For as long as most consumers in the West can remember, it’s been Coca-Cola versus Pepsi-Cola, vying for the public’s preferred carbonated soft drink. Just how long is that? Well, the Pepsi-Cola Company was established in 1902, ten years after Coca-Cola did, so the rivalry got going pretty much early on in the 20th century. It was a long gestation period however for Pepsi before it got close to being competitive with Coca-Cola✱. PepsiCo struggled so much in the early years that in 1923 the company was even declared bankrupt – basically due to WWI sugar rationing in the US. Eight years later it filed for bankruptcy again! Pepsi never actually went away though, slowly and methodically rebuilding itself as a significant player in the industry, albeit for a long time it remained as one observer put it, a “persistent gadfly” in a lake dominated by Coca-Cola (Kahn).
In its early days Coke was marketed both as a medicinal drink and as a “refreshing tonic”
While Coca-Cola powered on with innovatively marketing (using high profile sportsmen) its product to kids with Santa Claus’ help, and expanding Coke overseas, Pepsi didn’t really get its act together until the middle of the 20th Century. PepsiCo shifted its branding and marketing (moving from bottles to cans and adopting patriotic red, white and blue colours for the product). Another direction Pepsi goes in at this time is product diversification … the company’s 1965 merger with Frito-Lay Inc marks Pepsi’s foray into the snack food field. It also acquired other soft drink brands like Mountain Dew in 1964. Coca-Cola on the other hand confined itself to the beverage field with the introduction of TaB (a sugar-free diet version of Coke), then Sprite and Fresca.
Pepsi’s watershed year was 1975 when it mounted the “Pepsi Challenge”, a series of filmed blind-taste tests in which the majority of participants chose Pepsi over Coke as their preferred soda. This boosted Pepsi sales and escalated the rivalry between the two “Big Sodas”, kicking off what became known in America from the Sixties on as the “Cola Wars” or the “Soda Wars”. Until the Pepsi Challenge happened Coca-Cola had been coasting somewhat, complacently presenting itself as “the real thing” in contrast to the upstart pretender. Coca-Cola’s response to PepsiCo’s move was to promote the then most popular personality on US TV Bill Cosby as “the face of Coke”.
Pepsi embarked on a marketing campaign which depicted itself as a younger, hipper brand than its outmoded rival. Drinking Pepsi was a cool thing to do (so proclaimed the marketers), when stacked up against the tired, same old, same old Coke alternative. Integral to PepsiCo’s campaign was the recruitment of celebrities to endorse the beverage, the centrepiece of which was Michael Jackson. Other pop music icons followed the success of Jackson’s involvement with the product – David Bowie, Madonna, Lionel Ritchie, etc. Ad men heralded Pepsi as “the choice of a new generation”.
In the early Eighties, under pressure from Pepsi’s inroads into the market, Coca-Cola introduced diet Coke, a caffeine-free soda, followed by a complete redesign of Coke—given the secret codename “Project Kansas”—the outcome in 1985 was a sweeter Coke, New Coke. To counter Pepsi’s sweeter, more syrupy taste, Coca-Cola replaced sugar with corn syrup (which also reduced the production cost). New Coke however proved a disaster for the company, provoking a huge backlash from loyal consumers, some described the new taste as like “two day old Pepsi”. Southern fans of Coke, where Coca-Cola (and Pepsi) had its origins, were especially offended.
Faced with an avalanche of criticism, Coca-Cola brought back the old formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic”. New Coke for its part got rebranded but never really took off and was eventually discontinued. Disappointment that it was, New Coke did provide one unanticipated positive – it managed to reawaken in many Coca-Cola drinkers suffering from a bout of ennui a new craving for the original taste (Little).
The feud between Pepsi and Coke has continued to the present, in contemporary times reaching social media and outer space. In 2011 the hardball rivalry saw PepsiCo target Coke’s famous, family-friendly mascots, the polar bears and even every child’s favourite stranger Santa.
