The Ballad of Davee Duckett

(Warning: This post contains moralistic content, and may be amusing only to those with a cynical sense of humor.)

Back in the 70s and 80s, I was a regular sax player in a 15-piece swing band that played at least once a week, in a wide range of venues. A few of those gigs have stuck in my mind for one reason or another. This one was around 1978 or so. It was a kind of surreal experience, in a corporate sort of way.

The band had been booked for a Saturday night dinner at Syntex, a major pharmaceutical company based in Palo Alto. As I remember it, there were one or two hundred employees and spouses in the audience. Our bandleader's day job was with Syntex sales, which was undoubtedly how we ended up with the gig.

Syntex's hot product that year was Neo-Mull-Soy, a new soy-based baby formula. Advertising for the product featured a cartoon duck named "Davee Duck." 

The organizers of the party had decided that the duck would would be the party's theme. They called him "Davee Duckett," and the program had a picture of Davee wearing a coonskin cap. I remember that audience members got coonskin caps, but that could be a manufactured memory.

The organizers had written a Davee Duckett team-building song. When the band took a break, sheets with lyrics were passed around, and the master of ceremonies led the audience in singing this song, to the tune of Disney's "Ballad of Davy Crockett":

Let me tell you a story I knowed
About Davee Duckett and the way that he's growed

The story's short but the product stands tall
Because he's made us
The winner of them all

Davee, Davee Duckett!
Neo-Mull Soy Boy!

I think there were more verses, but this one has stuck with me for 45 years.

In case you are too young to remember, here is Fess Parker singing the original song, which was the theme to Disney's "Davy Crockett" TV series. Fess played the lead role in the series. If you grew up in the US in the late 1950s, you will remember the song, and the coonskin caps that just about every little boy had.

The original "Ballad of Davy Crockett" actually has twenty verses. The lyrics are something that the Disney Corporation would probably rather forget, as they are insulting to Native Americans. But the internet has a long memory; here are all 20 verses.

If you would like to know the actual history of Davy Crockett (1786-1836), here is the Wikipedia entry. He did fight the "Injuns" in the Creek War of 1813, but we should also note that to his credit, as a member of the US House of Representatives in 1830, Crockett did vote against Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.

I'd like to close this post on a cheerful note, but the Davee Duckett story doesn't have a happy ending. Contrary to the team-building song, Neo-Mull-Soy was not a "winner" for Syntex, and the product does not "stand tall." Neo-Mull-Soy was discovered to cause severe health problems in infants. Here is a CDC report. 

In 1979 the product was removed from the market, and Syntex became the target of a $2 billion class-action lawsuit. I can't find any record of how this suit was settled, although in a separate suit against Syntex in 1985, plaintiffs were awarded $27 million. A recent writeup of the Neo-Mull-Soy debacle can be read here. 

In 1984, Syntex cancelled the trademark for "Davee Duck." It's available, if you want it. Davee Duck rag dolls, part of the original advertising campaign, are also still occasionally available.