February 22, 2006
Just Call Him Butterstick Already!
The National Zoo might finally be coming around to it -- "Tai Shan" just isn't sticking. In an email to DCist, a reader tipped us off to the following:
Yesterday I received the latest edition of Zoogoer, the magazine for members of Friends of the National Zoo. On the back, there is an advertisement for the upcoming ZooFari benefit, the theme of which is "Black and White Night." Of course there is an adorable photo of a certain baby panda. The tagline? "Everything goes better with Butter." Yes, the National Zoo acknowledged in one of its print publications that everyone refers to Tai Shan as Butterstick. (I believe the copy says Tai Shan is "affectionately known as Butterstick.")We know it's tradition that a panda's name mean something serene and folksy in Chinese, but we're just not buying it. And anyhow, the merchandising possibilities expand exponentially if they officially call him Butterstick. "Everything goes better with Butter"? That's gold, pure marketing gold!
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I got that magazine yesterday, too, and just described the ad to DCist Jason over the phone. The zoo may not like Butterstick, but their ad agency knows a winner when they see it. "Everything Goes Better with Butter" could go down as this year's "Where's the Beef?"
That "Butterstick!" poster would make a great band poster...
Inquired into tickets for the Black & White thing. They're rather reasonable, HOWEVER, Butterstick won't be making an appearance. He will be asleep or something. Very disappointing.
I dunno. "Everything goes better with butter" just makes me want to saute the panda.
OK, so I bought a t-shirt with that image on it and it's the cutest thing ever. So, I conclude that everything *does* go better with butter.
Mmmmm.... Sautéed Panda...
To quote Stephen Colbert:
Where did "Butterstick" come from? The first place I remember hearing it was on Wonkette...
For that, we credit two DCist writers, Tom and Catherine, who blog at Unrequited Narcissism (linked on the sidebar). Wonkette was good enough to help us meme-orize it.
I thought it was zoo employees themselves who first commented that he looked like a butterstick when he was born.
Well, they said he was about the size of a stick of butter. The fateful word twist came later.
tom really came up with it; i ended up writing a bunch of posts on the baby panda on DCist employing the nickname, just for kicks. it got picked up by a few bloggers intent on meme-ing it (beaverhausen, articulatory loop, and chrisafer, i believe), then it took off from there (with help from wonkette et al). and the rest is panda history!