DUTCH SPOKESBEASTS BRING ME DOWN

A long time ago someone told me that the whole reason we rhyme things in songs is because it made it easier for lazy troubadours to remember the words. That makes sense to me, but I never got the point of alliteration.

Words starting with the same letters--this is supposed to impress us? Unfortunately, Dutch kids eat that shit up, as Dutch marketing goons have figured out and exploited to extreme-sports levels of oversaturation. Here are a few of their most egregious offenses.

This is Koos Konijn (Richard Rabbit) of Roompot (CreamCup) holiday resorts. I don't think you can find a worse PR agency than the one that came up with the name "cream cup" to promote family swimming pools. What kind of deranged mind thinks it's OK to combine the words cream and cup in any context? Just pronouncing it makes me sicker than eating a bucket of vanilla butter spread with a spoon made of child pornography. Anyways, Koos is their mascot. Guess it was probably easier to dig up a bunny costume than make some poor schmuck walk around the resort dressed as a Komodo dragon.

Here's Koos Konijn, together with all-sadness-of-Holland-captured-in-one-person Piet Paulusma, who isn't a mascot per se, but is a weather man who tries to inject a little fun and whimsy into his daily forecast. So far he's been pretty unsuccessful in this goal but he does team up with Koos on the occasional, those alliterative rats.

This is Max the Matzo, the pride of the Jewish Historical Museum and my personal favorite. Max has a cool theme song in which he raps about Jewish history and related stuff: "I am Max the matzo, eating me is knowing, and never forget!" Prrrpo! The sound of someone chewing on matzo is incorporated in the beat. Respect to the Fruityloop-jew who rigged this up.

This is awesome: Max together with his friends Sammy Sandwich, Gita the Pita, and Benny Bagel.

This is Al Armadillo, who's supposed to be some sort of plastic animal which children click on their seatbelt so they'll find it more fun to fasten their seatbelt. Pretty lame, but children are susceptible. You make a Nathan the Neo-Nazi-bear and watch as thousands of cute little kiddy arms snap to a 110-degree angle.

Mascots of football clubs top everything in their annoying alliterativeness. Up here is Vito Vitesse of football club Vitesse and Boy Buffel of RBC. I agree, shut up already!

This is the mascot of an organization that tries to promote better digestion and metabolism and is called "Stoffel de Schildpad," a name directly copied from Shelley the Tortoise in the Dutch version of Daily Fable. Copying a character wholesale from a kids' show is not OK. In addition, this creature gives me the frikkin' willies. If the goal is to speed up kids' metabolisms, then I guess it's pretty effective because mine's hitting diarrheic levels right now.

This fucking nightmare was the title character of a Christian kids' show called Benjamin Ben. He probably did more for the cause of secularization in this country than Chuckie did for not being to go to sleep worldwide. This is Satan, Islamic fundamentalism, and irritating militant atheists all combined in one doll. Sick.

And this is pushing things to the limit. This is hiring the hungriest fox in the world to watch the fattest geese in the world. This rabbit, mascot of Europe's biggest playground situated in a little town called Bennebroek is called Benny Broek. This is serious. I want to brutally bruise Benny Broek and beautifully beat him in his bleeding bitch balls.

EWOUT LOWIE