Crunchtastic

Yami: (holding a box of cereal) Yu-Gi-Oh is sponsored by Yugi-O's. They're Yugi-licious. Wait a minute- Yugi-licious? Is that even a word?
—Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series

A variation of Absolute Comparative that shows up mostly in children's commercials. An advertiser uses completely made-up adjectives to describe their product. Whether this invokes Totally Radical or Weasel Words is up to the reader.

Portmanteaus with "delicious", "terrific", and "fantastic" see the most use, it's easy to append -icious, -ific, or -tastic to the end of any other word. This trope is often paired with Lite Creme, it's easier to con people into buying your product via marketing buzzwords and PR bullshit than telling them that formaldehyde and soybeans makes a multi-colored cereal.

Compare with Perfectly Cromulent Word.

Examples of Crunchtastic include:

Advertising

  • "Fruitilicious". In fact, -licious derivatives have been coined to well beyond the point of exhaustion.
  • The "orangey orange" and "grapety grape" Trix.
  • "Crunchitize", from Cap'n Crunch.
  • "Crunchtastic", obviously.
  • Some years ago now Jimmy Nail used to advertise Kodacolour Gold film as "Clicknologically superbluous" before the tag line "Kodak: We have the clicknology. (SFX: camera clicking)".
  • Kraft Cheese Crumbles used "Crumbelievable", to the point of employing a re-recorded version of EMF's "Unbelievable" as its jingle. The commercials themselves were memorably mock-celebrated by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.
  • Wonka-brand "Scrumdiddlyumptious Bars" (actually made by Nestle). However, the word "scrumdiddlyumptious" was created by Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and as "Wonka-brand" is a reference to the character of Willy Wonka from the book. So in this case, the word was not so much made up by marketing people as co-opted by them, despite the fact that Dahl was very likely satirizing this type of language.
  • "Crispity-Crunchity-Peanut-Buttery Butterfingers!"
  • Taco Bell commercials advertising "melty cheese" on their products. For fun, go to a fancy restaurant and ask for the fondue to be served extra melty. See if you don't get ejected.
  • Taco Bell also had a commercial where three patrons attempt to come up with the perfect adjective to describe the chain's latest item: a combination taco/burrito with melted cheese between the two shells. They go through "smunchy" (soft/melty/crunchy) and "crufelty" (crunchy/soft/melty) before settling on "cruncheweesy" (crunchy/chewy/cheesy).
  • Taco Bell isn't the only fast food chain describing their cheese as "melty." At least a few pizza chains have been doing it, too.
  • Comcast is, apparently, "Comcastic!" Fun fact: Users of Comcast have described their service as "Comcastic" before it became the ad slogan. And when they said it, they meant "My internet is going down and/or being slow for absolutely no discernible reason." It's Comcastic!
  • One Subway ad calls its sandwiches "freshalicious". Another referred to its meatball sandwiches as "splodgilicious". A more recent ad at one point describes the sandwiches as "flavorocious".
  • Hubba Bubba Bubble Gum decided that the words 'funbelievable' and 'unbelievabubble' just weren't crazy enough for their product, so they took pride in informing us that it was "FUNBELIEVABUBBLE!"
  • One that actually became a real word is "dependability," invented by the Dodge brothers to sell their trucks in the 1910s.
  • Budweiser gives us "drinkability". Way to set the bar low there, guys.
  • There are a couple of porn sites that have used the word "MILFtastic"...
  • The Volvic commercials, source of many a YouTube Poop: "I'm filling my water with Volcanicity!"
  • ESPN did a series of NBA commercials. One of them featured Shaquille O'Neil's vocabulary.
  • Dairylea used to be called "calciyummy", without ever indicating why that might be a good thing.
  • Chuck E. Cheese's is now apparently "funified".
  • This can of nightmare fuel from Kinder Surprise contains mostly gibberish, but "chockadooobie" could qualify.
  • Nestle Crunch used to use this following jingle:

"Scrumptuous! 'Cause it's crunchous! That's why I like Nestle Crunch!"

  • Nissan ran an advertising campaign around the concept of combining words to make new ones, such as "Luxurious" and "Durable" to make "Luxurable". The best was undoubtedly "Spafe" (a combination of spacious and safe". Top Gear naturally pointed out that it was just "Shiny and Bright"
  • Why does Avo Classic Frozen Guacamole taste so good? Because it's Fresherized!
  • Snickers' most recent campaign not only makes up words, but gives them definitions. Such as substantialiscious: the weight of something when you weigh it on your tongue.
  • Coco Pops (The UK's equivalent of Cocoa Puffs) briefly changed their name to "Choco Crispies", because, according to the accompanying advert, they are "crispalicious"
  • Ariel washing capsules are "Brrrr-illiant" because they will clean at a low temperature.
  • "Swapportunity" - the opportunity to swamp something out for a low-fat cup of Yoplait Light.


