I Will NEVER Be Able to Get The Banana Splits Theme Song Out of My Head
Hanna-Barbera had a reputation for being wildly derivative and shameless in its thievery. Why bother coming up with new characters and voices when you can endlessly recycle the already successful?
Every child subjected to Hanna-Barbera’s empire of lazy crap at an impressionable age has had the surreal experience of encountering, later in life, the inspirations for the cartoons they grew up tolerating.
The live-action variety program The Banana Splits Show, for example, shamelessly copied two of the hippest, hottest, and most happening comedies of the late 1960s: The Monkees and Laugh-In.
The Banana Splits Show was an exact cross between Rowan and Martin’s smash sketch comedy and the Pre-Fab-Four.
Like Laugh-In, The Banana Splits Show was all about mindless speed and empty spectacle. It was brightly colored pop psychedelia for the whole family, full of blackout gags, cornball one-liners, and what can generously be called sketches and, more accurately, be deemed random flailing.
Like The Monkees, the Banana Splits were a band whose music filled the show.
I never watched The Banana Splits Show because it looked terrible, even by Hanna-Barbera’s low standards. But I ended up watching The Banana Splits Movie as part of a deep dive into the surprisingly vast universe of entertainment about evil animatronics that go crazy and start killing people.
It’s an ongoing study inspired by my nine-year-old son Declan’s obsession with Five Nights at Freddy’s in all of its forms.
I’ve seen the film version of Five Nights at Freddy’s about five times at this point. I've also seen Willy’s Wonderland, which is like Five Nights at Freddy’s, except with Nicolas Cage and fun rather than dreary and depressing.
So, I figured it was time to experience The Banana Splits Movie. The movie did not make much of an impression on me. It was much better than Five Nights at Freddy’s but not as good as Willy’s Wonderland.
I’m both impressed and not impressed that the filmmakers got Hanna-Barbera’s people to sign off on turning a G-rated show for kids about ostensibly lovable anthropomorphic musical animals into an R-rated bloodbath for adults rather than focusing on a band exactly like The Banana Splits but with a different name.
It’s impressive that The Banana Splits Movie got the real thing. Then again, I’m not sure Hanna-Barbera cares what people do with their characters as long as the checks clear.
I saw The Banana Splits Movie a week ago and I have not been able to get its theme song, “The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” out of my head.
“The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” might just be the single most irritatingly catchy song ever composed.
It’s incredibly distracting to have that infectious earworm playing in my frazzled brain for hours at a time. I wish I could go back in time exactly one week and warn my younger self that if he watches The Banana Splits even once, its theme song will worm its way deep into his subconscious and never leave.
I’m going to be fifty years old and still absent-mindedly singing, “One banana two banana three banana four/four bananas make a bunch and so do many more” and “Tra la la la la la la” at random intervals.
Along with The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar,” “The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” is the essence of bubblegum pop. It’s designed to be disposable and tacky, overly caffeinated nonsense for small children and those with the taste and sensibilities of small children.
“The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” has transcended The Banana Splits Show. Hanna-Barbera’s collaboration with fellow schlock merchants Sid and Marty Krofft lasted a mere two seasons, but its theme has hit the charts at home and abroad in different versions.
In 1979 pop-punk band The Dickies roared their way through a machine-gun-paced cover that hit number seven on the charts in the United Kingdom. In the mid-90s, meanwhile, it cracked the Top 100 with a cover featuring Liz Phair backed by Material Issue from an album of alternative acts covering the theme songs from children’s shows.
Fall Out Boy covered “The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” for The Banana Splits Movie. Regardless of the version, “The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” is too catchy. Pop songs are supposed to be catchy, but not to this extent.
This just feels weird and wrong. So, if you would also like to think about things other than the iconically annoying theme song to an inane late 1960s kiddie show, do not, under any circumstance, hit play on any of the YouTube videos above.
What? You already clicked, and now you can’t get that blasted ditty out of your head? I knew it. Welcome to a very unfortunate club of 2024 grown-ups tormented by a kiddie song from 1968.
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