This is how you poison kids on Halloween…
Welcome to the horror show that is the start of another week, Moanday! That means it’s time for The Nest to haunt whatever the zombies left of your brain with another nightmare of an earworm straight out of that rock and roll hell we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy is looking rather slutty spooky in her Elvira costume, while the Sponkies are both fighting over who gets to dress as Rainbow Donkey. Say “Bow Wow Wow” if you want ear candy…
Once upon a time, I was using my gift of sarcasm and wit on this blog to skewer many of the classic TV commercials of our past to expose them for the fucked up messes they really were. At the height of my Retro TV Ad Tuesday run three years ago, I featured one of my better entries delving into the madness that was those Mentos ads of the early 90’s. You probably remember them… the kids who would get into some stupid dilemma, the batshit insane idea they’d come up with to combat the problem only after popping a mint in their mouth, the laughable act of perfect product placement each spot ended on where the “hero” would hold the roll of Mentos up to the camera so everyone could see what brand of mind altering drugs they were taking…
Yes officers, the carjacker is armed! With a roll of MENTOS!!! Hurry!!!
Oh, and that godawful, annoying, nonsensical fucking jingle that would accompany this thirty seconds of televised torture that would make my Shelf Critter Theatre productions seem like Shakespearean plays. “It doesn’t matter what comes, fresh goes better in life! With Mentos fresh and full of life!” What the fuck!?!? The lyrics to “Louie Louie” actually make more sense than that collection of rejected phrases from a motivational speech. Who wrote that shit? And thank Dog they didn’t turn it into a full length song…
Oh wait, they did. They really fucking did. And you know what………… it’s actually not that bad!
Thanks to the voluminous archive that is the internet, there is very little that exists in this world that you can not find out at least some basic information on its origins if you know how to use Google. Yet this song, for whatever reason, is like the Stonehenge of the world wide web. It’s there for anyone to see, but nobody seems to know where in the hell it came from.
Time to get out the candy volume of those Mysteries of the Unknown books from Time Life.
The video I linked to above (Which was uploaded after I first tackled this mystery in 2014) credits this song to some made-up outfit called Peppermint Park. A comment on the original version of this song I found claims that the singer of this inanity is some European vocalist by the name of Frank Ryan (aka Richard Ryan Graves). One thing that does not seem to be in dispute is that the familiar Mentos jingle was written by German composer John Groves.
John Groves is quite fresh and full of life.
But maybe the biggest mystery surrounding this underground full length version of the Mentos song is which came first….. the jingle or the song!?!? If the commercial jingle came first, then what was the purpose of turning it into a full three minute ditty that removes all traces of the Mentos name from it? And if the song came first….. no, that would just be nuts. Nobody could possibly come up with something as fucked up as this completely out of the context of a Mentos commercial…
Fresh goes better! It makes perfect sense to me…
But in all seriousness, that lost three minute version of the Mentos theme kicks ass in a way only the 80’s could. I’ll have some more better fresh music for you next Monday…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
imagine that 3 minutes… wonder what the price was for a 3-minute commercial in the 80’s … I never liked it… well maybe a little bit as it was used to build the fab mentos fountains…
How about three hours? They totally missed out on making The Mentos Movie!
I had to turn it off at the 1:00 mark because holy flaming Mento’s, that sucked. Just wow.
That means you missed the badass guitar solo. It puts Eddie Van Halen to shame. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit…
P.S. You missed Brother Bear’s SCT debut Friday.
He looked great, but a little flat.
Mentos – coughs and throws up a bit. The only good thing they are used for is blowing up soda. Snorts and rolls with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
But you can sing this fun song while you are cleaning Coke off the walls….
Snorts with piggy laughter. I’ll just blame it on daddy. Yep, that’s the ticket – XOXO – Bacon
“It’s easy when you’re full of life.”
This is good sleuthing, evil. And you’re right, this song should be subtitled: “Welcome to the 80s.” What a tune.
The song is definitely dated. Any possibility it could be a fake of the modern internet is destroyed by its 80’s authenticity…
I don’t even know what to say except I hope I don’t spend the next week with that stuck in my head!
LOL! It would be frustrating to have a 25 year old commercial jingle stuck in your head. You can’t even sing it out loud without looking weird…
I would wonder about the sanity of anyone who walked around singing the Mentos jingle! But I take back what I said about not wanting it stuck in my head. It would be a vast improvement over the whiny-ass POS song that keeps trying to play in my head. I don’t know what it’s called but it’s really annoying and I would prefer to be thinking about the fresh, minty flavor of Mentos!
Way way way way way too “happy” a song/beat/sound – gosh were the 80s really all that BOUNCY? The 80s were not all that great for me……maybe that’s how I managed to miss all that bounciness…….thankfully.
Pam
Everyone was supposed to be happy and colorful and high on hair spray! This Mentos song is definitely the culmination of that very weird decade…
I think I’ll stick with this song, with its video parody of Mentos spots. Much better tune imo….
I caught that video in the dying days of VH1 Classic a few years ago and thought it was hilarious… especially since I think I’d just written my original post on the ads at the time. The song is OK…. the dude’s pigtails are another story however….
I’ve been trying to remember the song and it is totally gone. I kind of LIKE Mentos and I’ll be damned if I remember the song or any remnant of it. Is it because I’m old? Or just demented?
The ads were so insipid, it probably got filed in some undisclosed portion of the brain. I really thought the commercials were a put on at first…. like, how can anyone seriously think this is going to sell more mints? Well, here we are 25 years later still talking about them…
I just have to laugh. Those Mentos ads were SO awful and so random. But I have to thank you for the laugh. I have to show those to my 18 year old. I’ve told her about them so many times.
Most of the ones I remember are on YouTube somewhere. So weird, and such an international feel to them as well. I swear, the first Mentos commercial I ever saw was in Spanish in my high school Spanish class! I had no idea it was the next big thing….
I just have to laugh. Those ads were so random and so bad. You gotta love it.
They both Suck Mento’s!
Don’t suck those Mentos too hard, or your mouth will explode with fizz!
Ha! Ha!
Not a fan 😦 I can’t help thinking the advert came first, unless he was singing about personal hygiene and someone at Mentos co-opted it.
It’s just tough to imagine what the song could have possibly meant if it came first, and just as tough to imagine why a full length and brand-sanitized version would have been made if it came later. Whoever wrote it was either insane or sadistic…
Hmmm, guess I’m looking forward to the next edition since that ad was neither remembered nor memorable in my brain’s dusty memory bank. Wonder what I was doing to not have had to endure that schlock? The only reason I ask is it would be good to duplicate especially now during the political season. I’d love to be able to not see, hear or remember any more lies from candidates and certain elected officials.
I think this is the first Monday earworm I’ve ever posted that was universally disliked by everyone who commented! You must not have watched much TV in the early 90’s to miss the Mentos ads…. they were so screwed up and persistent, I don’t think they could have been forgotten!
Ha! Trust me, I definitely watched plenty of 90’s TV but honestly don’t recall that ad. Not very effective marketing for my wheelhouse. 😆