July 24, 2023 • 38 mins
This week we have a lost media mystery. I’m searching for a missing jingle for the once popular but now nearly-defunct Texas restaurant chain, Pancho’s Mexican Buffet. Does anyone else remember it? Who made it? Why can’t I find it anywhere? Does it even really exist?
Show Notes:
- Dalworth Carpet Cleaning Ad - 1994 (YouTube)
- Pee Wee's Big Adventure - Deep in the Heart of Texas (YouTube)
- Busta Rhymes - Dangerous (YouTube)
- Long Island Poison Control Center PSA (YouTube)
- G-Unit - My Buddy (YouTube)
- My Buddy Commercial (YouTube)
- Earworm (Wikipedia)
- History of Pancho's Mexican Buffet Inc.
- Pancho's Mexican Buffet 1994 Commercial - Raise the Flag (YouTube)
- Ramones - I Wanna Be Well (Feb 18th 1978) (YouTube)
- StevyFire - Pancho's Busboy (Soundcloud)
- Brewish - All You Can Eat (YouTube)
- Stuffed & Busted - Episode 1: All You Can Hear (Archive.org)
- Hey Everybody, It's Jimbo - Tex-Mex - 111 (Archive.org)
- King of the Hill - S3E19 (TikTok)
- Barry's Thoughts - Pancho's Mexican Buffett Review - March 2022 (YouTube)
- Pancho's Mexican Buffet Corpus Christi, TX. 1995 Commercial (YouTube)
- KDMX 102.9 Dallas - 30 May 2000 (Archive.org)
- Southwestern Pancho's Music (Wayback Machine)
- Kevin Toomey - The Mysterious Jingle That Changed My Life (YouTube)
- The power of nostalgia: What science tells us about longing for the past
- 5-19-2002 KDFW Local Commercials (YouTube)
- Pancho's Mexican Buffet Commercial (Raise The Flag!) (YouTube)
This episode of Mount Molehill written, produced, and edited by Chris, with music by Chris and Alex Bainter / CC BY. Any voices featured on the podcast are computer generated unless otherwise noted. Special thanks to Kevin Toomey on this episode for trying to help me out. This podcast features materials protected by the Fair Use guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. All rights reserved to the copyright owners.
If you have a molehill that you’d like us to turn into a mountain, email us at mountmolehillpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Unless you grew up in NorthTexas during the 90s or aughts,
the words Dalworth Clean probablydon't mean anything to you.
It's
(00:21):
a the Dallas Fort Worth area forover 40 years and whose commercials
were ubiquitous on terrestrialtelevision stations when I was a child.
The commercials themselveswere pretty unremarkable.
In each iteration, someone, whether itbe a party guest with a piece of pie,
a young child wearing muddy galoshes,or a wet dog, Dirty's the beige carpet
(00:43):
of a suburban North Texas home, andtwo Dalworth men dressed in white short
sleeved button up shirts and black tiesarrive at the scene of the grime to
steam clean the carpet and save the day.
But if the commercials are soformulaic, why am I still talking
about them 20 years later?
Because the Dalworth clean jingle...
(01:06):
Call 267 8433 Because the nextbest thing to do Is Dalworth Clean!
Everyone who grew up in DFW knows thissong, so much so that if you wanted
to recreate a Texan communal singingexperience like the one in Pee Wee's Big
Adventure, The stars at night are bigand bright, deep Dalworth Clean jingle
(01:34):
than with Deep in the Heart of Texas.
I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.
The Delworth Clean Jingle is thevery definition of an earworm, that
is, a catchy and or memorable pieceof music that continuously occupies
a person's mind even after it is nolonger being played or spoken about.
We all get these earwormsfrom time to time.
(01:56):
Busta Rhymes 1997 song, Dangerous, takesits chorus from an earwormy 1983 public
service announcement produced by the LongIsland Regional Poison Control Council.
This is serious.
We could make you delirious.
Delirious.
You should have a healthy fear of us.
Fear of us.
Too much of us.
No.
And G Unit's 2003
(02:21):
song, My Buddy, takes its chorusfrom a commercial for a popular 1980s
children's toy of the same name.
And it's no surprise that earwormsoften come from advertisements.
(02:44):
That's just marketing doing its job.
And being infected with an earwormcan be annoying, to put it mildly,
both to the person with theworm, and to those around them.
There are several ways toexterminate an earworm.
Studies show that chewing gum or occupyingone's mind with a task that engages
the working memory can be helpful.
(03:04):
I've always found that listening to theOffending Song repeatedly is the best
insecticide for dealing with an earworm.
But what do you do when thejingle that's stuck in your
head can't be found anywhere?
Welcome to Mount Molehill, aplace where even the smallest
(03:25):
mysteries become mountains.
I'm Chris and this week I'm searching fora missing jingle for the once popular but
now nearly defunct Texas restaurant chain.
Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
Does anyone else remember it?
Who made it?
Why can't I find it anywhere?
And does it even really exist?
Let's make a mountainout of this molehill.
(03:53):
In order to understand why I careso much about the Poncho's Mexican
Buffet jingle, you've gotta knowa bit about the restaurant itself.
The restaurant was founded in El Paso,Texas in 1958 by Jesse Arambide, Jr.
Jesse learned how to cook Tex Mex fromhis mother, but it was while serving on
board a naval troop ship during World WarII that he gained an understanding of the
(04:17):
economy of scale as it relates to food.
