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Tribute to Stay Puft, and Roy Rogers’ Happy Meals.

I had a dream that I ate a giant marshmallow, and when I woke up, my pillow had transformed into an all-too-long tribute to The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. One love, Stay Puft. We tight.

Fast food chains are more successful in some areas than other areas, and in NYC, the once-great Roy Rogers' scope has dwindled down to just a few remaining restaurants. I don't know when Roy stopped being fashionable, but I'd like to kill the person who started that movement because God damn, his chicken was serious business. The breast pieces always came with this little knob of fried fat attached to the edge, and popping those busters is certainly what led to every fried chicken place on the planet coming up with their version of "chicken poppers." If you live in a city that still pays Roy his due respect, consider yourself lucky and eat some crunchy skin for me.

Roy's inability to connect with children may have played a part in his slow decline. McDonald's had Happy Meals and Burger King had constant Happy Meal rip-offs, and Wendy's had a pretty little red-haired girl on the marquee, but what did Roy Rogers have? Nothing. Roy Rogers had chicken. Roy Rogers has roast beef. But Roy Rogers had no Happy Meal.

Eh, that's not entirely true. Once in a blue moon, Roy would put aside his convictions about chicken restaurants needing to serve chicken and not pander to the lowbrow crowd who wanted toys with their chicken. I assume this to be the work of his advisors, always in Roy's ear with more lies about the necessity of a Happy Meal element. I kind of want to spend the next paragraph writing "buckaw" over and over again, but I won't. One of Roy's Rare Rappy Reals was called "Power Pullers," including small action figures that...pulled power.

Essentially superhero-shaped Wacky Wall Walkers, the figures came in four different colors, stuffed in text-ridden picture boxes that went to great lengths to make the toys seem more interesting than McDonald's Fast Macs. Click here to download the commercial, and note how the song number doesn't really gel with save-the-world superhero toys. Buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw buckaw.

Posted by Matt on 04/30/2006. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 134 comments
1 2 3 … 6

First one to eat a million, wins!

Dude seriously Stay Puff rocks..he can step on my cheetos any day.

Chestnuts roasted by the80sruled @ 04/30/2006 8:17 PM

The Stay-Puft marshmallow man is cuter than any baby, ever. If anyone ever tells you how cute their baby is just start comparing their child to the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Their tears will be sweet gumdrops.

Chestnuts roasted by Darth Poop @ 04/30/2006 8:32 PM

Every time a Roy’s shuts down in the greater NYC area, I lose a little bit of my faith in God.

Chestnuts roasted by hodsthorn @ 04/30/2006 8:41 PM

Man I miss Roy Rogers. And Kenny Rogers Roasters. Apparently food tastes better when served by old singers, specifically Rogers.

Chestnuts roasted by hillvalley @ 04/30/2006 8:45 PM

So is the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man a ghost or a Marshmellow demon. I remember being quite puzzled to see Stay Puft in the Containment Unit in the Real Ghostbusters cartoon series. My theory at the time was that when Stay Puft died at the end of the Ghostbusters, his ghost (can demons have ghost?) came back and was captured later by the Ghostbusters.

Chestnuts roasted by Darth Wickett @ 04/30/2006 8:51 PM

You reminded me of when I was little and … actually, maybe it was Hardee’s, but either that place or Roy Rogers had the MOST KICK ASS roast beef sandwiches ever. A little bit of BBQ sauce, and that roll – that thing was to die for. I could down 2 of those things, and I was just a little kid and hardly ever ate 2 servings of anything at one time – and I still don’t! But, now I’m vegan, so no mo’ Roast Beef for me. :P

Chestnuts roasted by Ryane @ 04/30/2006 9:33 PM

I don’t know how you do it, Matt, but every article you write tops the previous one. Kudos!

Chestnuts roasted by mtrox @ 04/30/2006 9:50 PM

To this day, when any one around me gasps or utters an expletive to suggest something is wrong, I ask:

"What did you do Ray?"

I wish more people understood the reference…

Stay Puft was AWESOME.

Chestnuts roasted by Mr. Boligarky @ 04/30/2006 9:54 PM

I love me some Roy’s. I mourned the day they closed the one down the way from my high school, but yet celebrated mightly when I came out of Penn Station in NYC for the first time to see that ol’ sunset logo staring back at me. Interestingly enough, they sold their chicken recipe to Hardee’s a while back. There is constant buzz that Roy’s will re-emerge and once again kick KFC’s ass six-ways to Sunday. Which makes me happy. For not only do I adore their biscuits, but that would mean less gas money would be spent going up the GSP to the Turnpike to the rest stop right before the exit for the Lincoln Tunnel.

Chestnuts roasted by LemurCat @ 04/30/2006 9:59 PM

Awesome article. My brother and I used to be RGB fiends. We had the firehouse, stay-puft, and about 900 other figures. Never got into the weapons, though. I remember my mom would always make us "go out on the deck" when we played with the ecto plazm containers. I still have all the RGB eps on vhs, and I had a marathon last summer when I got my wisdom teeth out. That was a pretty dark show. They had some really weird references, too, like the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. I wish they’d bring RGB’s back. And not in the "EXTREME" form this time.

Chestnuts roasted by Eddie Lightning Frog @ 04/30/2006 10:20 PM

Alas, I’ve never known the joys of Roy Rogers chicken. The closest one to Cape May was (and may still be) at the Ocean View Rest Stop on the Garden State Parkway, about a half-hour from Cape Island.

Ah, yes, I’m also a long-time "Ghostbusters" fan. We never had the toys, oddly enough, since we rented the movies constantly loved the cartoon, but we did used to go around with make-believe proton packs in the dark, searching for one or more of the supposedly hundreds of ghosts who live in and around Cape May.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 04/30/2006 10:25 PM

What was up with that Egon hair? It always seemed formed out of toothpaste to me.
AJ is such an ineffectual wanker.

