to have at carnivals and amusement parks?

Chestnuts roasted by ShadowWing the Technorganic Autobot @ 02/20/2004 6:01 PM

Hmm… sorry I haven’t written in here lately, I’ve had midterms and stuff.

I was never a fan of the string cheese stuff. I’m not a fan of "processed" cheese, by which I mean cheese that isn’t of an identifiable type like "Cheddar" or "Swiss", because of the taste. I’ve always preferred slicing into a block, preferably non-coloured yellow finely-aged Cheddar. We did have string cheese in Canada, but I believe it was made by McCain and wasn’t the brand seen in that commercial. And I have a great memory for the sort of commercials that they’d show on WVNY-22 (ABC) in Burlington VT during Transformers, G.I. Joe and Jem and the Holograms, but I’m afraid I don’t remember that commercial at all. Maybe it’s a regional thing. WVNY-22 seemed to air more Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-ups and Fruit Wrinkles and the Mini-Pops Colgate Pump ad (the one sung to the tune of "Baggy Trousers", which Matt featured in http://www.ugo.com/channels/freestyle/features/commercials/">this UGO piece) during each commercial break than any other non-toy-related ads.

Well, I think I’ve said enough on-topic. I’ve just found something on the Internet and, knowing the sort of people that read this site, I know I can’t possibly be the only X-E reader whom would be thrilled to know that there is now an http://www.doctorsnuggles.com/">offical Doctor Snuggles website, the very strange cartoon where the lead character was an inventor voiced by Peter Ustinov, and, better yet, it’s run by the creator of the series, Jeffrey O’Kelly. I gotta ask Mr. O’Kelly what the deal was with the tea-sipping camel in the clouds; was it all one big drug reference?

Chestnuts roasted by Steve Brandon @ 02/20/2004 7:47 PM

I love all the food related stuff you write about Matt. I really liked the one when you baked a cake. Maybe you should try to bake this cake I saw over on ebay…

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2381471485&category=25466

it is an R2D2 cake. I bet it would taste good.

Chestnuts roasted by food dude @ 02/20/2004 7:48 PM

The string cheese with the sauce inside are called Stuffsters. Which is just about the worst name for anything, ever, in the history of the universe if you ask me.

Chestnuts roasted by Hellpop! @ 02/20/2004 10:21 PM

I think the 80′s seen many pizza related merchandise come out, pizza seemed to become more popular with kids in the 80′s because of Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E Cheese, where all the latest video games lured in kids, something Ronald couldn’t compete with.

I loved that commercial, you can always tell 80′s commercials by the hair and the clothes..lol

Chestnuts roasted by Nuke @ 02/20/2004 11:07 PM

Bravo! Tour-deForce! The commercial and the review.

This commercial had been nestled sweetly in the recesses of my brain for lo! these 20-odd some years.

Matt has lovingly retrieved it and held it up to the light for all to see.

I also thank him for taking the time and effort to write about it and procure the download.

However, I believe these Pizza guys, due to their age and occupation dealing with the public, obviously had enough street smarts to know when they were being "had", so it was heartening for me to see them "playing along" with the seemingly odd requests from their youngish customers. This is borne-out by the fact that liver-lips #1 was shown smiling knowingly at the end of the commercial holding a pizza box neatly stacked with the packaged congealed salty milk for the Nerdettes to grab with their maws. It not only takes time and effort to pre-fold and store those pizza boxes (I’m a former pizza delivery boy), but to accomodate those annoying kids with an item obviously not on the menu (what would they charge? The proprieters probably gave them away as a grandfatherly gesture) while trying to run a business puts those guys into the realm of the Biblical Job.

And good God! I had forgotten about the signs in the backround. They don’t make commercials like that anymore.

‘Nuff said

Chestnuts roasted by ibinsomniac @ 02/20/2004 11:41 PM

Thanks for the info, ShadowWing the Technorganic Autobot. Although, I thought about it some more and did a Google search or two, and I am pretty sure the Kangaroo was always the mascot, but the contest just resulted in a more ‘extreme’ version.

Chestnuts roasted by MG @ 02/20/2004 11:43 PM

STUFFSTERS?!?!? hahahaha no wonder i couldnt remember the name. >:O

Thanks for finding it though, now i know for future reference(will never happen)

Chestnuts roasted by heeloyd @ 02/21/2004 1:16 AM

Oh, Dunkaroos. I haven’t had them in so long. If they do still truely make them then I have got to get my hands on some.

Chestnuts roasted by Rood @ 02/21/2004 1:54 AM

And here’s the surprise of the week… Eurotrip features full frontal male nudity and people having sex in a confessional at the Vatican. I’m not offended, but I don’t know how they got that by the rating board without getting an R rating (Up here, R means you can’t see it unless you’re 18. Eurotrip is 18A which means that anyone under 18 can see it as long as they con some uninformed parent into taking them). It had its moments though, worth seeing if you’ve got nothing better to do.

Chestnuts roasted by Gabbylicious @ 02/21/2004 2:12 AM

That commercial looks funny as hell. For some reason, I can’t recall seeing it when I was younger. I wish my stupid computer would let the clip work, so I could see it together.

Ummm, chunk biter or string puller. I do both, depending on what mood I was in. If I’m hungry, I’m sure as heck not going to play with my food and pick at it. I want to take a chunk of cheese so I can get more taste. Other times I just pull strings off, but it seems like you don’t get much taste when you eat little strands.

Chestnuts roasted by Goonie4Life @ 02/21/2004 2:48 AM

…Polly-O? Da hell? This must be an Eastern thing.

Gah, someone do a snarky review of those old Carl’s Jr. ads, with Carl Karcher and Happy Star arguing over advertising, so them easties know what it feels like to be so left out!

Chestnuts roasted by G'Tron @ 02/21/2004 3:10 AM

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2004 at 1:04 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.