Monday, December 3, 2012

Nostalgic Mood

Does anyone remember the Nestle Quik dog,Farfel? I loved that dog and sent in for a Farfel doll. The doll was kind of a spongy brown rubber with wires inside so you could pose him however you wanted. Alas,he was lost in our house fire.
Farfel was created by ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson after a patron left a stuffed dog in a nightclub he was working in. Jimmy commissioned a Chicago dummy maker to make the dog. He named the dog Farfel,after the Jewish pasta dish. Farfel was an instant hit.
The commercials,which ran from 1955-1965,had Nelson's human dummy Danny O'Day singing: "N-E-S-T-L-E-S,Nestle's makes the very best...Farfel:Choc-late at the end Farfel's mouth would close with a snap,which is not good ventriloquist technique. The snap happened when Nelson auditioned for the Nestle executives,his hands were sweating from nerves resulting in his finger slipping off the mouth control. The executives liked it so much they insisted Nelson keep it.
The trio were also regular performers on The Ed Sullivan Show (or was that Shoe?) and The Texaco Star Theater.

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