My wife boiled a dozen eggs today and as I stared at the bowl, I wondered how many of those eggs I could eat. Now I didn’t do this because I was hungry, I did it because Paul Newman managed to wolf down 50 of them in Cool Hand Luke, and I always wonder if that would even be possible.
A movie can make or break a product. It took me years to eat a Baby Ruth bar after the pool scene in Caddyshack, and I still won’t eat chocolate covered pretzels unless I break the seal on the bag myself. But do you remember how popular Reese’s Pieces were after a certain lumpy brown alien started eating them? Some foods trigger memories of movie scenes for me every time I see them, and since it’s a slow news day, I thought I’d write some down:
- Animal House: Hard boiled eggs (Correction: mashed potatoes)–“I’m a zit!”
- Breakfast Club: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich (with the crusts cut off, of course)
- Caddyshack: Baby Ruth candy bar
- Die Hard: Twinkies
- Field of Dreams: Hot dogs
- Forrest Gump: Box of Chocolates
- Ghostbusters: Marshmallows
- Goodfellas: Spaghetti sauce (don’t burn the Sunday sauce!)
- Goonies: Rocky Road ice cream and truffles
- National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: Eggnog
- Pretty Woman: Chocolate covered strawberries and escargot
- Pulp Fiction: Whopper (or a burger royale with cheese for our French friends)
- Rocky: Raw eggs
- Silence of the Lambs: Liver
- Stand By Me: Pie
I posed the question on Twitter and got some great ones:
- Angel Heart: Hard boiled egg (@CraigSpivey)
- Clerks: Pringles (@smurfwreck)
- E.T.: Reese’s Pieces (@geeky_vixen)
- Fatso: Hot dogs from a street vendor (@DadsDish)
- Ghostbusters: Twinkies (@CraigSpivey)
- Mallrats: Chocolate covered pretzels (@geeky_vixen)
- Real Genius: Popcorn (@Fyffo)
- Young Sherlock Holmes: Pastries (@smurfwreck)
Thanks to everyone for all their input! So, are there any foods that trigger a pop culture memory for you? Add a comment below.
If I were to think of a food for The Goonies it would be a Baby Ruth(but I could see rocky road ice cream as well).
And it’s been a while since I last saw Animal House, but I always thought that was mashed potatoes.
If I were to pick a food from Clerks, it would be Gatorade(in those cool glass bottles).
I copied this off the script, so you can see what I mean.
RANDAL
Bitch, bitch, bitch. You want
something to drink?
(walking away)
DANTE
Gatorade.
Pause. Then…
RANDAL (O.C.)
What happened to all the Gatorade?
DANTE
Exactly. They drank it all.
Jason, you are correct! I just checked Hulu and it was mashed potatoes not a hard boiled egg in Animal House, but for me it will always be an egg. it still looks like one to me!
Your mention of mashed potatoes made me think of another classic: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Wow, I was just prepping an article about movie branded food stuffs, which is similar to this. Get out of my head dude.
Here’s a few:
Back to the Future: Pepsi Free
Silence of the Lambs: I would add fava beans and Chianti
Fools Rush In: Gray’s Papaya hot dogs
Harold and Kumar: White Castle (of course)
James Bond: martini (shaken not stirred)
Sex and the City: Cosmopolitan
Great minds think alike, and it takes great minds to come up with such important concepts as these. 😉
Awesome list. I can’t wait to see what you come up with on http://www.cavalcadeofawesome.net