Vintage 1950s ad: “Pepsi-Chic” before it went “Pepsi-Hip” (Robt Levering)
The battle between the brown carbonated sugar beverages has seen Pepsi and Coca-Cola go tit-for-tat. Coke had the contour bottle so Pepsi introduced the swirl bottle, Pepsi had Gatorade so Coke had Powerade, Coke had Fanta so Pepsi had Tropicana, and so on. Only the decision by Pepsi to branch into non-beverage fields has not seen Coca-Cola follow suit. Some industry observers attribute Pepsi’s declining market position commensurate to Coke (2008–2018: Pepsi’s market share fell from 10.3 to 8.4 per cent, while Coca-Cola’s rose from 17.3 to 17.8 per cent) to it’s preoccupation with diversification leading to the company losing its focus on its flagship product (Weiner-Bronner; Beverage Digest).
World domination through the prism of “Coca-colonisation”
Both Coke and Pepsi are deeply embedded in American culture and psyche as national icons. Coca-Cola’s brand recognition goes beyond this, embodying a universality that is global in reach. Mid-century Coca-Cola officials gleefully crowed that the drink is the “most American thing in America”. Robert W Woodruff, Coca-Cola president for over three decades, declared it to be “the essence of capitalism”. World War II enabled Coca-Cola to spread the word via US servicemen by cleverly promising (and delivering) them the sugary product in overseas theatres of war. The seemingly unstoppable postwar expansion of Coke as the company sought to extend its market to all corners of the world met with some international pushback. Certain European states like France (spurred on by agitation by the French Communist Party) staunchly resisted the drink’s introduction to their domestic markets, an attempt as they saw it to “Coca-colonise” other sovereign nations. In such countries the arrival of Coca-Cola bottles on their city shop shelves was seen as a pervasive evil, a symbol of American cultural imperialism, an all-consuming Americanisation which undermines the way of life and values of their society⍟.
Footnote: the Big Sodas rivalry had ad companies of second-half 20th century working overtime to come up with the jingle or tagline that would give their client the edge … from Coca-Cola’s early go-to “The pause that refreshes” to the TV age’s standards “Things Go Better with Coke” and “It’s the Real Thing” (the words “real” and “real thing” recur over the decades in Coca-Cola’s ad campaigns). Pepsi for its part, went from “more bounce to the ounce” in 1950 to its 1960s accent on youth, “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation” and numerous variations over the years on this theme (“young” and “generation” are the key Pepsi words that recur through the jingles and slogans).
Photo: George Marks/Retrofile/Getty
Postscript: The taste difference!
Most people know that Coca-Cola originally used small amounts of cocaine in the famous beverage (scandalous as that may seem to modern sensibilities), but what is it that makes the two brown-coloured soft drinks taste a bit different? They both have carbonated water, sugar, colour Caramel E150d, phosphoric acid and natural flavourings. Well, according to Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, 2005), its the hints of citrus acid that is added to Pepsi that sets the drinks apart – cf. Coke’s citrus-free, sweet vanilla and raisin flavours.
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✱ Pepsi was always coming from behind in the formative period, by the time PepsiCo was founded the Big Coke was already selling about one million gallons a year
⍟ the familiar bottle of Coke is boundless as well as ubiquitous, having been carried under the North Pole and into outer space
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Articles and sites consulted:
‘Why Coke is winning the cola wars’, (Danielle Wiener-Bronner), CNN Business, 21-Feb-2018, www. money.cnn.com
‘COKE VS. PEPSI: The Amazing Story Between the Cola Wars’, (Kim Bhasin), Business Insider, 02-Nov-2011, www.businessinsider.com
‘Ever Wondered What’s The Difference Between Coca-Cola and Pepsi? It’s Literally ONE Ingredient’, (Bobbie Edsor), Delish, 03-Dec-3020, www.delish.com
‘The Universal Drink’, (E.J.Kahn Jr), The New Yorker, 06-Feb-1959, www.newyorker.com
‘The Cola Wars’, (Melissa Santore), Ranker.com, 20-Feb-2020, www.ranker.com
The story of Robin Hood is one of those enduring English chronicles from the distant past, which like the Arthurian legend has continually provided rich fodder for the screen. The basic story is an all-too familiar one with universal appeal: a virtuous Saxon nobleman in Mediaeval England, fleeced out of his estate and title by powerful villains, responds by mobilising an heroic and effective resistance against the status quo, on the way freeing the poor and oppressed peasantry from their yokes. That the legend is known throughout the Anglophone world and Europe, is testimony to the fact has there been so many film and television goes at retelling the legend – starting with the first silent one in 1908.
