Typewriter Eating

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
OM NOM NOM NOM DING


You've probably Seen It a Million Times during The Golden Age of Animation. Here, a character eats a strip starting at one end of the corncob, along its long axis (takka takka takka), reaches the other end (ding!), rotates the corncob a few degrees and returns to the starting end (kachunk!), repeat. This action mimics typing on an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter with moving carriage. They then continue in a different spot.

This trope doesn't seem to be used anymore (and if ever used today, kids would ask what the sounds are).

Compare Buzzsaw Jaw, where the sound effect is (or at least can be) a buzzsaw.

Examples of Typewriter Eating include:


Advertisements

  • Walkers used to run adverts for their "french fries" (basically long, thin potato based snacks) where they were eaten like this (though without the ding).

Film

  • Rare live-action example in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, where Chaplin is strapped into an automated eating gizmo that presents the corn this way.

Literature

  • In The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, the narrator says her older brother normally eats corn on the cob this way, but the first time he brings a girlfriend home from college he's suddenly too adult to do it in front of her.

Western Animation

  • The image for this page comes from Out of the Inkwell, which features a literal example of this trope.
  • On Animaniacs, Wakko did this once, complete with Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter" as accompaniment.
  • Templeton does this in the fairground scene of Charlotte's Web.
  • One Porky Pig cartoon when Porky was a farmer had chickens getting into his cornfield and doing this.
  • Used in the Disney short Mickey's Trailer.
  • Scooby Doo has done this several times with corn on the cob.
  • Tom does this with a rib in an episode of Tom and Jerry.