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No. 717: Junko Pops!

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Junko Pops!

First | Previous | 2023-08-01 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/itoons/?comic=717

Strip by: shiningpikablu252

{An advertisement for a product called "Junko Pop", fronted by Junko Enoshima holding a pair of lollipops based on her likeness, with three taglines on various parts of the page. Larger varieties of both "flavors" of the product, "Spunko Berry" and "Punko Grape", are shown to either side of Junko. At the bottom right states "Available exclusively at Sunfish Pocket."}
Upper left tagline: "Better than a dunko tank!"
Upper right tagline: "More exciting than a bunko game!"
Tagline below product name: "Because despair never tasted so good!"
{cut to Rat's workspace, with Rat working and Goat standing next to him}
Goat: "This idea should be sunko in the treasure trunko."
{Pig arrives on scene}
Rat: "Better than having the landfill stunko up by the ingredients"
Pig: "Ooh! Plastic gunko!"

The author writes:

Another lame idea from the drunko mind of one certain Rat...

Leave it to a lame material specialist to derive inspiration from, of all things, a $30 million merchandise write-off with a punny sub-headline. As soon as I saw that sub-headline, trashy-named Ms. Ultimate Despair herself came to my mind (hey, it was either her or a character from Storm Hawks, an obscure western cartoon; given how Ms. Enoshima's a far more popular character, she was by far the better choice!), and the skunko-smell-quality material fell into place from there. Naturally, the rhyme episode—numerous opportunities for lame "rhymes-with-junk-followed-by-O" puns—also fell into place from there. While the merchandise falling victim to the $30 million write-off is a figurine line which also fits the rhyme scheme (and may very well have helped bring that idea into my mind), my mind came up with the idea of lollipops. (Sorry, Square Root of Minus Garfield running gag fans, no frozen pudding here.)

However, just a fictional advertisement for a supposed lollipop in Junko's likeness would make for an extremely lame piece even by iToons standards (even considering the depiction of a popular villain that could very well sell that kind of merchandise if it were indeed real)...So I threw in some panels of Rat at his work station in an attempt to bump it up to "merely lame", and pass the idea off in-universe as one of Rat's harebrained design ideas that usually manifest themselves as demographically-inappropriate "children's books". This also allowed for even more of the rhyme episode and the potential nightmare-fuel conveyance that the "lollipop" is made of the remains of said $30 million merchandise write-off...

Original Pearls Before Swine strips: 2014-01-26, 2014-01-29.
Junko Enoshima appears courtesy of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.
Sunfish Pocket logo appears courtesy of AI: The Somnium Files.