Poisonous Dose

At the end of last week's Sunday strip, Cartoonist Al Capp left Li'l Abner in Venice, innocently but enthusiastically helping the last of the Borgias bottle the last of the Borgia poison. With typical Capp satire, Li'l Abner named the concoction "Peppi-Borgia," and Mammy Yokum had a wonderful idea: "We'll give it a rootin', tootin', go-gettin' American ad-vertisin' campaign!"

But when United Features took a second look at the "go-gettin"' slogans ("Peppi-Borgia hits the spot, puts you 6 feet deep and that's a lot"; "the Pause that Petrifies"), it got cold feet. The slogans obviously splashed close to Coca-Cola and closer to Pepsi-Cola. Although the strips had already been mailed out to Li'l Abner's 700 subscribers, United sent a hurried order to rout out the "Peppi," leave a blank before "Borgia." Most newspapers did.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.