It wasn’t until the 1922 silent version with Robin Hood played by the lead Hollywood actor of the day Douglas Fairbanks Sr that the Robin Hood movie achieved serious cinematic recognition. Fairbanks’ athletic prowess and spectacular stunts elevated the movie and captured the imagination of audiences. With a budget of nearly one million dollars (one of the biggest in the silent era) the 1922 Robin Hood helped to establish the ‘swashbuckler’ sub-genre in cinema.
The next version of note, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is considered by many to be the best movie on the iconic Saxon hero. Errol Flynn in the title role brings the energy and verve to the film that largely accounts for The Adventures of Robin Hood’s standing as one of the great swashbucklers of Hollywood. As one critic observed: “Flynn’s Robert of Locksley, dripping with sexuality, good humor, panache and swagger, captures not only the derring-do character, but also the more dramatic side of his fight for injustice” (Susan King, ‘Classic Hollywood: 100 Years of Robin Hood movies’, LA Times, 12-May-2010). The use of (Technicolor) colour, still not widely used at that time, added to the film’s freshness and appeal.
R Todd in the Lincoln Green
For most Flynn’s performance and the 1938 classic has remained the benchmark. Of the numerous subsequent RH iterations, none have really stacked up against The Adventures of Robin Hood but some of the efforts do warrant a degree of favourable mention. The modest 1952 low-profile Disney flick, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men is a sleeper of a movie compared to the blockbusters above, but it proved popular in the US (good performance by Irish actor Richard Todd in the lead) and was in the main well received by the press: “an expert rendition of an ancient legend”; “as lively as a sturdy Western” (New York Times); a “zesty, colorfully retelling of the familiar story” (Leonard Maltin); and for its authentic English locations.
One of two 1991 feature film versions of Robin Hood was the much hyped Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves which did well at the box office but was not critical well received. Kevin Costner was lambasted for his less than credible impersonation of an English noble as was the screenplay, though Alan Rickman won plaudits for his deliciously hammy Sheriff of Nottingham — “wicked, droll, sly, eye-rolling, witty one-liners and put-downs” (Roger Ebert). The second film entitled simply Robin Hood, starring another Irish thespian Patrick Bergin, tries for more modern touches. The movie tones down the traditional “rob from the rich, give to the poor”, socialist-leaning revolutionary Robin, opting for a more out and out impudent anti-authoritarian (Tom Jicha, SunSentinel, 13-May-1991). Another innovation is the replacement of Hood’s traditional nemeses, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy of Gisborne, with two new baddies, Sir Miles Folcanet and Baron Deguerre. The Maid Marian role in RH adaptions are usually passive objects of attention, but this film has Uma Thurman attempting to redress this by actively participating in the climactic sword fight, (one critic was dismissive of this as “a contrived nod to present-day feminism”, Tom Shales, The Washington Post, 13-May-1991).
Crowe’s band
Two more recent iterations of RH have sought to give the story a modern twist. Both Ridley Scott’s revisionist 2010 Robin Hood and the 2018 version analogised the time-honoured legend with the post-9/11 West’s preoccupation with the war on terror. The critical consensus was that Ridley Scott’s version was dour and joyless with the essential adventure ingredient of the tale drained out. Russell Crowe playing Hood as a hardened war veteran was singled out for specific criticism by some – too old to play the role, his accent sounded more Irish or even Scottish than Nottinghamshire, etc. The 2018 Robin Hood depicts the Merry Men, clothed in half-modern costumes, as if they are SAS commandos entwined in a Middle East-type scenario picking off terrorists with automatic weapons (’14 Big Scren Robin Hoods’: Ranked’, (Mary Sollosi), 14-Jun-2019, EW.com).