It was these two things, a passion forTex-Mex cuisine and a knowledge of how to
serve it to large groups that inspired rand b Day to open a buffet-style Tex-Mex
restaurant, and he was pretty successful.
R and B Day.
Tried out a few different restaurantconcepts after his success
with the first ponchos buffet.
(04:38):
There were two full serviceversions of Ponchos, a seafood
buffet called the Spanish Galleon.
And a separate Mexicaneatery dubbed Emiliano's.
But none of those otherconcepts really panned out.
Poncho's Mexican Buffet was the onlychain of Arambides that truly had legs.
Poncho's continued to grow overthe next couple of decades, and
(04:59):
was a profitable business everyyear from inception up until 1979.
At which point, Arambide decided to stepdown and turn over his role as CEO of
Poncho's to President Hollis Taylor.
Taylor was able to rejigger the businessmodel, improving operational margins,
while at the same time expandingponchos to 55 locations in five states.
(05:22):
Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico,Arizona, and Oklahoma.
This was quite an impressive feat,considering that this was happening during
the oil industry bust of the early 1980s.
And Poncho's restaurants wereprimarily located in oil country.
Poncho's was able to keep afloat byoffering a variety of all you can eat Tex
(05:44):
Mex food at extremely competitive prices.
Even into the late 80s, the buffetprice for adults was only 3.
99, with children between 6 and11 eating for half of that and
children under 6 eating for free.
But the 1990s would prove to bea time of turmoil for ponchos.
They continued to expand at anannual rate of 10%, which would
(06:07):
prove to be a bit too ambitious.
In 1993, Jesse Arambedi Jr.
passed away and was succeededby his son, Jesse III.
And Poncho struggled toincrease its bottom line.
Several locations were closed, andprices had to be increased from 3.
99 to 5.
49, despite Poncho's entering an agreementwith food distribution juggernaut,
(06:30):
the Cisco Corporation, in 1994.
And it was at this time that Ponchostarted an aggressive marketing campaign
to offset the negative publicity of itsincreased prices and decreased quality.
The advertising campaign was somewhatsuccessful and centered on the Poncho's
gimmick of raising the flag, which issomething we haven't talked about yet.
(06:52):
but is definitely one of themain reasons that the buffet
chain is remembered fondly today.
Try raising a flag at a fastfood place and see what you get.
At Poncho's Mexican Buffet, it'll getyou more of the things you love from
our all you can eat buffet for just 4.
99.
You see, at pretty much any buffetrestaurant you've probably ever eaten
(07:13):
at, when you want more food, youget up, grab a tray and some plates,
and start piling it on yourself.
But ponchos was a little bit differentyou'd come in pay your fees and then take
your tray down a Cafeteria style linein which you'd tell the servers what you
want to eat and they'd put some on a plateand hand it to You after you had finished
(07:35):
your first round you could go back inline Or you could alert a server that you
were hungry using a much kitschier methodRaising the flag each table at ponchos had
a miniature flagpole on it with a Mexicanflag And if you wanted more food You'd
haul the mini halyard, the flag wouldgo up, a server would come and ask you
what you wanted, and a few minutes lateryou'd have a fresh plate of sopapillas
(07:59):
without ever having to leave your table.
And we'll definitely talk more aboutraising the flag later, but let's finish
up telling the history of ponchos first.
So, the ad campaign and increased pricesin 1994 helped boost store sales, but the
success was only temporary, and Poncho'sMexican buffet slowly began to die.
(08:20):
The company continued to lose moneythroughout the latter half of the
1990s, and in 1998, it was forcedto move from the NASDAQ National
Market to the NASDAQ Small CapMarket due to poor stock performance.
In the 2000s, the company tested twonew concepts, an even cheaper version
of the buffet called Poncho's ExpressBuffet and a higher end alternative
(08:42):
dubbed Poncho's Buffet and Grill.
Neither concept was successful, and in2001, Poncho's was purchased by Texas
veteran restaurateur Stephen Oyster for 7.
35 million.
At its apex in 1988, there were 55ponchos restaurants in five states.
(09:04):
Today, all locations outside of Texashave been shuttered, and only five
locations remain in operation in thecities of Mesquite, Umble, Houston,
Well, after eating atPacho's, I want to be well.
(09:29):
That's audio taken from a bootlegrecording of the Ramones performing
at the Panther Hall in Fort Worth,Texas on February 18th, 1978.
It's not uncommon for touring bandsto shout out local spots to ingratiate
themselves with the audience, but itwas almost mind blowing for me to hear
Joey Ramone introduce I Wanna Be Well bytalking about Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
(09:56):
This is essentially putting Poncho's,a restaurant that pretty much no one
outside of Texas has ever heard of, Onthe same level as In N Out, Wawa, Skyline
Chili, or any other locally grown butnationally known regional institution.
And this is just one of the many examplesof how ponchos became part of the
post war, pre Y2K zeitgeist in Texas.
(10:19):
There are parody songs.
Yeah.
(10:42):
There are podcasts like if we were goingto go to a restaurant, we were going to
go to a buffet because it was it was easy.
Everybody could findsomething they could eat.
But but in particular,poncho is Mexican buffet.
My dad loved it more than I'veever seen a grown man love.
Any restaurant, you know, it was TexMex and I'm telling you, you haven't
(11:03):
had Tex Mex until you've been to Texas.
