By chance, did you get yourself some fried chicken during the weekend sprint to the Christmas shopping finish line? Before online commerce, the mad rush to the malls and brick and mortar stores was the norm, especially toy shops, most hilariously roasted in the holiday comedy flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad, Jingle All the Way.

Now those dudes were hyper focused as ultra busy dads thrust into the retail hell of finding their kids that elusive sold-out toy no parents wanted to be the ultimate letdown by missing out on, Turbo Man. In real-life, the bloodthirsty competition torched in Jingle All the Way would have Cabbage Patch Dolls and Tickle Me Elmos. Talk about your ghosts of Christmases past.

But I digress. I’m here to poke fun at Kentucky Fried Chicken and a back-then promise by Colonel Sanders’ corporate goons to offer stressed-out gift buyers a little relief from their cram, carry and shove modes of the holiday season. No, not a flask of whiskey which would make the most sense for some (you saw Sinbad had no shame in sharing his tuckaway stash with Arnie in one of Jingle All the Way’s moments of truce), but chicken. Then again, the still-fierce contests for parking spaces in modern times leaves room for calorie burns, given you’re lucky gonna get stuck in the annex lot. Thus, KFC is here for you!

I’m guessing by the ladies’ fashion in this silly ad it ran somewhere between the late 1960s to mid 1970s. A Mary Tyler-Moore type gives the Colonel her best googly eyes and a Lucille Ball wannabe (closer to the Colonel’s age bracket) drops her chin upon his shoulder with equal suggestion. They’re not after what the Colonel’s peddling here, sorry. Or so the corporate goons would have you believe. As it says inside the ad and as KFC has blasted as its totem for decades, it’s finger lickin’ good.

Christmas stress relief being where and how you find it, in this case. Oh, Colonel, you stud! You are the man for all seasons.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.