 |
| Anson Williams and Scott Baio on Happy Days. |
When you were a kid, were you ever coerced into selling cookies, candy bars, or magazine subscriptions as part of a fundraising campaign? Did you have a lemonade stand in front of your house? Did you and your friends ever try to start a business of your own? I'll admit, I was not much of an entrepreneur as a child. It just held no appeal for me whatsoever. Plus I was lazy and spoiled. My business experience back then was limited to manning a table at my parents' garage sale. (And I likely ducked out on that after an hour or so.)
Chachi Arcola (Scott Baio) is definitely an entrepreneur -- or a huckster, more accurately. When Happy Days introduced this brash adolescent character in Season 5, his schtick was selling shoddy (stolen?) goods out of a paper bag that he carried with him wherever he went. Eventually, he started working as a busboy at Arnold's or as an assistant to his cousin Fonzie (Henry Winkler) at Bronko's Auto Repairing. He and his single mother are barely making ends meet, so Chachi needs every cent he can scrape up -- both for necessities and for fun.
In the Season 6 episode "Chachi's Incredo-Wax," that desperate need for cash leads him to sell bottles of furniture polish to everyone he knows. The problem is, the polish is defective and ruins everything it touches. The episode plays a lot like "The Hair-Brained Scheme," the series finale of The Brady Bunch. You remember that one. Bobby sells a bottle of hair tonic to his brother Greg, but the tonic ends up turning Greg's hair orange the day before graduation!
Does "Chachi's Incredo-Wax" live up to the high standards of that classic Brady Bunch episode? Find out when you listen to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.