Mmmmmm, don’t mind if I do.
There are five Mondays in the month of December, and the equine musical staff at The Nest plans to put each of them to very good use. That’s because we’re now into the Top 5 of our salute to the songs out there that just make us laugh… the Top 30 Novelty Songs of All Time Countdown! DJ Scratchy’s got her wildest and most colorful 80’s gear on while spinning our fifth favorite song of the weird, while the Sponkies get a lesson on just how cool and extremely bizarre the new wave era could be…
#5. “I Eat Cannibals” – Total Coleo
A decade and a half before Britain gave us the Spice Girls, it spawned another quintet of extremely talented and quirky ladies who could dance and sing their ways into our hearts. Unfortunately for the early 80’s group Toto Coleo, they didn’t quite achieve the worldwide fame and fortune that their successors did. But at least before the budget for their garbage bag wardrobe completely ran out, in 1982 they were able to record one of the 80’s strangest little secrets that will no doubt make you wonder what we were all smoking back in the day…
It’s possible that after viewing this unintentional parody of early 80’s music and style that you may not have noticed that the group seems to have two subtly different names. Their official name is Toto Coleo, however when their song was released in the US (Where it actually made a small dent in the Hot 100 chart at #66), their record company tweaked the name to Total Coleo just in case someone might confuse five chicks wearing Hefty dresses and singing about eating people with the US band who was busy at the time trying to show us how much white people know about Africa…
They’ve got 99 problems, but being confused with Toto Coleo ain’t one.
As strange as a song about comparing love to eating human flesh is just on reasonable logical principles, the video the gals shot for this song is somehow even more insane. You can shop at Goodwill every day for a decade and not come up with cheesier costumes than the Coleo girls are prancing around with in their neon jungle. Their makeup, as was common at the time, looks like it was applied with a paint roller… and their hairstyles were done by an open electrical outlet. When I first featured this video in one of my past MTV tributes, I mentioned that if you had an 80’s style bingo card, you could easily get a coverall just from watching the video for “I Eat Cannibals”…
Mock away, but keep in mind, it’s still better than Miley, Taylor and Gaga put together…
I hope you’re hungry for more silliness, because I’ll be back next Monday with Song #4 in the countdown!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
wow and they came really from europe with plastic clothes and aquanet in their hair? amazing how the messages changed from the 80’s till today ;O)
The 80’s was all about greed and selfishness… and obviously that was applied to fashion as well!
I . . don’t . . even . . . I think all I can do is jabber after watching that. It’s so perfect, like if you were needing to teach someone what the worst of the 80s were all about you could just say, hey, watch this video. And recycle your trash bags, people!
Also, was that one short haired blond chick a reincarnated Marilyn Monroe? I kept expecting her to sing “Hefty is a girl’s best friend!”
Even funnier, I sort of like the song. It’s still better than anything Justin Bieber puts out, and will be in my head all day. Can’t wait to show the Things. They’ll love it.
It is a really good song… very 80’s, which is always good. I knew the song before I ever saw the video, and was blown away at the level of cheese. It is one of the greatest things ever…
It is truly, truly, truly outrageous, I agree.
Oh my…that is the perfect video to demonstrate the cheesy-ness of the 80’s! I was confused about the mentions of flesh though because I’ve got some sort of dyslexia going on and I read the name of the song as I Eat Cannabis. Even with your title of Eat Me and the Anthony Hopkins photo, cannabis is what my eyes saw instead of cannibal.
Would you like a brownie, Clarice?
I used the cannibals/cannabis thing as a Mitzi-ism before. Sometime, I even sing the song like that… though I don’t believe cannabis should be directly ingested.
I guess I’ve been having visual Mitzi-isms! And I haven’t even been ingesting cannabis. Although I think I might have gotten second hand stoned just walking out to my garbage can the other day. My yard and driveway were enveloped in a cloud of some really skunky weed. I looked around but didn’t see Fuzzywig anywhere!
You’d be able to tell if Fuzzywig were lurking around because there’d be nonstop barking! If the smell was really skunky, it could have been Rainy, though I don’t think she’d want to leave here with all of the rain and frozen rain we’ve been getting…
More from the “Donner Party Collection of Sing Along Songs”. When I first glanced at this, before I scrolled down, I was sure it would be “Timothy.” You know, the song about the two guys who eat their friend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqDu5LBT8_Y
It is so weird and pathetic.
But this is a new one to me. And so much fun. I can’t believe I went through the entire 80’s and never knew about “I Eat Cannibals” or Toto Coleo. Thanks for another fun countdown song I never knew existed.
Timothy will always be THE cannibalism song, though it’s not obvious enough to qualify as a novelty song. I remember singing along with it as a kid on the oldies station my folks listened to and had no idea what it was about until much, much later on…
I first heard “I Eat Cannibals” on a short lived 80’s station we had in town back in 2001. I never saw the video until I looked it up on YouTube about 6 or 7 years ago. This one is buried very deep in the closet of 80’s goodness, and I’m happy to have introduced it to a few more people who missed out on it!
Absolutely never heard of this group or even heard this song but I do like the trash bag look. Great thing to wear to a party where you just might drink too much and have some happy accidents! Thanks for giving me a NEW ear worm. Somehow it’s strangely catchy.
Pam
A lot of the new wave bands of the early 80’s, especially from the UK, had the trash bag look going on in their videos. The girls in A Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran” are also rocking the wardrobe by Hefty look. This song is extremely catchy, and I’m a little surprised it didn’t become a bigger hit here… or at least an 80’s nostalgia favorite.
Probably people couldn’t see the video through the haze of smoke in the 80s……… 🙂
Clearly the 80’s did not have anti-frizz hair products.
No, I think the 80’s had just plain frizz hair products. Thankfully I was a boy and just got a bowl cut like all the other kids…
That’s terrible and terrifying. That must be one I turned off whenever it came on. I almost remember it but not quite.
I figured it would probably not be your kind of music. Given its performance in the US, apparently it wasn’t even most new wave fans’ kind of music…
The band name doesn’t ring any bells but I definitely remember the song. Ah, those were the days…
When the music was weird, and we loved it for that…