My favorite restaurantby far was Poncho's.
Not sure.
It was featured in episode 19 ofseason 3 of that most Texan of
all TV shows, King of the Hill.
What this calls for soap appears.
There are
(11:25):
YouTube videos.
I'm raising my flag.
I want more.
You raise your flag and you get more food.
Okay.
And now I'm done and I'mgoing to get dessert.
And guess what we have for dessert.
Soap a peas.
And of course.
There were a slew of commercials.
Ponchos in the Port Air Shopping Center.
(11:47):
You're a fiend!
And the most famouscommercial featured a jingle.
And not just any jingle, but one of theearwormiest jingles you ever did hear.
I apologize in advance for this, butit went a little something like this.
Raise the flag, raise the flag.
(12:10):
If you're ready for a little moreponchos, Raise the flag, raise the flag.
You're ready for a littlemore ponchos Mexican buffet.
I can still hear it now,like it was only yesterday.
I mentioned at the top of the episode thatmy preferred method of dealing with an
earworm is to listen to it over and over.
(12:32):
And that's how this whole thing started.
It was a normal day like any other,except for some reason, the Poncho's
Mexican Buffet Jingle bored its wayinto my brain and I couldn't get it out.
So of course, I went to Google andsearched for Poncho's Mexican Buffet
Jingle so that I could listen to it.
I didn't find it.
(12:52):
Then I went to YouTube.
Didn't find it there either.
I went to archive.
org.
Nope, not there either.
Did this jingle actually exist, orwas it a figment of my imagination?
When my partner got home from work,I frantically began questioning
her, demanding that she sing methe Ponchos Mexican Buffet jingle.
(13:13):
And just as I was about to lose allgrip on reality, she sang it back
to me, exactly as I remembered it.
I was, at the very least, relievedto hear it, because this meant
that I wasn't going crazy.
But it was at that moment that I knew,deep down, that Poncho's Mexican Buffet...
was about to consume my every wakingthought for the foreseeable future.
(13:37):
I had to find that f ing jingle.
So, the first thing I had to do wasconfirm that this jingle actually existed.
After all, the only thing so farthat had affirmed its existence
was my significant other.
She grew up in the Dallas Fort Worthmetroplex during the 90s and aughts,
so she would have been exposed to it.
(13:58):
But on the other hand, her and I havebeen together for 10 years, so it's
possible that if this jingle was justsomething that I made up, she was
just repeating back to me somethingthat she had heard me sing earlier
at some point in our relationship.
It seemed possible that the Poncho'sMexican Buffet jingle was an example
of the so called Mandela Effect, so...
(14:20):
Before jumping in head first to thisand scouring the furthest reachers
of the world wide web, I decided thatit would be best to first establish
that this jingle did in fact exist.
I wanted to ask other people if theyremember the jingle, and if so, if
they knew where I could find it.
So I decided that I would make apost on Reddit to see if anyone knew
(14:41):
anything, and this is where I raninto the first of many roadblocks.
I had just started a new Reddit accountfor this podcast, and as such, I didn't
have enough karma to submit a self post.
So, I spent the next few weeks buildingup karma by putting my Google fu and
knowledge of all things obscure towork, and answering questions on the
(15:02):
HelpMeFind and TipOfMyTongue subreddits.
That took a few weeks, and kindof ended up going to waste anyway,
since I decided on a different namefor the podcast, so I no longer use
that Reddit account, but I digress.
Once I had finally built up enough karma,I made a post to the Houston, Dallas, and
AskDFW subreddits that went like this.
(15:25):
Does anyone remember theponchos Mexican buffet jingle?
It went something like this.
Raise the flag, raise the flag, ifyou're ready for a little more ponchos,
raise the flag, raise the flag.
You're ready for a littlemore Ponchos Mexican Buffet.
I believe this jingle was primarilyused in radio spots, but it could
(15:45):
have been used in TV ads as well.
It seems like everyone I talked to thatgrew up around a Ponchos, at least in
the DFW area, remembers this jinglevery well, but I haven't been able to
find any trace of this jingle online.
I've found a couple commercials, butso far I've been unable to locate
any trace of the iconic jingle.
(16:06):
Is there anybody out there that hasa recording that features the jingle?
Does this jingle stillget played on the radio?
Please help, I justwant to raise the flag.
And there were quite a few responses,many of which confirmed that they
remembered the jingle, and that I hadgotten the lyrics right, which was good
(16:26):
enough for me to reasonably say thatthis wasn't just some Mandela Effect
thing that I had made up in my mind.
But the responses mostly consisted ofpeople sharing memories of ponchos, which
was fun, and But didn't really help me.
There were a few interestingresponses, though.
There were a few replies about otherpeople's unsuccessful search for the
(16:48):
jingle, which made me feel betterbecause at least I wasn't the only
one out there who couldn't find it.
But there was one response that reallystood out by a user who said, If I'm
not mistaken, there were actually a fewdifferent ads that featured that jingle.
The one with the baby with a fakemustache and sombrero standing out
the most, and others being morelike a regular restaurant ads.
(17:08):
The one with the baby lookedvery low budget and maybe from
much more obscure sources.
But the other was higher in budgetand maybe the product of an agency
that is still active in the DFW area.
I used to work in TV commercial productionin Dallas when these ads were in rotation.
