editors
JERRY BECK (LA)
AMID AMIDI (NY)
Scary Green Giant
by jerry
July 12, 2007 4:45 pm


Stop motion animator/historian, Ken Priebe, thinks he has found the creepiest puppet animation ever:

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Vincent says:
07/12/07  4:49pm

That was wonderful.

 
Micah Baker says:
07/12/07  4:51pm

The Giant! He’s… why, he’s maaad! Mad I tell you!

 
uffler mustek says:
07/12/07  5:29pm
 
Bob says:
07/12/07  7:21pm

YAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

That’s pretty scary, man!

 
fishmorgjp says:
07/12/07  7:44pm

AAAH! He’s going to eat us! No wait, first he’ll process and can us… and THEN he’ll eat us!!

 
RR says:
07/12/07  8:02pm

Is it just me or does the giant’s face look like Bill Plympton?

 
uncle wayne says:
07/12/07  8:05pm

no….he moves exactly like the [first] monster in “Jack the Giant-Killer!” Is it not the same (non-Harryhausen) animator? Anyone know!?

 
Chris Sobieniak says:
07/12/07  8:27pm

God, I can see someone use this in an upcoming “YouTube Poop” vid!

 
Robert Schaad says:
07/12/07  8:34pm

He’s presenting the gift of sweet peas and niblets to claymation…sorry dynamation Medusa. Wait! Don’t Look!

 
Marc Crisafulli says:
07/12/07  8:44pm

Yo ho WHOA.

 
Fouad Ghorbani says:
07/12/07  8:56pm

That was great.

 
Gerit says:
07/12/07  11:59pm

He looks beyond jolly –more like a hallucinatory rictus grin. Keep the creepy stuff coming. It’s the best.

 
David Nethery says:
07/13/07  12:00am

NOT as scary as Len Lye’s “The Peanut Vendor” (posted on YouTube courtesy of Ken Preibe) , but darn scary all the same.

If you haven’t seen “The Peanut Vendor” , well, you’ve been warned ,but here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQYZPwEdPoo

 
Chuck R. says:
07/13/07  12:37am

I’m going along with David. Nothing’s creepier than that monkey.

The Green Giant sort-of looks like singer/talk-show host John Davidson. Here’s proof.

 
Zekey says:
07/13/07  1:11am

Everything about this commercial shouts “I WILL MOLEST YOU WITH THESE CANS OF BEANS”

 
Shmorky says:
07/13/07  2:03am

Good god, those eyes!
“EAT MY PEAS! EAT THEEEEM! HE HE HE! I’M SPRITELY!”

 
eeteed says:
07/13/07  2:27am

i seem to recall reading somewhere that this was animated by these people…

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=503

 
GeeVee says:
07/13/07  3:14am

Just checked out “the peanut vendor”. Wow, that was fantastic, funny and creepy. ‘Really delivered the goods. Ranks up there with Charley Bowers’ “Wild Oysters”. Thanks man!

 
Elliot Cowan says:
07/13/07  6:00am

It’s not that creepy although he does look like Gary Sinese

 
Florafauna says:
07/13/07  6:07am

Let’s compare:

Giant: has no soul
Monkey: has detachable tail, freakishly long arms

Giant: lecherous grin + vegetables
Monkey: no eyelids + singing

Giant: tries to entice you with canned vegetables
Monkey: tries to swallow your soul…

It’s a tie in my estimation. I will have nightmares about both.

Thanks Cartoon Brew.

 
Russell H says:
07/13/07  7:05am

I read somewhere that this was the only Green Giant commercial in which the Giant is actually seen walking. It was determined that audiences found this to be too “menacing,” so in all subsequent commercials to this day, the Giant has always been shown just standing in one place.

 
Uli Meyer says:
07/13/07  7:27am

I love it!

 
Hooper says:
07/13/07  7:35am

GAH! The Green Giant always creeped me out when I was a little kid in the ’60s. Thanks for the memories.