The 1950s was the first decade that television really impacted on the public and popular culture in advanced Western countries…for countless viewers in Britain, Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand, this meant a new opportunity to indulge in the perennial classic adventure story of the Lincoln-green set. In those pioneering days in the new medium Associated Television’s Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-59) was compulsory viewing in grainy black and white. Richard Greene was a reassuringly efficient “righter of wrongs” and appropriately English in pedigree. His presence as Hood aided by interesting stories and an enticingly catchy theme song, saw the production through 143 episodes. The success of the Greene “Robin Hood” inspired a new wave of TV series on the Nottinghamshire archer extraordinaire from the Seventies on🅐. The pick of these is probably the 1984 series Robin of Sherwood which had the novelty of two different incarnations of Robin Hood. The ITV series was widely praised as a “gritty, authentic production design with real-life history, 20th century fiction and pagan myth” (‘Robin Hood’, Wikipedia). World expert on Robin Hood literature Stephen Knight described it as “the most innovative and influential version of the myth in recent times”. A haunting soundtrack by Clannad helped the “moody and atmospheric” vibe of Robin of Sherwood. Personally, I’m a bit partial to a more recent Robin Hood series (2006-09), largely for Keith Allen’s high camp, deeply sarcastic performance, replete with a range of exaggerated often incredulous facial gestures as the Sheriff of Nottingham (one episode spoofs the Bob Marley song in its title, “Who Shot the Sheriff?”).
So deeply embedded in film and popular culture is the Robin Hood story that inevitably someone would lampoon it and that somebody was Mel Brooks in his 1993 parody Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Brooks makes fun of other (serious) iterations of RH like Costner’s Prince of Thieves. In fact Brooks has already roamed into this territory in television in 1975 with his sitcom on Hood and co, When Things Were Rotten. Both were replete with one-liners, sight gags, literal humour and anachronisms (something the non-humorous versions were also very prone to).
One of the funniest alternative iterations of Robin Hood came out of late Eighties children’s television. Creator Tony Robinson‘s Maid Marian and her Merry Men as the title suggests inverts the roles of the legend…Marian is the de facto leader and the brains of the Sherwood Forest outlaws, while Robin, an incompetent ex-tailor (“Robin of Kensington”) is a complete airhead. Another comic inversion of the traditional legend seen here and in Men in Tights is the presentation of Robin as being far from heroic.
Marian’s outfit
Footnote: One of the quintessential personal traits of Robin Hood is his prowess as a master archer which features in all RH screen versions. Given the character’s mythic status this prowess is typically grossly exaggerated – Russell Crowe manages to hit a fleeing soldier on horseback hundreds of yards away with an arrow flush on the back of his head; Taron Egerton in the 2018 film shoots nearly 20 arrows in the trailer alone! (Max Tenenbaum, ‘The 10 Best Archers From Film and TV’ Screen Rant, 07-Apr-2020).
Postscript: Political Hood The Adventures of Robin Hood TV series was clearly intended as good fun, a vehicle of commercial escapist entertainment, nonetheless buried in the storyline are snatches of political commentary on contemporary events in the UK during the strait-jacketed postwar decade after 1945. An analogy can be made between Robin’s return from serving in the Crusades to find his property and titles confiscated, and the shabby treatment of British veterans returning from the WWII conflagration. The Adventures‘ political messages were not confined to contemporary Britain. The TV program was the brainchild of a blacklisted US producer Hannah Weinstein. Weinstein hired leftist American writers such as Ring Lardner Jr similarly persecuted by the McCarthyism scourge in the US. Lardner and the others were not slow to draw comparisons between the fictional Robin Hood’s plight and their own ongoing victimisation by the zealous American Right. According to Lardner, writing for the show afforded “plenty of opportunities for oblique social comment on (the assault on liberties in) Eisenhower-era America” (Allen W.Wright, ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood 1950s TV Series Page 2’, (Sept 2005), Robin Hood: Bold Outlaw of Barnsdale and Sherwood, Spotlight, www.boldoutlaw.com).
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🅐 not to mention the similarly themed 1958 TV series William Tell which might be summed up succinctly as “Robin Hood with a crossbow”
In 1937 the Nazi regime organised two art exhibitions in Munich concurrently, separated only by a park and a few hundred metres. One was intended to hammer home to the German volk the inequity of the type of art that the führer Adolf Hitler found abhorrent, ie, anything in art that even hinted of modernity. The other representing all that Hitler found good in art was the complete antithesis of this – a paean to traditional, realistic painting and sculpture and art that conformed to classical themes and forms.
