Friday, August 1, 2025

Tin, elven saints, and Flour Boys

In "Missing Shelves," published today, G of the Junior Ganymede posted this bit of verse written by an unspecified member of his family:

Cultural Christianity

You can’t put books on missing shelves
You can’t make saints of Keebler elves
You can’t have Christ without the cross
You can’t refine and keep the dross

This is synchronistically interesting in connection with my last post, "Laurelin the tin tree?" In a comment there, I wrote:

Tin is a pretty ambiguous symbol. It occurs in the Bible both as a synonym for "dross" and as a valuable commodity listed alongside silver and gold. For Isaiah, tin in the silver is equated to water in the wine, potentially linking it to the Temperance card of the Tarot, which depicts an angel diluting wine with water.

This is the passage from Isaiah I had in mind:

Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:

Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.

Therefore saith the LORD, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies:

And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin (Isa. 1:22-25).

The reference to making saints of elves is also topical, as that is quite literally what Bill is doing: identifying elves (Tolkien, not Keebler) with Christian saints, for example equating John the Baptist with the elf-king Thingol.


The mention of Keebler elves sent me down a minor rabbit hole. I remember that when we were kids, there were four different shapes of E. L. Fudge cookies, and we had given them names and ranks. Cheek Holder was the highest-ranking cookie, followed by Flour Boy. I'm not entirely sure of the names of the two lower-ranking cookies, but I believe it was Fudge Boy followed by (maybe?) Star Boy. "Flour Boys" was also the usual name we used for E. L. Fudge cookies in general. So sometimes our mom would buy a pack of Flour Boys, and we would each be allowed to take a particular number. If you got a good "hand," meaning lots of Cheek Holders and Flour Boys sensu stricto, you "won."

The names came from the appearance of the cookies. Flour Boy and Fudge Boy were holding containers labeled flour and fudge respectively, and Cheek Holder was probably supposed to be waving but looked to us like he was holding his cheek. All the online images, though, have the cookies labeled with names like Ernie, Buckets, and Fast Eddie. Those names definitely didn't exist in my Keebler-eating days.

I did lots of searches adding words like vintage or particular decades, but so far I have scoured the Internet in vain for an image of a genuine Flour Boy, holding a labeled bag of flour. At one point I noticed that my search string -- e l fudge shapes history -- could be read as a sentence, if a rather ridiculous one.

I did finally manage to find a picture of Cheek Holder, which proves I'm not crazy.


Besides his cheek, Cheek Holder is holding a heart. This suggests that the four types of Flour Boys could correspond to the four Jacks/Knaves/Pages.

5 comments:

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

If we put E. L. together as El, "God," then "El fudge shapes history" -- "fudge" meaning a vague or misleading answer, or an inadequate kludge -- is a perennially appropriate headline.

William Wright (WW) said...

The E.L. Fudge Cookie is the inverse of the Oreo Cookie... white on the outside, and dark on the inside. We've been referring to Beings who could take on fair forms to fool people, like Sauron and Melkor, and that seems to fit here.

"Fudge", what lies on the inside of one of these Elves, is a word that refers to lies, dishonesty, etc. To top it off, these Elves are now owned by a company called Ferrero. That name in Italian means "Iron". We've seen that name come up before in reference to Saruman, during that time the Iron music video from Woodkid was a thing. He is our devil here, I think, and thus our Father of Fudge, I mean, Lies.

So, we might want to be careful around Ernie and Fast Eddie. They look super friendly, but... I don't know.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

"Father of Fudge" sounds like an ersatz Wonka, plus one of the Flour Boys is now named Buckets.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

I think you're on to something with Flour Boys being a negative symbol. The cookie is currently marketed as the "elfwich" (elf-witch), "made special in the Hollow Tree®" -- a symbol which seems conceptually similar to the tin tree.

Possibly related:
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-shit-sandwich-technique.html

WanderingGondola said...

Heh. Recall that, in a recent-ish email, I used "shit sandwich" in a different way, stating it's how "one of my animation teachers (circa 2009) described giving negative items of critique in between positives." Such critique is ideally constructive, objective, looking at the strengths and flaws of a work and its creator's skills. Very different from that pathetic PR.

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