Cheesy Moon



One of the common Moon myths in Western culture is the saying that it is comprised of "green" cheese.

This can manifest in many ways in fiction, often for laughs. For example, the moon may be depicted as made of Cartoon Cheese (possibly even a shade of green), and it may even be inhabited by moon mice (since mice love cheese and all that).

In Video Games, this can overlap with Level Ate as applied to lunar settings.

See also The Man in the Moon, the other common Western folklore about the moon.

Advertising

 * An old McDonald's ad featured Ronald McDonald attempting to reach the moon to collect cheese for the restaurant's burgers.
 * A Ritz Bits commercial from The Nineties featured a box of Ritz crackers rocketing to the moon, in order to use the cheese to become Ritz Bits sandwiches... with cheese!

Comic Books

 * In a Raggedy Ann comic, Raggedy Ann and Andy (and a visiting astronaut doll) visit the moon and discover a crater full of green cheese while having to dodge real astronauts.
 * In an unpublished 1940s Justice Society of America story, a villain sends Johnny Thunder to get a piece of green cheese from the moon as one of several "impossible tasks." Thanks to Johnny's Literal Genie, he manages to do it anyway.
 * In Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, Little Cheese is a mouse who gets shrinking powers from a chunk of lunar cheese that was being studied by his scientist father. Green cheese as Green Rocks.

Literature
"They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch"
 * Xanth's moon is described as being cheese on the near side, honey on the far side.
 * Stanislaw Lem had a short story where Moon accidentally became made of cheese.
 * The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling:

Theatre

 * In the opening song of Merrily We Roll Along's second act, a long list of maybes includes "Maybe the moon is cheese".

Video Games

 * In Duck Tales, one level is the Moon, and one of its collectibles is a piece of cheese.
 * The "Moon Fondue" level in Spyro 2: Season of Flame on the Game Boy Advance is comprised of green, cheese-like terrain and includes a race of mouse astronauts.
 * In King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, during one chapter the moon falls out of sky into Falderal (a place based on wordplay and literal figures of speech) and it's revealed to be just a wheel of Cartoon Cheese. The player is tasked with finding some way of getting it back in the sky before they can leave the area.
 * In Revenge of the Titans, many of the Moon Campaign's mission locations are named for different kinds of cheese, disguised with the nomenclature of actual locations on the moon—for example, Mare Crisium (Real Life) and Mare Caseum (in-universe).
 * At one point in Pajama Sam 3 You have to find out what type of cheese the moon is made of.
 * The moon seen in the "Midnight Run" level of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, as well as in the space levels featured in the GBA title The Huge Adventure, is pretty cheese-like.

Western Animation

 * The Tom and Jerry short, "O Solar Meow", ends with Jerry on the moon, which has large quantities of cheese. Another short featured Tom and Jerry operating a lunar mining operation, where the caverns were made entirely of cheese.
 * Wallace and Gromit's debut short film, "A Grand Day Out", revolved around the characters travelling to the moon to get cheese. The second short film, "The Wrong Trousers" later made a reference to it in a newspaper article mentioning how sales of "moon cheese" are soaring.
 * Arthur: In one episode, Arthur is trying to buy Moon Boots. He imagines himself hopping straight to the moon wearing these. He then grabs a bit of the moon and tastes it, saying that it's green cheese all right!
 * The MGM Oneshot Cartoon Little Buck Cheeser is about a group of young mice who build a rocket to go to the moon because it's made of cheese.
 * The Beany and Cecil cartoon "Beanyland" has the gang building a theme park on the moon - Dishonest John, already mining and selling the cheese there, tries to sabotage the place.
 * In one Popeye cartoon, Popeye, Olive, and Wimpy visit the moon, which is actually made of cheese, and populated by little cheese-men. Unfortunately, the Big Cheese who rules the place is  a cruel tyrant. A dose of spinach later, and Popeye manages to turn him into crumbs.
 * In The Smurfs, the moon isn't made of cheese itself, but The Man in the Moon who lives inside it does have a lot of cheese. The mice who also live there like him a lot, but he feels they only like him for his cheese.

New Media

 * Wikipedia article: The moon is made of green cheese discusses the origin of the saying in greater depth. It's actually meant to indicate that someone who believes this is extremely gullible (an analogous modern phrase would be "And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you").
 * Google Earth's sister site, Google Moon (which provides photos of the moon's surface) at one time displayed a yellow cheese texture at its highest zoom setting (as an Easter Egg), although it has since been fixed.