⇧ A Hitler, landscape (Source: Widewalls)
Hitler’s early experiences and his perceived emotional pattern suggest a motive of personal revenge contributing to the Nazis’ fanatical war on the modern and the avant-garde in art. As a young man Hitler dreamed of a career as an artist but a double rejection by the Vienna art academy saw those aspirations dashed. His paintings were summarily dismissed as passe by the art establishment in favour of abstract and modern styles (Burns), leaving the future Reich leader with a bitter aftertaste and a grudge①.
In Mein Kampf Hitler avers that “Cubism and Dadaism are symptoms of biological degradation threatening the German people”, Werckmeister, O. K. “Hitler the Artist.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 2, 1997, pp. 270–297. JSTORwww.jstor.org/stable/1343984. Accessed 2 March 2021.
The purging of so-called “degenerate art”
The Degenerate Art Exhibition (Entartete Kunst) in 1937 was the culmination of a concerted campaign waged by the Nazis to root out all manifestations of avant-garde art in Germany. The first efforts by Hitler’s henchmen were a reaction to the preceding liberal and permissive Weimar era which had embraced the modern style in art and especially Expressionism. In 1933 the Nazis held their first art exhibit of the supposed “degenerate art” in Dresden. Allied to this, the systematic confiscation of modern artworks from museum across Germany took place. Hundreds of thousands of the plundered art pieces including works by modern masters were sold by the Third Reich (some of the proceeds were siphoned off into armament production)②. Much of the minor, less marketable art works were ultimately burnt.
⇧ Beckmann: ‘The Night’
The “wrong type” of art
Hitler rejected the avant-garde and modernity in part for aesthetic reasons. Hitler like many of his Nazi followers had an innate conservative aesthetic taste in art. Politics and ideology also played a part, the führer associated modernism with Jews and communism, and by extension, with democracy and pacifism. Jewish influences, Hitler held, had contaminated the classical art styles so beloved by him. At the same time he denounced what he called “cultural Bolshevism” for weakening German society. Modern art, the Nazis believed was an evil plot against the German people, a “dangerous lie” which would poison German minds. In chilling words given the Nazis’ later unbridled lethal use of eugenics Hitler stated that “anyone who paints a green sky and fields blue ought to be sterilised”.
⇧ Kokoschka: ’Portrait of a Degenerate Artist’
“Sick art” and culture as a propaganda tool
Hitler and the Nazis believed that art played a critical role in defining society’s values. Expressionism③ and the group Die Brücke (“The Bridge”) and artists like Oscar Kokoschka and Ernst Kirchner got singled out for extra repressive measures. The Nazis depicted avant-garde art as the lowest of the low—”impure and subversive”, it’s artists ‘diseased’ specimens corrupted by mental, physical and moral decay—conversely they elevated classical Greek and Roman art to a sublime place, the highest of cultural planes.
⇧ Hitler viewing the ‘Degenerates’
The Degenerate Art Exhibition
The Nazis’ 1937 exhibition was carefully stage-managed as a propaganda vehicle to mock and deride the modern art Hitler so detested. The exhibition comprised Expressionist, Dada, Cubism, Abstract (allocated its own room designated the “Insanity Room”) and New Objectivity artworks. Paintings were hung in a careless, haphazard fashion, with graffiti scrawled on the walls which defamed the artists. Actors were hired to prowl through the gallery loudly denouncing the “Modernist madness”. Adolf Ziegler, the Reich”s top arts bureaucrat and Hitler’s favourite artist, declared the displayed works “monstrosities of insanity, insolence, incompetence and degeneration”. And to ram home the degeneracy point, the vilified artworks were juxtaposed alongside paintings by the enfeebled and the disabled, by psychotic patients and the like. According to the Nazis, degenerate art was the product of Jews and Bolsheviks, but interestingly only six of the 112 artists whose work was displayed in the exhibition were Jewish. The 650 paintings, prints and sculptures included works by Grosz, Dix, Klee, Beckmann, Nolde, Chagall, Picasso, Wandinsky, Marc and Mondrian.
