Soupy Sales is Off the Air
Pie-in-the-face television comedian Soupy Sales died at age 83 Thursday night of multiple health problems. The longtime children’s TV host once got into trouble for an unusual request he made to his young viewers:
On New Year’s Day 1965, Soupy Sales asked youngsters to go through their parents’ clothing and send him little green pieces of paper with pictures of men with beards. He later reported receiving only a few dollar bills and said he donated them to charity, but Metromedia, the station’s owner, suspended him briefly after a viewer complained to the Federal Communications Commission that he was encouraging children to steal.
In one episode of his show, the crew surprised Soupy with a back-door visit from a stripper, which you can see on YouTube in kid-friendly and kid-unfriendly versions:
Over the years, Sales was falsely credited with sneaking numerous dirty jokes past his young viewers. Snopes.Com helpfully provides examples:
- Soupy’s telling the joke: “What starts with ‘F’ and ends with ‘UCK’? A fire truck!”
- Soupy’s singing a ditty entitled “If you see Kay . . .”
- Soupy’s playing a game with White Fang in which the dog grunts the alphabet but consistently misidentifies the letter ‘F’ as the letter ‘K’ until Soupy blurts out in mock exasperation: “Everytime I see ‘F,’ you see ‘K’!”
- Soupy’s telling his audience: “I climbed up a tree and kissed my girl between the limbs.”
- Soupy’s exclaiming: “My wife can’t cook, but she sure can cream my banana!”
- Soupy’s announcing: “I took my wife to a baseball game — I kissed her on the strikes, and she kissed me on the balls.”