Despite the goofy title, the story behind "Mr. Invincible #7 - Banana Fizzy" is a complex and interesting one, with plenty of unexpected twists and turns.
First of all, there's the unusual length of this radio spot -one minute, twenty-six seconds. The reason for this is the following: at the time (the summer of 1997) Super News Talk 780 KOH (as it was once called, at least until our Program Director, Dan Mason, called a meeting and asked the air staff "Can anyone here tell me what Super News Talk means?" and he was met with blank stares; we quickly turned ourselves into Newsradio 780 KOH, which then eventually changed to Newstalk 780 KOH. Anyway...) At the time, KOH was airing live coverage of the Nevada Wolfpack football games; I frequently found myself at the controls during these games on many a Saturday afternoon, and two things occurred to me: 1. We frequently had a little time to kill after the post-game show, meaning that I had to fill air time with things like PSA's and station promos, at least until it was time for a national news update from ABC News, and 2. it somehow seemed appropriate that we should perhaps slide a little Mr. Invincible misadventure into the post-game action; after all, drinking and driving after the big weekend game at the University of Nevada - Reno was something of a very real concern to local law enforcement. Taking these things into consideration, an epic Mr. Invincible spot was born.
We (of course) took things to our usual extreme in an effort to make a serious point; there's no way anyone can function behind the wheel of a car after "16 beers, 4 margaritas, and a Banana Fizzy"- whatever the heck that is; to the best of my knowledge, there's no such thing as a Banana Fizzy- we merely came up with that because it sounded funny. (Always follow the rules of Comedy Gold, folks: some words are guaranteed to make you giggle: Banana. Chicken. Underwear.) On the "inside joke" level, we worked in a little bit of a dig at the misfortune of the Nevada Wolfpack football team with the chant of "We're Number Two! We're Number Two!"
We couldn't help but be a little nervous about this one, because the last thing we wanted to do was make a DUI seem trivial. However, it all seemed to come together beautifully, even with the obviously silly "cops and donuts" gag. (Important note: the voice of Mr. Invincible's psychotic cellmate at the end of the spot belongs to none other than the great Bob Castle, who unfortunately passed away in 2007; Bob was the sort of radio talent who could nail something in just one take- and that's exactly what he did here, playing the role of "Bubba" after we spent only about a minute describing what we wanted him to do.)
One more thing. This spot first aired on KOH on August 31st, 1997, at about 4:58 PM Pacific Standard Time. The reason I remember it so clearly? Just moments after this spot made its debut, the first report of the car accident that claimed the life of Princess Diana hit the airwaves at 5:02 PM; ABC News was just starting to offer the first initial reports of what had happened, and of course, everyone knows what transpired later that evening. As a result of that horrid event, every Mr. Invincible spot that was in rotation at the time -all seven of them- were promptly removed from the KOH studio and stored in my private locker for the next month; we had a horrible fear of one of those comedic spots playing after a tragic ABC News update, and we weren't about to let something like that derail our whole traffic safety campaign. Interestingly, we later learned that all of the national networks that we were doing business with at the time had decided to pull all of the "Vince & Larry" traffic safety ads as well.
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