⇧ Führer taking in the “good art”
Exhalting in the “pure Aryan art”
To provide Germans with a favourable point of comparison, the Nazis simultaneously held the Great German Art Exhibition in the same Munich neighbourhood. This displayed ‘Ayran’ art➃, the type of art Hitler approved of. Often gargantuan in scale⑤ – statuesque blond nudes, idealised heroic and duty-bound soldiers and imagined pastorals and idyllic landscapes (reflecting Hitler’s predilection for realistic paintings of outdoor rustic settings). Characteristically the favoured Nazis’ male figures in art represented the concept of the Übermensch (an idealised ‘superman’). Hitler’s intention was that the Groß deutsche Kunstausstellung propaganda would help mobile the German people behind the Nazis’ values.
Footnote: The outcome of the dual 1937 exhibitions was not anticipated by Hitler and the Nazis: Entartete Kunst proved wildly popular, attracting more than two million visitors, whereas Groß Kunstausstellung only managed less than a third of this number. The “Degenerate Art” show was such a hit that it was toured on display throughout the German Reich after the Munich premiere closed.
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Postscript: German artists deemed ‘degenerate’ understandably were more at risk of persecution from the Nazis from those outside the country. Special attention was given to artists like George Grosz and Oscar Dix who were openly critical of the totalitarian regime. Grosz mocked Hitler on canvas while Dix earned the enmity of the Nazis for his excruciating depictions of the horrors of war. As one writer put it, “the Nazis labeled Dix a ‘degenerate,’ but the term is better applied to the society he depicted—cannibalizing itself and hurtling toward destruction” (Alina Cohen).
Dix’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ (1933)
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① Hitler’s own preference for subject matter as an artist was for painting buildings and largely unpopulated pastoral landscapes (the future “world leader” had no talent for capturing the human form)
② Hitler and the National-Socialists’ notion of modern art as being the product of entartung (degeneracy) can be traced to a Jewish Austro-Hungarian social critic Max Nordau who decried the new art and literature in 1890s Europe as being the work of diseased minds
③ the focus on Expressionism as a target for the Nazi “culture police” proved a particular problem for Joseph Goebbels. The propaganda minister had early on championed the Expressionist movement and had to backtrack swiftly on this to avoid the führer’s opprobrium
➃ Ayran art uniformly infuses a celebration of youth, optimism, power and eternal triumph
⑤ the Nazi taste for mega-scale art reached its apogee in architecture, massive structures like ‘Germania’. “Monumentality and solidity (exuding power), simplicity and timeless eternity” were the bywords of Nazi architecture
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Bibliography
‘Degenerate art: Why Hitler hated modernism’, (Lucy Burns), BBC News, 06-Nov-2013, www.bbc.com
‘Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937’, (Jason Farago), The Guardian, 13-Mar-2014, www.theguardian.com
‘Degenerate art’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org
‘Nazi architecture’, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org ‘Why “Degenerate” Artist Otto Dix Was Accused of Plotting to Kill Hitler’, (Alina Cohen), Art Sy, 11-Feb-2019,www.artsy.net ‘Art as Propaganda: The Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibit’, Facing History and Ourselves, (Video, 2017)
‘Adolf Hitler’s war against modern art’, The Canvas, (Video, 2019)
The ardent British football fan while waiting for match day or counting down the off-season days to next August can often be found lapping up all the available literature he or she can get their hands on about the beloved round ball game. The appetite for football fiction extends to the graphic novel and it’s predecessor the comic book. The perennially popular exemplar of this quintessential “Boy’s Own” exploits genre is Roy of the Rovers.
[R] 17-y-o Roy Race on his ‘debut’
The comic Roy of the Rovers had its debut in Tiger magazine in 1954…the strip follows the fortunes of fictional football team Melchester Rovers, with the spotlight very much on its star centre forward Roy Race. Captain Roy and his team invariably find themselves the underdogs, battling adversity, foul play, injuries and bad luck, somehow in the end they manage to beat the odds and spectacularly win the game in the last minute usually with a corker of a goal by Roy (for supposed ‘underdogs’ Melchester Rovers are decided overachievers – over the years racking up eight fictional FA cups, three European cups and one UEFA cup!).