Fanfic

  • Characters in My Immortal occasionally say things "preppily" or "gothically". Ebony and Draco regularly do things "sexily" - mostly things which aren't particularly sexy, such as crying, summoning broomsticks, and jumping in front of bullets. Tara also likes to attach "wisely" to Dumbledore's actions. Apparently, "You dunderheads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" can be screamed "wisely".

Film

  • It's not just a great day in the 1977 Disney musical Pete's Dragon - as the song says, "It's a brazzle dazzle day!" The Tagline was actually "Brazzle Dazzle Brilliance!" (No wonder kids preferred to check out Star Wars again...)
  • "Supercalifregilisticexpialidocious."
  • The people of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry find it "fabulicious".
  • Kung Pow: "Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab."
  • Billy Madison: "What do you think of that, Mr. Blue Duck?" "That's quacktastic!"
  • The Smurfs combines this with Smurfing when Smurfette calls Patrick Winslow's dressing up for work "smurfalicious".

Literature

  • In Old Goriot by HonorĂ© de Balzac, set in 1819, some characters have a habit of adding "-orama" to the ends of words, for example (in translation from the French) "souporama", "healthorama" and so on. Apparently this was based on a real linguistic fad of the time that followed the invention of the "diorama" and the "panorama". Hence, Older Than Radio...
  • Enid Blyton often used "delumptious" and "scrumplicious", two different portmanteaux of "delicious" and "scrumptious". These were also referenced in Goodnight Mister Tom.

Live Action TV

  • Tobias Funke, M.D.: Analrapist
  • Variation: In a Saturday Night Live sketch parodying Inside The Actors Studio, Will Ferrell as James Lipton feels that Charles Nelson Reilly's acting is so incredible that he must invent a word to describe it. The word: "Scrumtrillescent."
  • The practice was parodied in another Saturday Night Live sketch involved an advertising jingle for the "Nuterrific" bar. The jingle consisted largely of this kind of descriptor, ending with "It's NUT very good!"
  • This is a recurring sketch on Late Night With Conan O'Brien called "Fantastic!" Conan will describe what guests/band is going to be on the show the next day and an enthusiastic "audience"' member says "That's fantastic!" and proceeds to add "'tastic!" on to every thing he describes. ("Omar Epps? That's Epps-tastic!"). However, when Conan describes the normal show's events from the show (such as the "hilarious monologue" and "zany comedy bits"), the man goes quiet or starts doing something unpleasant (such as drinking from a bottle of bleach). Finally, Conan asks the man if he likes the guest but thinks everything else is some negative adjective and the man adds a "-tastic!" to that too. "Not crap. Craptastic!" Or "Not boring, Bortastic!"
  • Dr. Cox from Scrubs: "I megaloathe you all."
  • Nathan Stark about Carter: "Yes, he said invisibling."
  • Doctor Who: "Oi, chavtastic again!"
  • Season 5 of Project Runway had Blaine, who constantly applied "-licious" to words.

Music

  • Destiny's Child has (and is) "Bootylicious".
  • Fergie is Fergalicious.
  • Funkadelic should probably be canonized as the patron saints of this trope, insofar as it refers to music. Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication!

TV Tropes

Video Games

Brother: How things going down there?
Rikku: The situation...it's disasterrific!
Brother: (over com device) Disasterific not a real word! Say "disastrous" like the rest of Spira!

    • Yuna then takes the word and the trope is played straight via this exchange.

Brother: [over com, hysterically] What happened? Is Yuna okay?!
Yuna: Things are, ow, [slight sarcasm] disasterrific.
Brother: Disasterrific? I am on my way!
Rikku: [staring up in disbelief] What about me?

  • Netting 5 kills in a row in Halo multiplayer earns you a "Killtacular" medal. Things escalate from there until the 7-kill streak medal, which is called "Killamanjaro!"
    • This has been expanded upon in more recent games in the series. As of Reach:
    • 4 kills: Overkill
    • 5 kills: Killtacular
    • 6 kills: Killtrocity
    • 7 kills: Killimanjaro
    • 8 kills: Killtastrophe
    • 9 kills: Killpocalypse
    • 10 kills: Killionaire!
  • Super Robot Wars Original Generation has Ascended Fanboy Ryusei Date, who believes that one particular Super Robot is "so ridiculously sweet... It's sweetdiculous!"
  • In House of the Dead Overkill, scoring enough consecutive hits without missing a shot sends your character into "Goregasm" mode.