I'll poke some old contactsand see if any leads shake up.
I find myself suddenlyinvested in this mystery.
(17:29):
Now that sounded promising.
But the user never got back to me.
Alright, so at this point, it'slooking like I'm just going
to have to brute force it.
I know this jingle exists,other people know it exists, but
nobody knows where to find it.
So back to YouTube.
So I just searched for Poncho'sMexican Buffet on YouTube and
(17:51):
went through every single video.
Literally.
I scrolled until therewere no more results left.
And I don't know if you know howmany results show up in a YouTube
search, but trust me, it's a lot.
The next place I looked was archive.
org.
I went through all the audio and videosearch results for Poncho's Mexican
(18:12):
Buffet, but Again, didn't find anything.
I looked up videos of commercials thatwere taped off the local DFW affiliates
of Fox, UPN, and CBS, which was only abouttwo hours all in all, but again, no dice.
So I scoured Archive.
org for radio broadcast recordingsfrom the Texas markets that used
(18:33):
to have Poncho's restaurants.
I listened to over 25 hours of old Texasradio broadcasts from 1986 to 2012.
And while there was some fun andinteresting stuff in there...
Hi, it is Lisa and it's back.
We have another virus.
This one is called the Killer Resume One.
And this is just...
Once again, the Poncho's MexicanBuffet jingle was nowhere to be found.
(18:58):
As a last ditch effort, I went throughevery single snapshot of the Poncho's
website on the Wayback Machine.
I found some music files, but it was justsome generic, southwestern sounding music.
(19:18):
And it was at this point that Ifirst began to have some serious
doubts about whether or not I wouldever be able to hear the Poncho's
Mexican Buffet jingle again.
I had pretty much exhausted every avenueat this point, and I'm just one guy with
limited resources and no connection tothe food service or advertising world.
And while there had been a fewpeople along the way that did express
(19:41):
some interest in helping me findthe jingle, their investment into
tracking it down was only fleeting.
No one seemed to care as much as I didabout a decades old restaurant jingle.
No one, that is, except Kevin Toomey.
I've been living with a mystery.
On February 5th, 2021, Kevin posteda short documentary chronicling his
(20:04):
13 year journey to find the singer ofa radio jingle for a Columbus, Ohio
pizza restaurant, and he went to greatlengths tracking the singer down.
A thing I've been wrestlingwith for a decade of my life.
Got in the horn, started making calls.
(20:24):
I can go down the Gloria Estefanwormhole as deep as that sucker goes.
And while he did not initially findan answer, by May 2021, he had posted
a follow up documentary finallyputting his jingle mystery to rest.
And watching Kevin's documentarygave me the strength I needed
to forge ahead in my own search.
(20:46):
And I continued my questwith renewed vigor.
And, in fact, my next leadactually came from Kevin.
When I reached out to him to ask forhis permission to include clips from
his documentary in this podcast,He not only responded, but he also
provided me with some helpful info.
In a message on Instagram, he said, Forwhat it's worth, don't think much of it
(21:08):
is included in my dot because it didn'tend up going anywhere, but I was in touch
with an old producer guy who had a hugejingle production company in Dallas.
He was certain he'd help me find thejingle, but never actually was able to.
If your jingle comes from theDallas area, you should email him.
You can tell them I suggested you reachout since they were helpful in my search
(21:29):
for the Rotelos Pizza Jingle Singer.
He's a Dallas based jingle producer.
And I did reach out to thatperson, but I never got a response.
Well, thanks anyways for trying, Kevin.
So at this point, it was prettyobvious to me that if the Poncho's
jingle is on the internet, it's notanywhere that I'm going to find it.
(21:51):
And, at least so far, reachingout to other internet sleuths
hasn't led anywhere either.
So the only logical thing to do was totry and contact someone who was actually
involved with Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
So I went to the ponchos website,and I noticed that they had a page
where you could subscribe to emails.
(22:11):
So I signed up in the hopes thatI would receive a welcome letter
and that I'd then have an officialPoncho's email address to respond to.
The welcome letter never came, so mynext option was to start calling Ponchos.
And yes, these are actual calls.
(22:38):
Phone ringing Poncho, make some movement.
Hi, I was wondering if you had thecontact information for the owner?
Um...
Okay, give me one second to unplug.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you for calling Patchos.
Hi.
Uh huh.
(22:59):
Are you the owner of Ponchos?
No, I'm just a man of the year.
Oh, I was wondering if you had anycontact information for the owner.
Uh, for what?
Um, I had a question about, uh, an oldad campaign that used to run on TV and
the radio, and I was wondering if hemight know any information about that.
Mm.
(23:19):
You know, Panchos, it's been, uh,we have been sold like five times
in the last, in the last 23 years.
Yeah.
I I How long have you worked there?
Since 98.
So you probably remember thoseraise the flag commercials?
Yes.
One in the morning.
(23:42):
. . Yeah.
So that's actually whatI was trying to mm-hmm.
reach out to the ownerabout, is to try out.
Find out some more information about that.
Well, there's two.
One of them is not in the country.
Okay.
He travels a lot.
And the other one, he's always busy.
He doesn't want me to share hisphone number or email, but he
(24:03):
wants you to leave a message.
But if you want to catch him, if you,you don't live in this area, right?
No, not anymore.
If you want to catch him, he's here.
I want to say, he always comesby to pick up some paperwork,
or you can leave your message.
