Let's All Go to the Lobby

In the modern age where everything about the midcentury movie-going experience is long forgotten, Let’s All Go to the Lobby is a chestnut that remains a standby of the eternal movie-going experience. The theater chains still want you to go to the lobby. And they want you all to get yourselves some treats.

—Thad Komorowski

Technicolor Refreshment Trailer No. 1 -- better known as Let's All Go to the Lobby -- is probably the best known "snipe" or theatrical movie trailer ever produced. Animated refreshments including a pack of chewing gum, a box of popcorn, a soft drink cup, and a box of candy sing and dance across the screen, imploring audiences to get themselves some treats.

The Chicago-based Filmack Trailer Co. produced the forty-second Technicolor animated snipe, one that a theater could buy for the measly price of $10.75. Official records at the still-existing company can’t determine a specific date, but advertisements were taken out for the cartoon as early as 1951. Filmack proudly touted that Dave Fleischer, of former Betty Boop and Popeye fame, animated the snipe. (Though, obviously, he had hired some anonymous freelancers to do the actual drawing.)

Let's All Go to the Lobby was added to the National Film Registry in 2000.

Tropes used in Let's All Go to the Lobby include:

Anthropomorphic Food: Singing and marching... to the lobby.
Public Domain Soundtrack: The jingle's tune is "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"

Appearances of Let's All Go to the Lobby in fiction include:

Radio

The CBC Radio news-quiz show Because News referenced and spoofed this snipe on the show aired May 30, 2000.

Web Comics

The animated refreshments start off the intermission installment of The Order of the Stick. Unfortunately for them, there are new refreshments in town, and things only get worse for them from there.