Coco-nuts
We decided to revisit the infamous coconut in today’s comic for a very good reason.
We were contacted a while back by Top-Shelf Marketing, the marketing team responsible for the coconut, because we’d made a mistake in thinking the original coconut was their monkey coconut (though, in all fairness if I remember correctly, the waitress where Omar got it told him it was the monkey coconut).
In any case, they were awesome sports about the misunderstanding, as you can see from the email and brochure they were kind enough to send us:
Hello Space Monkey’s,
Our office thoroughly enjoyed reading your entries and comic strip from July 19th, 2006. We are the designers and purveyors of the dreaded Coconut Monkey, as well as the Coconut Pirate, unfairly characterized as a Coconut Monkey in your Comic Strip.
For your reference, I have attached a photograph of each, posing side by side at the bottom of this e-mail, and also provided the “Sell Sheet” for the Coconut Monkey that we send out with each catalog request.
If you had only driven down the road to Schlitterbahn Beach Water Park, you could have gotten an actual Coconut Monkey, instead of the dreaded Coconut Pirate that you (so aptly) received from the Pirates Landing.
To show that we are good sports, please provide us with information about advertising on your website.
P.S. Up until just a few days ago, we had NOT received any negative feedback from any Drupes.
Best regards,
John Baccoli
National Accounts Manager
Top-Shelf Marketing


So, as you could guess, we were more than happy to give their creation some more air time here on the site. And the actual monkey coconut is actually very cute, if we don’t say so ourselves.
Sorry, we couldn’t get back to you guys sooner, Mr. Baccoli. Keep the coconuts comin’. Spread the monkey word!
We are assholes
When we got that e-mail, lo these many months, I had to reconfigure my whole way of thinking. To imagine a world where I am the bad guy, the jerk-off, the enfant terrible assholis.
If was an uncomfortable moment. Then I saw a shiny object on the sidewalk and all was forgotten. I imagine it to be a Bush-like move.
Yes, it turns out that I cast evil aspersions on a perfectly fine product. If the coconut was indeed meant to look like an ugly (human) pirate, then bravo, coconut dudes. Good one. The monkey, as it actually exists, is quite cute and something I’d have been proud to have at my table. I’d have loved to have had a drink from its head. But drinking from the skull of a pirate is all kinds of issues… I would prefer to avoid that sort of mishmush.
Oh, by the way — my favorite part of that promotional flyer is the boy going up the tree to get the coconut. These things must take months to make.
Still… this whole experience will teach me to be careful how and why I rant. I could hurt a poor coconut-fetching boy’s feelings.
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