(24:24):
If you leave your message, I'mnot going to guarantee that
he's going to call you back.
You know, unless it'ssomething super, super big.
That's the only reasonwhy he calls you back.
But if you want to catchhim, he's always here.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah, the, the message isjust, uh, that I have some
(24:44):
questions about that ad campaign.
Yeah, he was a run.
He's been with Pancho's forlike 50 years, so he was a run.
Okay, um, sir.
Uh huh.
Um, so, I mean, there's probablynot a big chance of him getting back
to me on this, but I'll go aheadand leave my number if that's okay.
yes.
Yeah.
(25:04):
This is all I can do, okay?
I'm just a messenger.
No, no, I understand.
But if it's like, uh, something big, thenI give it to them, and they call you back.
They only call you back whenthere's, like, complaints,
or, you know, big things.
Oh, no, I don't have any complaints.
Okay.
Let me see, what's your phone number?
(25:26):
It is, uh, 505...
Your name?
Chris.
And you don't work for a company, right?
No, no, this is just personal interest.
Sounds good.
Uh, we'll give it to him.
Alright, well, thank you
(25:47):
It didn't sound likely that I would everget a response from the owners of this
poncho's, but luckily I knew that thefive remaining poncho's Mexican buffets
were not all owned by the same people.
It's kind of hard to tell, butI think there are possibly three
separate groups of owners forthe five remaining restaurants.
One company owns the Arlingtonand Fort Worth locations.
(26:08):
That much seems pretty clearbecause on PonchosMexicanBuffetDFW.
com, those two locations are bothlisted on the Our Locations page.
But on that same website...
Under the About Us section,there is another page called
Other Locations Not Affiliated.
This page lists the Mesquite,Humble, and Houston locations.
(26:33):
Then if you go to the About Us pageon ponchosmexicanbuffethouston.
com, it states, quote, With threeconvenient locations, You need
not look for authentic Mexicanfood any further, end quote.
However, if you go to their locationspage, they only list the humble location.
And here's some unfortunate news, folks.
(26:55):
The reason the Houston locationis no longer listed is because
that apparently shut down sometimearound September 2022 after I had
already started digging into this.
So there's actuallyonly four Ponchos left.
But interestingly, neither the DFWnor the Houston Ponchos websites claim
ownership of the Mesquite location,which definitely is open, because
(27:17):
at the time of this recording, thereare Google reviews for the Mesquite
location from just two days ago.
All of that is just a long windedway of saying that, just because the
company that owns the Arlington andFort Worth companies probably won't
get back to me, all hope is not lost.
So I called the Mesquite locationwith the ambiguous ownership first.
(27:39):
I figured they only have one location.
They don't have an official website.
It's probably owned by a smallercompany and maybe they'll be
more likely to talk to me.
But they just hung up on me.
So I called the humble location next.
Hello, and thanks for calling.
To be put through to therestaurant, please hold.
(28:01):
Do you know you can orderonline to get the best deals?
We've just sent you a textmessage with a link to order
online, so why not try it now?
Phone ringing We got a bunch of snap here.
Hi, um, I was wondering if you could giveme some contact information for the owner?
(28:22):
The owner is not in right now,and uh, she's on vacation, so she
won't be here until next week.
Alright, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Bye.
Okay, I guess I'll try again next week.
Once again, at this point, I'mquestioning this whole thing.
I'm calling buffet restaurantsand bothering people to
(28:43):
find a 30 year old jingle.
This is what an insane person does.
So my next step was to start reachingout to everyone that had ever worked
for the Ponchos Corporation on LinkedIn.
I'm exaggerating, but I did go throughevery LinkedIn profile that listed
Ponchos Mexican Buffet as an employer,and there were a lot, as you can
(29:03):
imagine, but there were two that Ikeyed in on that sounded like they
might actually be able to help me.
One was the former vice presidentof marketing for Ponchos Mexican
Buffet, and the other was theformer director of marketing.
If, IF they got back to me, that wouldbe amazing because they both worked
(29:23):
in marketing for Ponchos during thetime when the commercial played.
But I didn't have much hope, however,because I had to reach out to one of
them via Facebook, which means thatthey would first have to accept a friend
request from someone they don't know,and the other person, I had to send
an email to their current employer.
Via the contact page on their websiteand hope that not only did they actually
(29:47):
read the email But that they wouldthen route it to the right person and
then they would read it and decide torespond So at this point all I could
do was wait Wait for the owners of theArlington and Fort Worth locations to
call me, wait for the Humble owner toget back from vacation, and wait for the
two former employees to respond to me.
(30:09):
So that's what I did.
I waited.
And while I waited...
I began to retrace my steps.
I was just looking for something, anythingthat I missed that would aid me in my
search for the Poncho's Mexican Buffetjingle, but I couldn't find anything.
And after waiting weeks and getting noresponse from any of the people I had
(30:30):
reached out to, The only thing I had leftto do was call the Umble location again.
Phone ringing.
Ponchos, how may I help you?
Hi, I was wondering if you had any,uh, contact information for the owner?
(30:50):
Give me just one second.
Okay.
I waited on hold for ten minutes,but no one ever got back to me.
Clearly, nobody at the remainingPonchos restaurants wants
to talk to me about this.
And these aren't the onlycalls that I made, either.
There were several more that I didn'tinclude in the interest of time that
(31:13):
all ended very much the same way.