Chestnuts roasted by squee4242 @ 04/30/2006 10:34 PM

I went to college outside of Utica, and my grandparents live in Albany, so I’d often drive back and forth between the two of them.

Used to be Roy Rogers at the rest stops, then they kind of just disappeared.

Poor Roy.

Chestnuts roasted by Adam @ 04/30/2006 10:47 PM

Can’t say that I’ve ever had Roy Rogers. It must not have made it to Kansas or Idaho, or if it ever did, it closed before I can remember.

Ryanne, might you be thinking of Arby’s? Their roast beef sandwiches taste pretty good to me. However, they recently came out with an advertising campaign stating that their chicken stuff was now 100% real chicken. It really makes me wonder what it was before. It also makes me question whether their roast beef (the real reason for going there) is 100% real beef or 50% tofu or what. I also question if their french fries are 100% real potatoes, or if the apple fritters contain real apples. The list goes on. Somehow I think this advertising campaign is going to backfire on them.

I went off-roading and camping this weekend. The scenery was usually pretty awe-inspiring. If you ever get the chance to drive or bike the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park you should go.

Also, we visited Arches National Park. I just couldn’t stop snickering. The landscape there MUST have inspired the Roadrunner cartoons. I got some pictures of a formation with the inspired name of "Balancing Rock" that just begs Wile E. Coyote to stand under it with dynamite or something.

Chestnuts roasted by spaz307 @ 04/30/2006 11:07 PM

Dammit, the80sruled, now all I can hear in my head is
"maaade from the beeest stuuuff…"

We used to have a Roy Rogers on Main Street. After it went belly-up, it sat there as a sad empty tomb for years, now it’s a store for tie-dye shirts and patchouli oil. Stupid college town.

Chestnuts roasted by Welsh Rabbit @ 04/30/2006 11:21 PM

psst, I think the Gozer link needs to be fixed, it leads back to the home page.

Chestnuts roasted by squee4242 @ 04/30/2006 11:28 PM

Oh god….Roy Rogers chicken is love.

Delcious.

When the one near my closed down I almost died. Well, not really. But I was SO upset.

Chestnuts roasted by Denise @ 05/01/2006 12:01 PM

There was this lunch table full of girls back in high school that everyone always referred to as the "Power Pullers" — now I get it! They weren’t making a crude sexual innuendo, they were giving props to Roy Rogers, and now it all makes perfect sense.

Chestnuts roasted by Review the World @ 05/01/2006 1:02 AM

This makes me so fortunate to live only a few minutes from the only Roy Rogers remaining on Long Island (on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley).

Fixin’ bars rule!

Chestnuts roasted by Adam @ 05/01/2006 1:55 AM

"I’m just saying that when the library ghost shoved her nasty face up the camera’s crotch, I had trouble sleeping for weeks"–

The Library Ghost is infamous in my life for scaring the crap out of me. I had to cover my eyes every time as a kid because it was just to horrifying. –

On the subject of Roy Rogers. They could have played up the Cowboy angle as a way to market it to kids.
The last Roy Rogers I remember seeing was in PennStation like two years ago. I bought a Hamburger there and it was god-awful. Seriously. No Exaggeration, flat-out disturbing. It’s since closed.

Chestnuts roasted by Joker @ 05/01/2006 2:23 AM

When I was a kid in North Jersey my family went to Roy Rogers so much that when we went to an actual restaurant I couldn’t understand why you paid after you ate and why you didn’t order at a counter first.
I remeber getting a MotU cup at Roy Rogers that you had to hold up to the light before turning the lights out and being amazed my a glowing Skeletor or Scare-Glow or Horde trooper that hadn’t been there before.

"That was your plan? ‘Get her!’?"

Chestnuts roasted by WonKa @ 05/01/2006 3:14 AM

Never seen a Roy Rogers. Didn’t know old cowboys even GOT their own restraunts.

Their roast beef sandwiches taste pretty good to me. However, they recently came out with an advertising campaign stating that their chicken stuff was now 100% real chicken. It really makes me wonder what it was before.
I’ve eaten Arby’s chicken before and after the campaign. There’s no difference in taste. It’s the same chicken–evidently it always was natural.

Chestnuts roasted by Mars @ 05/01/2006 4:17 AM

I have had a tramatizing experience related to ghostbusters so I am sorry but I don’t think I could watch both movies until it’s WAY out of my memory, maybe watching it with my kids. MY roommate bought both movies on dvd, and when he was gone I was really bored so I wanted to watch the second movie. Well he didn’t have any scissors, so I pulled out a knife
(this was about 4 years ago) and I was going to rip it open with it, well I ripped open my right hand’s middle finger, standing there with just a sports bra on and cut off shorts (I am a girl LOL) and I needed to goto the ER to get about 6 stitches in my hand. Still have the knife, my roommate refuses to throw away a perfectly good knife (c.cksucker) and the movie. I think the shorts still have the blood on them!! But anyway sorry but I cannot watch that movie again.

Chestnuts roasted by Goob @ 05/01/2006 4:51 AM

Heh heh, Roy rogers chicken… does he now?

Chestnuts roasted by rockasoo @ 05/01/2006 5:36 AM

Roy Rogers is beyond awesome. On every trip to NYC or north NJ, we only stop at those NJTP rest areas where Roy Rogers is present and accounted for.

They used to have one in downtown Philadelphia at the Gallery shopping mall. I think the logo is still visible (it was carved into the wood). How depressing it was to see a Roy Rogers logo with a damn Foot Locker next to it.

Chestnuts roasted by Mike F @ 05/01/2006 7:10 AM

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