Three Phases of the Rabbit

Dude's name is Quicky. Who knew?

Deep in my youth in the seventies, some of my best friends were cartoon characters.  And we intensified our connection when I joined various fan clubs and generally getting on the merch train early and often. I was a duly deputized member of the Banana Splits Fan Club, had the card with my name on it and everything. I can sing the Banana Splits theme (which contains the names of all four wacky characters) to this day. These huge, psychedelic anthropomorphic animals provided hilarious antics and gripping drama on their Saturday morning show. And of course, I was nose down in a bowl of sugary cereal that whole time.   I agonized over the Quisp/Quake kerfluffle. Though a clear partisan of Quisp, I worried about the controversy damaging both brands. 

And then there was Quick, and their awesome mascot, the Nestlé Quick Bunny. Quicky to his friends in Europe and Canada. Dude came in two colors, pink and brown, for strawberry and chocolate. I was always a strawberry guy, from the beginning. Quicky was awesome, starring in several commercials running non-stop between the shows. Back then, Nestlé Quick was a powdered substance, which one dipped out of a can and added to milk. The ability to add ever greater amounts of Quick to one’s milk was definitely a feature, not a bug. I would load that glass of milk up until it was the consistency of concrete. 

That habit led to me being able to easily acquire the multiple proof-of-purchase tags (we didn’t have UPCs yet) necessary to claim the coolest glass and bowl set containing the image of pink Quicky, the strawberry bunny. I don’t know what ever happened to that glass, but I sure do associate that big pink bunny with the happier parts of my childhood. He and his luscious product never failed to elicit comfort and delight. 

I met Tonjua Twist when she was fresh off the boat from Kentucky as a freshman at Sarah Lawrence. She was a luminous being in the guise of a goofy girl. People were drawn to Tonjua (pronounced TAN-yuh) from the get go. Men, well, you know. Women, she had tons of long term female friends too. I had a mad crush on her in college of course, but as we went into  the same business (she became a wardrobe stylist) I valued her as a friend and colleague. 

Tonjua doesn’t really look much like a bunny. But you can see she has the vibe. Polaroid Transfer by Chris X Carroll.

 The whole time I knew her, I saw dudes fall hopelessly, helplessly in love with her. Often the production of a mere Polaroid of her on the set would be enough to get male friends asking for her phone number. She really was one of those people who glowed with a light and beauty that others routinely responded to. And professionally? Fehgeddaboudit! I would totally bring her on for a job with some client, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, whomever, and within minutes she would become the go-to girl for features, covers, all sorts of jobs I wasn’t cool enough to do, much less get. Tonjua’s funeral, after her untimely death at the turn of the century, was  a stunning cross-section of the beautiful, fabulous, normal, wicked, fun panoply of New York. 

One of my favorite memories of Twist was her penchant for Nestle’s Strawberry Quick. She swore by it as a hangover cure. In those days, we had a lot of hangovers to cure. Tonjua wasn’t just a user, she was an evangelist, proclaiming, to all who would listen, the powers of the adorable pink bunny to cure all sorts of chemical and alcoholic abuse. I was never as convinced, but everytime I see ol’ Quicky (nowadays it is widely available in gas stations and convenience stores),I chuckle and think of my old friend, gone now twenty-four years. It still hurts and makes me sad, but it has also been long enough that the sight (and I’ll admit it, taste) of Strawberry Quick invariably brings a smile and happy thought of my long gone and still much missed pink-bunny-adjacent friend. 

But wait, in one of the odder turns of life, I find myself a rower and Crew coach. Rowing stresses your body to its limits, both aerobically and anaerobically. Following a race, you need more than water.  The perfect recovery drink is a combination of protein, carbohydrates, fluids, and bunny. Seriously, Nestlé’s Quick is considered the perfect “recovery drink” to rowers, albeit in an entirely different sense than Tonjua’s hangover elixir. 

Be kind, for everyone around you is fighting a great battle. Many of those battles might be helped by the liberal application of Quicky’s elixir, stat. It certainly can’t hurt to try. And toss a kind thought to the memory of my old pal Tonjua, won’t you?