Toot Sweets
"Toot Sweets" is a song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 musical motion picture. In the film it is sung by Dick Van Dyke and Sally Ann Howes. "Toot Sweets" is also featured prominently in the multi-award winning stage musical of the same name which premiered in London at the Palladium in 2002 and on Broadway in 2005 at the newly refurbished Foxwoods Theatre (then the Hilton Theatre). The song was written by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman (also known as the Sherman Brothers).
The song title is a play on words, a humorous Anglicisation of the French expression "tout de suite", meaning "at once".[1] In the context of the film and stage musical, "Toot Sweets" is about a candy cane that has holes in it, making the candy playable as an edible tin-whistle. Unfortunately for protagonist Caractacus Potts, the "Toot Sweets" act like dog whistles, calling all the local canines into the candy factory (not unlike The Pied Piper Of Hamelin), ruining the sanitary conditions of the factory and turning love interest Truly's father against him.
[edit] Other meanings
In the late 1960's, Mattel sold a toy called "Toot Sweets". It was a device that molded Tootsie Rolls into whistles.
[edit] External sources
- Sherman, Robert B. Walt's Time: from before to beyond. Santa Clarita: Camphor Tree Publishers, 1998.
- Random House's Mavens' Word of the Day