Roy on the field epitomises fair play (often in contrast to his opponents), his personality embodies all the virtues of “sportsmanship, etiquette and why a fractured ankle, a broken rib and an early case of polio should never stand between a determined team captain and victory in FA cups” (McGinty). Roy’s Rovers competed against the other teams in the League—like their arch-rivals Tynefield United—who never come close to ever matching up to the ethical pedigree of Melchester Rovers.
Roy of the Rovers moments Roy of the Rovers permeates English football culture to the extent that it is a standard trope for fans of the game to invoke the comic strip to describe memorable sporting incidents, unexpected comebacks, miraculous wins from behind, etc.
Roy is beyond the slightest doubt the absolute gun player in Melchester’s colours, however it’s not quite a one man band. He gets stirling assistance from teammates, most notably from Johnny Dexter the team’s “hard man” and goalie Gordon (“the safest hands in soccer”) Stewart (cf. Gordon Banks).
The créme de la créme, the “Roy of the Rovers Annuals” were a staple for boys each year…over the years of the publication Roy and his team go through all the highs and lows – relegation to Second Division; kidnapping of players; a terrorist attack; the club experiences financial calamities and so on. In the process Roy briefly defects at one time to a rival club before returning to the fold before losing a leg in a skiing accident. After enforced retirement he becomes Melchester manager and his son Rocky assumes the mantle of the side’s star striker.
[B] Roy with his Prince Valiant hairstyle
By the early 1990s, with the inevitable ebbing of ROTR’s popularity, the publication folded. However, at several intervals, the comic, phoenix-like, has been resurrected for the diehearts, most recently in 2018.
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Socialism in one football club
In 1988 the BBC produced a two series radio program drawing inspiration from the legendary Roy of the Rovers comic but taking it in a very different direction. Lenin of the Rovers, “the story of Britain’s only communist football club”, written by Marcus Berkman, is both spoof and affectionate satire, sending up the football comic classic while retaining a sliver of nostalgia both for Roy of the Rovers and the British game of yesteryear. Lenin of the Rovers conversely takes a massive swipe at the contemporary (that is, as at 1988) world of Brit soccer, ridiculing big game commentators and pundits alike, skewering top-flight players for being overpaid, pampered show-ponies with their “in-car leopard skin yoghurt dispensers” (nothing’s changed!). Also in the program’s cross-hairs is the run amuck degree of football sponsorship (eg, the “Heinz Sandwich Spread FA Cup”) and stockbroker hooligans (Hughes). The LCD gutter press also gets a pummeling for its bald-faced lies and facile and trivalising reporting (eg, “Curvy Corinne’s” tabloid article in The Daily Tits: “My night of lust with Ralph Coates”✧).
The story line is pure farce, supposedly detailing the experiences of communist East European football player Ricky Lenin (Alexei Sayle in a heavily accented voice which appears to be channelling his Balowski family character from The Young Ones) at Midlands club Felchester Rovers. Lenin is portrayed as a “tactical mastermind/balding midfield maestro” but more accurately might be described as thick as two planks. Through constant rhetorical flourishes Lenin lectures the team on dialectical materialism, the inevitable destiny of Felchester Rovers football club*, but he is exposed as a faux Marxist for covertly trying to enrich himself through football connexions. Lenin launches a proletarian coup which removes the club’s manager Ray Royce (a transparent pun on Roy Race), and then himself has to ward off a challenge from Felchester’s “burly defender” Stevie Stalin and “hard nut” henchman Terry Trotsky.
A riotous hoot
Many misadventures follow as Lenin and the club bungle their way through sex scandals, corruption and dodgy business deals, and a disastrous mid-season holiday in a war-torn Central American banana republic (El Telvador)+. The latter episode spoofs cult movie Apocalypse Now (“I love the smell of shin-pads in the morning”), with a side reference to the WWII football plot of Escape to Victory!
In the episode where Felchester travel to Germany to play Borussia Mönchenpastry (cringe!), they encounter diabolical German tabloid publisher Max Gut, a thinly disguised Robert Maxwell. Piss-taking comes fast and furious in LOTR, another episode involving Ricky putting out feelers for a move across the Irish Sea to represent the Republic of Ireland national whose team sheet reads like the United Nations with not a solitary Gaelic name in it! One of the team apparently qualified for Ireland due to having once read a James Joyce novel!