Either they did not want to talkto me, or they didn't have any
information about the jingle.
I decided that, for now, it's probablybest to stop calling them for a while.
There's a fine line between beingpersistent and being annoying, and I felt
that I had started to cross that line.
(31:36):
And that's it.
No one was willing to talk to me aboutthe Poncho's Mexican Buffet jingle.
My internet sleuthing had reached itslimits, and as much as I've laid out
for you here, there was a lot moreinvestigating that I didn't really go
into because it all led to dead ends.
We're talking newspapers,obituaries, public relations
(31:57):
firms in Colorado, dead forums.
I put in a ridiculous amount ofeffort trying to find this jingle.
And at this point, it was all for naught.
It seems that I'm no closer to hearingthat jingle than I was when I started.
I may never get to raise the flag again.
And that's a depressing thought.
(32:18):
But why?
Why do I care so much about amid 90s jingle for a Mexican
buffet on the verge of collapse?
In an article on inverse.
com about the power of nostalgia,psychological scientist Clay Rutledge
said that Nostalgia is one of the toolswe use to remind ourselves that we matter.
(32:38):
And maybe that's why I care so much.
Maybe this whole thingwasn't about ponchos at all.
Maybe it was about me andmy place in the world.
Because if something that was so belovedby so many people could just be discarded
and forgotten so easily, what's to stopthe same thing from happening to me?
(32:58):
And how can I remind myself thatI matter if the things that matter
to me don't matter to anyone else?
Does anything matter?
An existential crisis, courtesyof Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
Even though I've done everythingin my power to find this jingle and
come up with nothing, I'm not readyto say that I'm done searching.
(33:22):
More like, Poncho and I are on a break.
By the time this episode releases, Iwill have been looking for the Poncho's
jingle for over a year to no avail.
jingle.
Because, I just want to raisethe flag, one last time.
(33:48):
Update.
I originally began writing this storyon October 27th, 2022, and by that point
in time, I had already done most of theinvestigation detailed in this episode.
I had already gonethrough YouTube, Archive.
org, and seemingly the entire internetwith a fine toothed comb in search of
(34:12):
the Poncho's Mexican Buffet jingle.
Well, it's now July 23rd, 2023, at 8.
54pm, just under 10 hours beforethis podcast is set to premiere, and
I have some exciting news, folks.
The Poncho's Mexican Buffetjingle has been found.
(34:33):
At least partially.
I was at my computer just makingsure that all my I's were dotted
and T's crossed before premieringthe podcast tomorrow, or...
I guess today, as you guys are hearing it.
And I just decided to, once again,do a quick search for the jingle.
And there it was.
After searching for it for so long,it was just sitting on YouTube.
(34:57):
I almost couldn't believe it.
Apparently on March 20th, 2023, YouTubeuser Chen with Rules uploaded a video
of commercials that aired on May19th, 2002, on the Dallas-Fort Worth
Local Fox affiliate, K D F W, and twodays after that YouTube user sate.
(35:20):
Uploaded a single commercialextracted from Chen with Rules video.
That commercial features thePoncho's Mexican Buffet jingle.
Poncho's All You Can Eat MexicanBuffet invites you to experience
real food at best food prices.
For around 6 bucks, choose fromover 35 authentic Mexican recipes.
All made from scratch every day.
(35:41):
Got little ones?
At Poncho's, children under 5 eat 3.
And our Big Kids Buffet is just...
2.
99, ponchos, fresh handmade Mexicanfood, great prices, and family fun.
Still hungry?
Raise the flag!
Raise the flag!
You're ready I must have just sat hereand listened to it about 20 times.
(36:04):
I am irrationally excited about this,but I can't yet put this case fully
to rest because if you'll notice,this commercial contains only an
abbreviated version of the full jingle.
The entire jingle goes, raisethe flag, raise the flag.
If you're ready for a little moreponchos, raise the flag, raise the flag.
(36:28):
You're ready for a littlemore ponchos Mexican Buffet.
And the version featured in thisspecific commercial omits the first part.
Raise the flag, raise the flag.
You're ready So, yeah, this mysteryisn't fully solved yet, but damn am
(36:49):
I excited that I can finally listento at least part of the jingle.
You better believe I immediatelydownloaded the video from YouTube
and uploaded it to Archive.
org.
This episode was fully recorded,edited, and ready to go out tomorrow
with a completely different ending,so I'm just super excited about this.
(37:11):
Anyways, uh, thanks for listening tothe series premiere of Mount Molehill.
Mount Molehill is written, produced,and edited by me, Chris, with
music by myself and Alex Painter.
Any voices other than mine featuredon the podcast are computer
(37:32):
generated, unless otherwise noted.
All of the sources used in thisepisode can be found in the show notes.
This podcast features materials protectedby the Fair Use Guidelines of Section
107 of the Copyright Act, all rightsreserved to the copyright owners.
Special thanks to Kevin Toomey on thisepisode for trying to help me out.
(37:54):
If you have a molehill that you'd likeme to turn into a mountain, whether it's
a mystery that you just can't solve,or just an interesting topic you'd like
me to delve into, please reach out.
You can email me at MountMolehill podcast@gmail.com,
or you can call and leave me avoicemail at 5 0 5 2 1 8 6 8 9 4.
(38:15):
Follow us on Instagram to see updatesand supplemental material for the show.
