{"id":321,"date":"2002-01-18T13:54:49","date_gmt":"2002-01-18T21:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/01\/18\/what-the-heck-is-this-from\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T14:29:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T22:29:14","slug":"what-the-heck-is-this-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/01\/18\/what-the-heck-is-this-from\/","title":{"rendered":"What the heck is this from?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:16611,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.google.com\\\/search?q=wanna+buy+a+duck%3F+does+it+quack%3F+of+course+it+quacks!&amp;hl=en&amp;start=10&amp;sa=N&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.google.com\\\/search?q=wanna%20buy%20a%20duck?%20does%20it%20quack?%20of%20course%20it%20quacks!&amp;gws_rd=ssl&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6664,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.google.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260309014042\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.google.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-09 07:42:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-16 19:56:46&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 23:48:45&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-29 04:40:19&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 08:28:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 11:22:22&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 11:22:22&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16612,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/members.aol.com\\\/EOCostello\\\/p.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20080704214924\\\/http:\\\/\\\/members.aol.com\\\/EOCostello\\\/p.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.aol.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I stumbled across this little exchange today, that sounds extremely famliar from a long time ago&#8230;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Wanna buy a duck?<\/p>\n<p>  A what?<\/p>\n<p>  A duck!<\/p>\n<p>  Does it quack?<\/p>\n<p>  Of course it quacks, it&#8217;s a duck!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For the life of me, though, I can&#8217;t pin down where in the world it comes from. Doing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=wanna+buy+a+duck%3F+does+it+quack%3F+of+course+it+quacks!&amp;hl=en&amp;start=10&amp;sa=N\" title=\"Google search for 'Wanna buy a duck...'\">Google search<\/a> doesn&#8217;t help much either &#8212; it pops up around the &#8216;net, but never attributed to any one thing, always just listed as an &#8216;in joke&#8217; or as a party game or some such.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone else remember this, or have any idea what it&#8217;s from? It&#8217;s stuck in my head and driving me mildly batty&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Well, thanks to a slow day at work, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/\" title=\"Google\">Google<\/a>, and the assistance of one of my co-workers, I may have answered my own question.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that the &#8220;Wanna buy a duck?&#8221; phrase originated with 1930&#8217;s comedian Joe Penner. There&#8217;s not a ton of information about him out there, but I did find this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  <strong>Penner, Joe (1904-1941):<\/strong> Penner had a brief but meteoric career and radio in the 1930s, briefly achieving fame with a series of catch phrases such as &#8220;Wanna buy a duck?&#8221; and &#8220;You nah-sty man!&#8221; One of the earliest roles of Mel Blanc on national radio was as the voice of Goo-Goo, the duck that figured in the catch-phrase above.<\/p>\n<p>  Egghead, the forerunner of Elmer Fudd, was based in part on Joe Penner, using some of his mannerisms (most notably in &#8216;Daffy Duck and Egghead&#8217; (Avery, 1938)). The little brother rabbit Elmer in &#8216;My Green Fedora&#8217; (Freleng, 1935) laughs like Penner. Vocal actor Dave Weber seems to have provided Penner-like voices for a number of WB cartoons in the 1930s.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(found on <a href=\"http:\/\/members.aol.com\/EOCostello\/p.html\" title=\"P-38 and P-40 to Put out that light\">this page<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>The phrase also turned up some hits on the Marx Brothers, mostly for this exchange:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Groucho: &#8220;Now here is a little peninsula, and&#8230;eh&#8230;here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  Chico: &#8220;Why a duck?&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I also found the following exchange during my hunt &#8212; I think it was also a Marx Brothers quote, but now I can&#8217;t find it again:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  I think I wanna buy a duck.<\/p>\n<p>  What&#8217;cha gonna do with a duck?<\/p>\n<p>  What would <em>anyone<\/em> do with a duck?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Anyway, it looks like Joe Penner gets the original credit. The final result that started this whole thing off is probably either from Joe himself during one of the times he used it, or it just sprang up at some point through the years and has since been floating around the public conciousness for a while (as evidenced by the number of times it pops up across the web when you do a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=wanna+buy+a+duck%3F+does+it+quack%3F+of+course+it+quacks!&amp;hl=en&amp;start=10&amp;sa=N\" title=\"Google search for 'Wanna buy a duck...'\">Google search<\/a> for it).<\/p>\n<p>Still, it was an interesting search. While I was talking about it with Diane (one of the ladies I work with, and the one who pointed me in the direction of the Marx Brothers), she pointed out that there&#8217;s really no reason it should make sense, or even have anything connected to it beyond the &#8220;Wanna buy a duck?&#8221; phrase. She used to be in the Navy working on airplanes, and she said that quite often when they&#8217;d take the cowl off the plane, the phrase &#8220;I like trains&#8221; would be inscribed somewhere inside the cowl. Why? Who knows? It&#8217;s just one of those things where the &#8216;why&#8217; doesn&#8217;t really matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wanna buy a duck?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[2121,13],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-joe-penner","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}