The episode: “Wild Rebels,” ep. 207
The riff: Sarcastically intoned by Servo as a member of a neo-nazi biker gang pours a few glasses of wine.
The explanation: This riff combines two different references into one. General Foods International is a subdivision of Kraft mostly known for insant coffee, and one of their slogans was “celebrate the moments of your life.” Ripple, on the other hand, was a fortified “bum wine” popular in the U.S. in the 1970s, and was particularly remembered as being Fred Sanford’s drink of choice on “Sanford and Son.” Tom is mocking both the wine and the marketing campaign simultaneously.
Novelty factor: This is a weird coincidence, but I recognized the reference to Ripple based on my previous exposure to references about “bum wine.” In the riff from a few weeks ago about Thunderbird, I’d read about Ripple while researching. So in effect, this is the first time that researching a riff has given me the information I needed to understand a future riff when I heard it. Who would have guessed there would be two different bum wine references in the first month?
More bum wine references, I say.