coffee and eggs

Most of the time I hate clearing out the closets at work- I'm supposed to be the head computer geek, not the chief box shifter- but every so often I find something that makes the shuffling seem slightly less miserable.

Elementary school teachers are unable to throw anything away. Everything might be useful for something- "This could be part of a great art project!" Because of this, the closets get filled with useless or outdated "educational materials."

EXHIBIT A:
Coffee: The Story of a Good Neighbor Product
COFFEE - The Story of a
Good Neighbor Product

Produced in 1966 by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau, CTSOAGNP tells how South America is best known for the export of coffee, and how much fun it is to harvest coffee, and how to prepare and drink coffee. Look at the festive outfits they wear while sorting green coffee cherries:

A  bean-sorting woman is a happy woman.
"I smile and dress pretty
to make the beans happy."

The booklet also features useful exercises students can work on in class, like "Indicate the 13 steps in the roasting and factory preparation of coffee."

EXHIBIT B:
The Incredible Edible Out-of-this-world Egg
The Incredible Edible
Out-of-This-World Egg

TIEOOTWE comes from the American Egg Board. Produced in 1978, it features a book, a filmstrip with audio tape accompaniment, and a bunch of ditto masters, which are used to make those awful purple papers that elementary schools used before photocopying became so cheap.

Of course, "Eggs are Good Food" makes a lot more sense than "Hey Kids, Coffee is Your Pal." The things that makes TIEOOTWE so special are the casual copyright violations and the incredible lame story that would drive children to refuse all eggs and egg-related products out of spite. Let's get a closer look at some of the folks on the cover:

Three Egg Salute - I think Matthew is about to huck that thing at The Good Egg.

The three-egg salute is executed by Sarah, Matthew, and "Rodney, the proper, well-organized robot." "But wait," you say, "Isn't that gold robot just a really obvious ripoff of C3PO?" No, no, no! Rodney is only gold on the cover to the book! Here's what he looks like in the filmstrip (remember filmstrips?):

Rodney, the big pink robot
Rodney vibrates when excited.

Yes, Rodney is pink. The promo guys must have been cracking up while they made this. "Let's make a big pink bullet-headed robot, name him Rod, and see if anybody gets it!"

Here's the plot of this story: Sarah, Matthew, and Rodney live on the planet SRAM. Rodney is the happy slave robot who does most things right, but his cooking sucks... until the planet is visited by The Good Egg!

Rodney and The Good Egg
The Good Egg is welcomed by Rodney.

It turns out that a)No one on Sram has ever heard of eggs, b)Eggs are required in all foods or all food sucks, c)Sram is actually Mars, but no one on the planet knew that because d)The kids have never been to school, so they read everything backwards. The lessons learned: Without Eggs all food sucks, and not going to school causes dyslexia.

Bonus! Some samples of the soundtrack- note that you never hear the voices of Sarah, Matthew, Rodney, or The Good Egg. I'm sure this was done to improve the story, not because it's cheaper to pay one voiceover person than five.

Not all all inspired by Star Wars
A hard to swallow simile
...a little too curious...