I'm not crazy, but his prices are insane

This one is inspired by Michael's search for the worst Christmas creep out there. You know, the entity that gets into the Christmas spirit by playing jingles, putting up decorations, or advertising Christmas sales sometime before the kids have finished trick or treating.

If you lived in or around New York in the 70s and 80s, you remember Crazy Eddie, and his Christmas in August commercials.


Although they were something of a joke, you could, if you wanted to, make the case that they represented an early invasion of Christmas advertising.

Whenever i think of Crazy Eddie, though, i think of the commercial i saw one time, very late at night, possibly in an enhanced state of mind. It was filmed on the Crazy Eddie set, and had all the same production values as a standard Crazy Eddie commercial. However, instead of Jerry Carroll in whatever getup he was in, this one featured a rather large duck quacking directly into the camera in exactly the same cadence as the standard Crazy Eddie fare. No one else i knew ever saw this particular commercial, and i've been left to wonder over the years whether i either hallucinated it, or saw the work of some late night local television stoners making an in-house goof on the Man.

fortunately, there's google, and a search on Crazy Eddie duck commercial turned up this exchange:

Posted 11 October 2005 14:36
Growing up in New York, the Crazy Eddie commercials were stuff of legends. I lived about a half mile from the main store on Coney Island Avenue and Kings Highway.

Anyway, I don't know what made me think of this, but does anyone remember this one? Unless it was a parody that I somehow missed, this one spot had, presumably, Jerry Carroll dressed in a giant duck outfit and the duck "quacked" out the entire "typical" commercial, giving the same signature cadence and motions to phrases like "...and he'll beat it..." "...his prices are insane...", etc. He spoke ZERO words, he just quacked the whole thing thru.

Can anyone on this board confirm the existence of such a commercial?

Yes - but it was more like a chicken. We were going to produce a Thanksgiving commercial, but the turkey costume provided by Rubies Costumes looked more like a chicken. Just goofing around Jerry put on the head piece and started clucking like a chicken and we started rolling tape. It was so hilarious we decided to edit it into a finished spot. Like most Crazy Eddie commercials from those days, the spot was shot around 2AM in a soundroom at the Coney Island Avenue store.

Mystery solved, and just in time for Thanksgiving too.

Thank you Jerry Carroll, and thank you Larry Weiss as well.