Frosty Morn Pigs: Update

You remember Frosty Morn, don't you? Besides the oddest sausage-related name imaginable (Frosty? Morn?), they are known for terror-delighting millions throughout the South for decades.

As we said long ago, Frosty Morn made its mark by employing a cunning strategy built on suicidal animals and a relentlessly repeated jingle. So significant was Frosty Morn that a second look is in order.

In the animated advertisement under discussion here, a meat elf instructs a class of pigs on the benefits of Frosty Morn ham. That is, he inspires them to grab their destinies with both hands, to rush headlong into their hickory-smoked future and dive into their sugar-cured doom.

Not, you understand, that they require much coaxing. They're practically prancing in expectant joy! These pigs are the aptest of pupils. They need very little convincing. Hell, they came to school pre-convinced that their lives are already spoken for.

Sing it over and over and over again!
(Meat Elf) Frosty Morn!
Sing it over and you sing it over again!
(Meat Elf) Frosty Morn!

The height of a piggy’s ambition
From the day he is born
Is hope that he’ll be good enough
To be a Frosty Morn!

(Solo pig, spoken) All Frosty Morn meat is government inspected.

For meat that’s wonderfully different
They tenderize these hams.
They sugar cure and hick’ry smoke
That’s Frosty Morn—yes, ma’am!

(Meat Elf) So everybody join in!

Annnd…

Sing it over and over and over again!
(Meat Elf) Frosty Morn!
Sing it over and you sing it over again!
(All) Frosty Morn!

It's almost charming how blatant they are. The repetition is no hidden technique. It's front and center! Sing it over and over and over again! Repeat it until you're ready to believe anything. A destructive absurdity will do as well as a consoling truth. A proposition's value depends not one scrap on its intellectual rigor, its logical consistency, its congruity with the facts. Instead, it depends on its ubiquity. And, of course, on the degree to which it leads animals to seek their own deaths.


(Thanks to Dr. Tom for the referral.)