Word: gobbler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Someone from ABC apparently heard "Jingle Bells" in the jingle of coins at a video arcade recently. And the result means big bucks for the people who gave video-gobbler Pac-Man his own Saturday morning cartoon. Based on this show's success as the highest-rated children's show on television, the agents behind Pac-Man's TV career now bring us "Christmas Comes to Pac Land Presumably, Ms. Pac-Man will guest star in the Dec. 16 special, with Marty Engels as the voice of the electronic big-mouth...
Among presidential audiences, one of the more curious is surely the annual live gift from the National Turkey Federation. Last year's wattled visitor set off a flapdoodle when it squawked and beat its wings at the approach of President Reagan. This year's 50-lb. gobbler had been exposed to human contact for a couple of months to avoid a repeat performance, although in the Rose Garden one observer noted that the turkey "looked like he was on 'hides." (The fowl, which will be used for breeding, was not on tranquilizers, insisted N.T.F. representatives.) The President...
Ordinarily one does not advertise in this space, but occasionally commerce and virtue coincide. Behold the Graffiti Gobbler-"the first effective, no mix, inexpensive formula that quickly and easily removes graffiti without harming the original appearance of the surface." (Did you feel your heart leap?) Already proved successful in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Detroit and Windsor, Ont. (Canadian graffiti?), the "spray-on, wipe-off' Gobbler is right now being tested on the New York City subways, the end of the line. If it works there, its Australian inventor, Norman Shuttleworth, will be the Emperor of Gotham. No fame will equal...
...course, if the Gobbler works, we will lose a bit in the bargain. The instructive messages in public toilets, the phone numbers, the lively anatomical drawings-no loss in any of that. But some things will be missed. The desperate erudition on the walls of college hangouts, for example: ARS LONGA; VITA HERRING. The continuing message exchanges will also disappear...
...graffiti had stayed at that innocent level, there would be no need for Mr. Shuttleworth. No Gobbler would have been welcome in the days when Kilroy was here. But Kilroy is not here any more and his, in any case, was a benevolent omnipresence. Not so with his successors: TURP, BOOB, HURK, DZ3, SONY, JUNIOR Y, SODA 1, whose names-if they are names-twist and bubble on the flat surfaces of our lives like virulent bacteria. No place in the country is safe, but New York City is actually under siege, its walls tottering under the cumulative weight...