Web Comics

  • From Stickman and Cube: Cube-O's. Just like regular O's, but CUBE-TACULAR!
  • And there's an instance in VG Cats where they combine fast food and Final Fantasy to make Kentucky Firaga Chocobo, with a side dish of moogle pom-poms. "They're kuporiffic!" Funny if you know that "kupo" is a Polish expletive.
    • Another comic parodies the "dumbass fratboy gamer" stereotype by giving two such individuals a game review show. Every level of their grading scale is a normal word appended with "bro", culminating in a perfect score being labeled "Broseidon, God of the Brocean".
  • This Irregular Webcomic poll question.
  • Howse!!! Dr. Eric "Crankypants" Foreman says:

"There aren't actually enough words in the English language to fully describe how much I hate you. So I made up a couple. "Detestispize" seems to sum it up the best."

Web Original

  • Sailor Moon Abridged's comedy is based largely in mocking the bad (and often downright bizarre) English Dub. Which happened to be full of these. For example:

Serena: Oh, c'mon, Luna! Don't be such a stoigemeister!
Luna: A what?!
Serena: I like making up words! Fudgecracklesnot!

  • Turned Up to Eleven by the Powerthirst commercials. Observe:

Now with preposterous amounts of testosterone. PREPOSTERONE.

  • Strong Bad from Homestar Runner has coined "extracurriculariffic", and his Sblounskched! candy bar has a "crispety, cookety log" in the middle (a cookie center hollowed out to make room for more "candy matter"). There's a lot more. In fact the Homestar Runner Wiki has a page devoted to all the made-up words!
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series is Yugi-licious! Yami then goes to on to question whether that means that it tastes like Yugi and how they would even go about testing that (besides the obvious method).
  • Dragon Ball Abridged

Reporter 2: Mr Kent, if you had to come up with a word for how dead he is, what would it be?
Mr Kent: Cadaveriffic!

  • Linkara has taken to making up new words to describe how terrible the comic he's reading is, like Idiostuperific.
  • Cracked.com writers are also famous for their use of these sorts of words, although Seanbaby and Gladstone are particularly notable.

Western Animation

  • Parodied by Freakazoid!, which introduced audiences to the phrase "Toyetic".
  • Parodied on an episode of The Simpsons where a cash-strapped Springfield Elementary has resorted to using free periodic tables provided by Oscar-Meyer - which, among other things, lists the atomic weight of "bolognium" as "snacktacular".
  • Parodying his commercial work toward the end of his life, The Critic had Orson Welles shilling for frozen peas, which were full of "Country goodness and green pea-ness," which the legendary actor himself realizes is a terrible slogan.
    • Based on a real life event, although the original lacks the pea-ness.
    • The Critic also features this phone call from Ted Turner Captain Ersatz Duke Phillips: "What about that other word I invented: 'Dukelicious'? Nobody's using it? What a Duketastrophe."
  • Rappers Gangstalicious, Thugnificent, Macktastic, and Flonominal in The Boondocks.
  • In Jimmy Neutron, Hugh says stuff like "funkariffic" and "puppetastic". Lampshaded by Jimmy who asks if they are real words.
  • In SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick talks about the word wumbo, citing "Wumborama" and "Wumbology: The study of wumbo."
  • In the big musical number of the first season finale of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Applejack mentions her "Appletastic" treats.
    • Even before that, in the episode "Applebuck Season," Pinkie Pie refers to Applejack diverting a stampede of cows from Ponyville as "Appletastic."
    • The eponymous Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 is apparently "Icantbelievable". Mind you, what kind of advertising did you expect from the Flim Flam Brothers?
  • Done in Avatar: The Last Airbender when Sokka was on his Mushroom Samba thanks to Cactus juice. Apparently nothing is quenchier.

"It's the quenchiest!"
"Nothing's quenchier!"

Real Life

  • Common internet slang includes words like "suck-tastic", "failtacular", "craptacular", and many others.
  • It's a little-known fact that Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses, used to work in advertising. He created these slogans for the Aero chocolate bar: "delectabubble" and "incredibubble".
  • During a review of an extremely bad game in Australian magazine PC Power Play, the reviewer noted that describing how bad it was could leave him open to a being sued by the developers. As a result, he (re-)invented 2 (not at all) new words to circumnavigate this problem- skanktacular and craptastic.
  • In Souvenir of Canada, Douglas Coupland describes how bilingual packaging shows how much easier it is to advertise in English (rather than French). English: "Unbelievably, indescribably chocalicious!" French: "Pour bon gout." Which translates literally to "For Good Taste". Hm. Loses something there.
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