Thanks for listening, I'll be backwith another episode in two weeks.
Unless you grew up in NorthTexas during the 90s or aughts,
the words Dalworth Clean probablydon't mean anything to you.
It's
(00:21):
a the Dallas Fort Worth area forover 40 years and whose commercials
were ubiquitous on terrestrialtelevision stations when I was a child.
The commercials themselveswere pretty unremarkable.
In each iteration, someone, whether itbe a party guest with a piece of pie,
a young child wearing muddy galoshes,or a wet dog, Dirty's the beige carpet
(00:43):
of a suburban North Texas home, andtwo Dalworth men dressed in white short
sleeved button up shirts and black tiesarrive at the scene of the grime to
steam clean the carpet and save the day.
But if the commercials are soformulaic, why am I still talking
about them 20 years later?
Because the Dalworth clean jingle...
(01:06):
Call 267 8433 Because the nextbest thing to do Is Dalworth Clean!
Everyone who grew up in DFW knows thissong, so much so that if you wanted
to recreate a Texan communal singingexperience like the one in Pee Wee's Big
Adventure, The stars at night are bigand bright, deep Dalworth Clean jingle
(01:34):
than with Deep in the Heart of Texas.
I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.
The Delworth Clean Jingle is thevery definition of an earworm, that
is, a catchy and or memorable pieceof music that continuously occupies
a person's mind even after it is nolonger being played or spoken about.
We all get these earwormsfrom time to time.
(01:56):
Busta Rhymes 1997 song, Dangerous, takesits chorus from an earwormy 1983 public
service announcement produced by the LongIsland Regional Poison Control Council.
This is serious.
We could make you delirious.
Delirious.
You should have a healthy fear of us.
Fear of us.
Too much of us.
No.
And G Unit's 2003
(02:21):
song, My Buddy, takes its chorusfrom a commercial for a popular 1980s
children's toy of the same name.
And it's no surprise that earwormsoften come from advertisements.
(02:44):
That's just marketing doing its job.
And being infected with an earwormcan be annoying, to put it mildly,
both to the person with theworm, and to those around them.
There are several ways toexterminate an earworm.
Studies show that chewing gum or occupyingone's mind with a task that engages
the working memory can be helpful.
(03:04):
I've always found that listening to theOffending Song repeatedly is the best
insecticide for dealing with an earworm.
But what do you do when thejingle that's stuck in your
head can't be found anywhere?
Welcome to Mount Molehill, aplace where even the smallest
(03:25):
mysteries become mountains.
I'm Chris and this week I'm searching fora missing jingle for the once popular but
now nearly defunct Texas restaurant chain.
Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
Does anyone else remember it?
Who made it?
Why can't I find it anywhere?
And does it even really exist?
Let's make a mountainout of this molehill.
(03:53):
In order to understand why I careso much about the Poncho's Mexican
Buffet jingle, you've gotta knowa bit about the restaurant itself.
The restaurant was founded in El Paso,Texas in 1958 by Jesse Arambide, Jr.
Jesse learned how to cook Tex Mex fromhis mother, but it was while serving on
board a naval troop ship during World WarII that he gained an understanding of the
(04:17):
economy of scale as it relates to food.
It was these two things, a passion forTex-Mex cuisine and a knowledge of how to
serve it to large groups that inspired rand b Day to open a buffet-style Tex-Mex
restaurant, and he was pretty successful.
R and B Day.
Tried out a few different restaurantconcepts after his success
with the first ponchos buffet.
(04:38):
There were two full serviceversions of Ponchos, a seafood
buffet called the Spanish Galleon.
And a separate Mexicaneatery dubbed Emiliano's.
But none of those otherconcepts really panned out.
Poncho's Mexican Buffet was the onlychain of Arambides that truly had legs.
Poncho's continued to grow overthe next couple of decades, and
(04:59):
was a profitable business everyyear from inception up until 1979.
At which point, Arambide decided to stepdown and turn over his role as CEO of
Poncho's to President Hollis Taylor.
Taylor was able to rejigger the businessmodel, improving operational margins,
while at the same time expandingponchos to 55 locations in five states.
(05:22):
Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico,Arizona, and Oklahoma.
This was quite an impressive feat,considering that this was happening during
the oil industry bust of the early 1980s.
And Poncho's restaurants wereprimarily located in oil country.
Poncho's was able to keep afloat byoffering a variety of all you can eat Tex
(05:44):
Mex food at extremely competitive prices.
Even into the late 80s, the buffetprice for adults was only 3.
99, with children between 6 and11 eating for half of that and
children under 6 eating for free.
But the 1990s would prove to bea time of turmoil for ponchos.
They continued to expand at anannual rate of 10%, which would
(06:07):
prove to be a bit too ambitious.
In 1993, Jesse Arambedi Jr.
passed away and was succeededby his son, Jesse III.
And Poncho struggled toincrease its bottom line.
Several locations were closed, andprices had to be increased from 3.
99 to 5.
49, despite Poncho's entering an agreementwith food distribution juggernaut,
(06:30):
the Cisco Corporation, in 1994.
And it was at this time that Ponchostarted an aggressive marketing campaign
to offset the negative publicity of itsincreased prices and decreased quality.
The advertising campaign was somewhatsuccessful and centered on the Poncho's
gimmick of raising the flag, which issomething we haven't talked about yet.
