Kill Your Television!

Previous legend || Kill Your Television! || Next legend

Soupy Sales Tries to Make Money FA$$$$T!!!

Soupy Sales hosted several incarnations of the Soupy Sales Show for American television from 1955 up through the late 70s. He was known for goofy puns and pie-in-the-face jokes for the kids, but also for edgier humor for adults. Legend has it that Soupy instructed kids to "go to your parent's dresser and send all the pictures of dead presidents you find there to me," for which he was fired.

Documented: Soupy Sales got in trouble for telling kids to send him pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents from their parents' dresser drawers on his show. Most retellings say he was fired and his show cancelled over it.

The detail of his being fired is incorrect, but otherwise Soupy did essentially ask this on New Years Day 1965: he asked the kids to go get Dad's wallet and take all the "little green pieces of paper with pictures of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, and Jefferson on them, send them to me, and I'll send you a postcard from Puerto Rico." The show received thousands of angry phone calls, and Soupy was suspended for a week. See ClassicTV.com page for further details about this incident and the other facts of Soupy's television career.

References:

• ClassicTV.com