The February Travel Book
As a Dodo
The Milkybar Kid
The Milkybar Kid
1961 – 2006
Oversized, sweet-fixated children and lovers of 1970s advertising are today united in mourning The Milkybar Kid, who passed away on Friday.
The Kid, perhaps the only ten-year-old, bespectacled albino ever to make a living in America's Wild West, burst into the nation's consciousness in 1961: a rough, tough specky cowboy, who would lasso young children and force feed them with his sugary treats – thus providing inspiration for both Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's child catcher and innumerable paedophiles. Despite such questionable behaviour, The Kid and his stunningly banal catchphrase ‘The Milkybars are on me!' became an instant hit with the youth of Britain, inspiring millions of boys to spice up their games of ‘coyboys and injuns' with fantastically incompetent demonstrations of lasso technique and fragile-family-heirloom-damaging skills.
Times were changing, however, and The Kid was slow to change with them. As a new generation of children began to swap their cap-guns for light sabers (thus affording even greater opportunity for damaging fragile heirlooms) The Kid's spinning-circle-of-rope-based antics began to look increasingly passé. When he did finally make the leap into space his efforts were – as even his closest friends were to admit – somewhat embarrassing. Deserted by his public, The Kid followed many other one-time stars into obscurity. No longer under pressure to preserve his image, he gave in to his sickly-sweet-chocolate-style-substance obsession, sitting alone at home and mainlining bar after bar. In the following years he fell completely from the media's gaze, save for a brief – balding and bloated appearance in the tabloids during the noughties ‘paedo' scares, when he was forced to deny ever having asked his old pal the Cadbury's Lad to show him his finger of fudge.
Earlier this year The Kid was admitted to St Ofcom's Hospital where, along with other hawkers of fattening foodstuffs, he underwent a series of investigations. It soon became apparent that he was unfit for the modern age and did not have much longer to live. It came as little surprise when, on Friday, Ofcom doctors announced The Kid's death, which they attributed to a massive overdose of a powdery white substance believed to be sugar.
The Milkybar Kid will be buried in an oversized coffin on Monday. The service will be televised although, under new advertising regulations children will only be able to watch it after the watershed … if their chubby fingers aren't so large that they mash the buttons on the remote control.
As a Dodo by George Poles and Simon Littlefield is published by Summersdale (hardback; £9.99). It is also available through amazon.co.uk and all good booksellers.
