Dead Memes: E.F. Hutton

I remember kids who’d make this same joke on the playground in elementary school. We had no idea what it meant, but it was on TV, so we mimicked it. It became a wide-ranging cultural reference. It was even used in Pretty In Pink by Ducky, right before he’s hurled into the girls’ bathroom by the preppies.

E.F. Hutton was a brokerage firm that was absorbed into Shearson Lehman after a check-kiting scandal in the late 80s (although ). That means there’s a whole generation that has no idea what this means. If you tried to use this as a punchline today, you’d get blank stares.