Kars4Kids Jingle

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About

The Kars4Kids Jingle, also known as "1-877-Kars-4-Kids," is a song that plays during radio and television commercials for the non-profit organization Kars4Kids. It is widely known as one of the most despised jingles of all time.

Origin

Kars4Kids is a non-profit organization that began in 1995.^[1] It takes donations of cars and donates the proceeds to Oorah, an Orthodox Jewish organization dedicated to "awakening Jewish children and families to their heritage." The jingle, which features a child singing the agency's telephone number, first appeared on local New York City radio stations in 1999.^[2]

Spread

The original jingle was so hated that Kars4Kids keeps the singer's names under wraps due to the fact he has received death threats. Kars4Kids stayed in New York until 2004, when it expanded to Chicago. It reached west coast audiences in 2005, and by 2007, was all over the country. Kars4Kids Public Relations director Wendy Kiran told Noisey in 2015 that the song currently reaches 50 million listeners daily. In 2014, Kars 4 Kids released a 30-second television commercial.

Backlash

The jingle is almost universally hated. Noisey jokingly stated, "It’s one of the few issues that transcends race, gender, and class. Were a Presidential candidate to run for office on the promise that they would ban the jingle and waterboard the people responsible, they’d win in a landslide."

Critics of the jingle include Jerry Seinfeld,^[3] Keith Olbermann,^[4] and Bill O'Reilly. Radio host Don Imus notably was caught on a hot mic deriding the commercial as it played on air, telling the kids to "go to hell" in 2010.^[5]

Following the release of the television commercial, Vulture^[6] commented that its existence proved the end times were nigh. Later that year, Saturday Night Live^[9] joked about the jingle in a sketch discussing CIA torture techniques.

Kars4Kids Sock Puppets

Aware of the negative reaction their jingle draws, Kars4Kids has taken to trolling its critics on its YouTube channel^[7] with videos featuring overly nice sock puppets. For example, after Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopolous tweeted,^[8] "Today is Thursday morning. Day 4 of the KARS-4-KIDS jingle stuck in my head. I pray for a swift and painless death," the Kars4Kids Youtube channel tweeted her the below video of the sock puppets singing, "There’s a jingle stuck in Katie’s head, and now she wishes that she were dead."