 
Geo says:
07/13/07  8:28am

Anyone else find it ironic
that the Mickey Rooney Show was brought
to by the Green Giant?

 
John A says:
07/13/07  8:41am

One thing you need to know about the Jolly Green Giant: It’s a good idea to politely decline whenever he offers to introduce you to “The Little Green Sprout”.

 
K.Borcz says:
07/13/07  9:22am

whoa! That was crazy! I don’t even have sound on my computer at work!!!

 
Robert Igoe says:
07/13/07  10:15am

Legend has it that parents used to call the network after the ad ran because his terrified their children. Personally, I used to get freaked out by Smokey Bear when I was a kid. I mean, hell, he was a flipping grizzly and I always wondered what he did to people when he caught them being careless!

 
Hannah says:
07/13/07  2:01pm

Along with this and the “Peanut Vendor”, I sense a huge amount of nightmares coming our ways.

 
Jim C. says:
07/13/07  9:43pm

That peanut cartoon is definitely creepy. Most of all the closeups starting at about 0:38, and especially when it comes back into frame from the left at about 0:55. It reminds me of the “sponge monkeys” at http://www.rathergood.com.

 
El says:
07/13/07  10:21pm

I had to watch it twice before I realized that he’s meant to be tossing the cans up in the air and catching them again. I thought it was some strange green giant hoodoo that made them disappear.

That said, I don’t think he’s my best friend in peas OR corn.

 
tom says:
07/13/07  11:20pm

I loved that!

 
Quiet_Desperation says:
07/14/07  1:14am

What babies! He’s friendly! He just wants to give you some tasty corn.

I admit it’s a ten story high can with a noticable gravitational field, but, you know…

The only thing that ever creeped me out as a kid was the big Martian head in the sky in the movie Five Million Years To Earth (AKA Quatermass And The Pit).

This is the best online image I could find.
http://www.horror-wood.com/pit_qu6.jpg

Oh, and the giant spider in Angry Red Planet:
http://www.scifidimensions.com/Mar00/angry-spider.jpg

 
mwb says:
07/14/07  6:08am

Awesomely creepy.

And they wonder why kids don’t want to eat their vegetables!

“Must not eat vegetables or the giant will get me…”

 
Steve Segal says:
07/14/07  6:16am

Hi uncle wayne,
I felt the same way about the commercial. I believe the giant was called Goramon and he was animated by Jim Danforth when he was only a teenager. Now, have you ever seen the version that was converted into a musical? Truly bizarre. Jack was played by the recently departed Kerwin Mathews, he was one of my favorites.

 
uncle wayne says:
07/14/07  10:07am

Hey, Steve! I HAD seen “the musical”….which made me about as angry (& unthinkably appalled) as paying $108 for a gas tank. I recently saw the (real) film on TCM. Talk about a grand memory….and a great film!

Thank YOO for your reply!

 
Ron says:
07/16/07  10:57pm

That was excellent!!

 
RODAN says:
07/17/07  6:47pm

Ummmm…sorry but he has that pedophilesque grin… CAN WE SAY CREEPY!
Sorry but that’s what came to mind…

 
Cody says:
07/19/07  12:09pm

Chris Sobienak, your vision has been confirmed. Here is the YouTube Poop video that features this Jolly Green Giant (now more menacing than ever!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smaoj8DfvPs

Youtube Poop: The Green Giant has Seized the Corn!

 
Noah Berry says:
02/16/08  1:49am

LOL

I thought they destroyed all these copies decades ago, Looks like someone gained access to the russian spy trawler archives from when they were listening to america off the coast of los angeles in the 1950’s

 
David Johnson says:
08/14/11  7:29am

Hello, I was the one who posted the video on YouTube; they deleted everything I put up there due to copyright infringment three times, so now it’s on Dailymotion:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xjfi0z_early-green-giant_shortfilms

 
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