Today’s Zippy, savoring words:
(#1)
Eschew the muu! Bonuses: the preposterous name Relentless Betablocker; men’s fashion underwear.
Zippy’s polka-dotted muu-muu (or muumuu) has been his costume since the early days, and has become the standard fashion for all the Pinheads of Dingburg. This strip takes advantage of the rhyme between muu-muu and the (formal and relatively rare) verb eschew. From NOAD2:
deliberately avoid using; abstain from: he appealed to the crowd to eschew violence. ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French eschiver, ultimately of Germanic origin and related to German scheuen ‘shun,’ also to shy [‘start in fright; avoid doing’].
The verb eschew occurs prominently in the jokey slogan “Eschew obfuscation”, a call for clear writing — expanded in this t-short slogan:
(#2)
Beta blockers. From Wikipedia:
Beta blocker … is a class of medications that are particularly used to manage cardiac arrhythmias, and to protect the heart from a second heart attack (myocardial infarction) after a first heart attack (secondary prevention). They are also widely used to treat hypertension
No visible relevance to the content of the comic strip, but it has a nicely alliterative name.
Undico. In the last surreal panel, Dingburger Relentless Betablocker is discovered to be working as a machinist in an Undico underwear factory (with a name that combines underwear and an abbreviated company, as in the trade name Nabisco). Now there is a Undico company that supplies men’s underwear, but it’s located in the Australian state of Victoria, far far from Dingburg.
There’s a men’s fashion underwear brand named Unico, produced by the considerably larger company Mundo Unico (webpage here). From Wikipedia:
Mundo Unico is a men’s apparel company based in Medellín, Colombia [but with branches in a number of other countries, including Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.]. Developed by Nicolas Echeverri, Unico has been noted for its introduction of Lycra, elimination of seams, and color to its products.
Unico is also seriously into accentuating men’s baskets, as in this 7″ short boxer from the Mundo Unico Asia Collection for Autumn 2015:
(#3)
I haven’t found the locations of the factories, but (given the economics) it’s unlikely that ay of them are in the U.S., much less close to Dingburg.
