What’s a sporting event without giant foam fingers? Let me re-phrase that. What’s an American sporting event without giant foam fingers? If the giant foam finger disappears, if there is no way a fan can stick his big index proudly skyward, proclaiming his teams superiority over yours, well then, Osama has won.  

        Don’t laugh. The giant foam finger was banned from last year’s Super Bowl. The security freaks thought midget terrorists could reside in them and pop out with an arsenal. I say this reactionism is going overboard. Let’s use a little common sense. Let’s be just like the airport, let the fingers in but quiz the finger carrier. “When you were transporting this finger did any midgets ask if they climb inside and nap in your finger?” “Did they have a bulky pouch or anything that looked suspicious wrapped around their mid-section?”

        If we allow the giant foam finger business to go down, what’s next? The plastic vomit makers? It’s a slippery slope if we allow useless entertainment gag items producers to fail. In case you don’t know the useless entertainment gag product industry makes up a large amount of whatever manufacturing facilities our country still has. Dribble glasses have already bit the dust. Giant foam finger makers are the cornerstone. There was even a Bud Light “Real American Hero” commercial honoring Giant Foam Fingers. I love those bits. You need to bow down to Mark Gross and Bill Cimino, who as creative talent for the ad agency BBD-Chicago wrote them. And we love Pete Stacker who announces them without a hint of chuckle in his voice and David Bickler, former lead singer for Survivor (Eye of the Tiger), who really busts out the vocals. Here are the Giant Foam Finger Maker lines and lyrics:

    Bud Light presents real American heroes
    (real American heroes)
    Today we salute you, Mr. Giant Foam Finger Maker
    (Mr. Giant Foam Finger Maker)
    Without you, our teams would be in sixth or seventh place and feel as if they were
in sixth or seventh place
    Carefully, you craft uncanny representations of actual human hands
    (so big, so real)
    so that we may wave them annoyingly in the faces of our rivals.
    (in your face)
    They’re enormous, yes, yet one size fits all. Brilliant.
    (raise them to the sky now)
    So crack open a Bud Light, Mr. Foam Finger maker, and know we speak for sports fans everywhere when we say, “No, you’re number one.”
    (Mr. Giant Foam Finger Maker)
     
    If you get a chance to buy a foam hand or a foam finger, buy one. You help out an industry in trouble. Added bonus, you can carry your “Silliman on Sports” book tucked nicely in the finger and during timeouts, you can pull the book out, wave your finger, yell out “We’re number one” and have a few laughs reading the book.  On second thought, folks might think your talking about our book. That’s okay, too.