A recurring device sprinkled liberally through Lenin of the Rovers has Ricky Lenin speaking random lines from well-known pop songs – “We are family! I have all my sisters with me”; “A rebel to the core”, “Don’t go breaking my heart“, etc. ad nauseum.
From go to whoa it’s a pun bonanza, reminding me a lot of those exquisite Sixties radio comedies like I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. Felchester’s Euro opponent is Swiss club FC Toblerone (groan!). Their arch-rivals in the English comp is the thuggish Crunchthorpe United, however the Felchester team itself triumphs in the Cup employing the same tactics of illegal crunching tackles and skilless brawn. Needless to say that in the computer football universe, Felchester Rovers would be Melchester’s Crunchthorpe United.
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✧ LOTR takes no prisoners with the reputations of past FA stars with a constant flow of running gags at their expense (particularly cruel on Ralph Coates)
* with ideological fidelity he also devises a “five year goal plan” for the club, prompting his teammates to slag Arsenal for its “five goals a year plan”
+ there’s a reference to Terry Venables here, the former English manager’s nickname was “El Tel”
Reference material:
‘A teen magazine for boys — but will they buy it?’, The Scotsman, Stephen McGinty, 15-Jan-2004, www.thescotsman.co.uk
‘Lenin of the Rovers’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
‘Radio revolution’, Rob Hughes, When Saturday Comes, November 2010, www.wsc.co.uk
‘Lenin on the goalpost’, Paul Shaffer, Lion and Unicorn, 2017, www.thelionandunicorn.wordpress.com
In its early days Coke was marketed both as a medicinal drink and as a “refreshing tonic”
Pepsi’s watershed year was 1975 when it mounted the “Pepsi Challenge”, a series of filmed blind-taste tests in which the majority of participants chose Pepsi over Coke as their preferred soda. This boosted Pepsi sales and escalated the rivalry between the two “Big Sodas”, kicking off what became known in America from the Sixties on as the “Cola Wars” or the “Soda Wars”. Until the Pepsi Challenge happened Coca-Cola had been coasting somewhat, complacently presenting itself as “the real thing” in contrast to the upstart pretender. Coca-Cola’s response to PepsiCo’s move was to promote the then most popular personality on US TV Bill Cosby as “the face of Coke”.
Pepsi embarked on a marketing campaign which depicted itself as a younger, hipper brand than its outmoded rival. Drinking Pepsi was a cool thing to do (so proclaimed the marketers), when stacked up against the tired, same old, same old Coke alternative. Integral to PepsiCo’s campaign was the recruitment of celebrities to endorse the beverage, the centrepiece of which was Michael Jackson. Other pop music icons followed the success of Jackson’s involvement with the product – David Bowie, Madonna, Lionel Ritchie, etc. Ad men heralded Pepsi as “the choice of a new generation”.
In the early Eighties, under pressure from Pepsi’s inroads into the market, Coca-Cola introduced diet Coke, a caffeine-free soda, followed by a complete redesign of Coke—given the secret codename “Project Kansas”—the outcome in 1985 was a sweeter Coke, New Coke. To counter Pepsi’s sweeter, more syrupy taste, Coca-Cola replaced sugar with corn syrup (which also reduced the production cost). New Coke however proved a disaster for the company, provoking a huge backlash from loyal consumers, some described the new taste as like “two day old Pepsi”. Southern fans of Coke, where Coca-Cola (and Pepsi) had its origins, were especially offended.
Faced with an avalanche of criticism, Coca-Cola brought back the old formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic”. New Coke for its part got rebranded but never really took off and was eventually discontinued. Disappointment that it was, New Coke did provide one unanticipated positive – it managed to reawaken in many Coca-Cola drinkers suffering from a bout of ennui a new craving for the original taste (Little).
Vintage 1950s ad: “Pepsi-Chic” before it went “Pepsi-Hip” (Robt Levering)
Photo: George Marks/Retrofile/Getty