(06:52):
but is definitely one of themain reasons that the buffet
chain is remembered fondly today.
Try raising a flag at a fastfood place and see what you get.
At Poncho's Mexican Buffet, it'll getyou more of the things you love from
our all you can eat buffet for just 4.
99.
You see, at pretty much any buffetrestaurant you've probably ever eaten
(07:13):
at, when you want more food, youget up, grab a tray and some plates,
and start piling it on yourself.
But ponchos was a little bit differentyou'd come in pay your fees and then take
your tray down a Cafeteria style linein which you'd tell the servers what you
want to eat and they'd put some on a plateand hand it to You after you had finished
(07:35):
your first round you could go back inline Or you could alert a server that you
were hungry using a much kitschier methodRaising the flag each table at ponchos had
a miniature flagpole on it with a Mexicanflag And if you wanted more food You'd
haul the mini halyard, the flag wouldgo up, a server would come and ask you
what you wanted, and a few minutes lateryou'd have a fresh plate of sopapillas
(07:59):
without ever having to leave your table.
And we'll definitely talk more aboutraising the flag later, but let's finish
up telling the history of ponchos first.
So, the ad campaign and increased pricesin 1994 helped boost store sales, but the
success was only temporary, and Poncho'sMexican buffet slowly began to die.
(08:20):
The company continued to lose moneythroughout the latter half of the
1990s, and in 1998, it was forcedto move from the NASDAQ National
Market to the NASDAQ Small CapMarket due to poor stock performance.
In the 2000s, the company tested twonew concepts, an even cheaper version
of the buffet called Poncho's ExpressBuffet and a higher end alternative
(08:42):
dubbed Poncho's Buffet and Grill.
Neither concept was successful, and in2001, Poncho's was purchased by Texas
veteran restaurateur Stephen Oyster for 7.
35 million.
At its apex in 1988, there were 55ponchos restaurants in five states.
(09:04):
Today, all locations outside of Texashave been shuttered, and only five
locations remain in operation in thecities of Mesquite, Umble, Houston,
Well, after eating atPacho's, I want to be well.
(09:29):
That's audio taken from a bootlegrecording of the Ramones performing
at the Panther Hall in Fort Worth,Texas on February 18th, 1978.
It's not uncommon for touring bandsto shout out local spots to ingratiate
themselves with the audience, but itwas almost mind blowing for me to hear
Joey Ramone introduce I Wanna Be Well bytalking about Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
(09:56):
This is essentially putting Poncho's,a restaurant that pretty much no one
outside of Texas has ever heard of, Onthe same level as In N Out, Wawa, Skyline
Chili, or any other locally grown butnationally known regional institution.
And this is just one of the many examplesof how ponchos became part of the
post war, pre Y2K zeitgeist in Texas.
(10:19):
There are parody songs.
Yeah.
(10:42):
There are podcasts like if we were goingto go to a restaurant, we were going to
go to a buffet because it was it was easy.
Everybody could findsomething they could eat.
But but in particular,poncho is Mexican buffet.
My dad loved it more than I'veever seen a grown man love.
Any restaurant, you know, it was TexMex and I'm telling you, you haven't
(11:03):
had Tex Mex until you've been to Texas.
My favorite restaurantby far was Poncho's.
Not sure.
It was featured in episode 19 ofseason 3 of that most Texan of
all TV shows, King of the Hill.
What this calls for soap appears.
There are
(11:25):
YouTube videos.
I'm raising my flag.
I want more.
You raise your flag and you get more food.
Okay.
And now I'm done and I'mgoing to get dessert.
And guess what we have for dessert.
Soap a peas.
And of course.
There were a slew of commercials.
Ponchos in the Port Air Shopping Center.
(11:47):
You're a fiend!
And the most famouscommercial featured a jingle.
And not just any jingle, but one of theearwormiest jingles you ever did hear.
I apologize in advance for this, butit went a little something like this.
Raise the flag, raise the flag.
(12:10):
If you're ready for a little moreponchos, Raise the flag, raise the flag.
You're ready for a littlemore ponchos Mexican buffet.
I can still hear it now,like it was only yesterday.
I mentioned at the top of the episode thatmy preferred method of dealing with an
earworm is to listen to it over and over.
(12:32):
And that's how this whole thing started.
It was a normal day like any other,except for some reason, the Poncho's
Mexican Buffet Jingle bored its wayinto my brain and I couldn't get it out.
So of course, I went to Google andsearched for Poncho's Mexican Buffet
Jingle so that I could listen to it.
I didn't find it.
(12:52):
Then I went to YouTube.
Didn't find it there either.
I went to archive.
org.
Nope, not there either.
Did this jingle actually exist, orwas it a figment of my imagination?
When my partner got home from work,I frantically began questioning
her, demanding that she sing methe Ponchos Mexican Buffet jingle.
(13:13):
And just as I was about to lose allgrip on reality, she sang it back
to me, exactly as I remembered it.
I was, at the very least, relievedto hear it, because this meant
that I wasn't going crazy.
But it was at that moment that I knew,deep down, that Poncho's Mexican Buffet...
was about to consume my every wakingthought for the foreseeable future.
(13:37):
I had to find that f ing jingle.
So, the first thing I had to do wasconfirm that this jingle actually existed.
After all, the only thing so farthat had affirmed its existence
was my significant other.
She grew up in the Dallas Fort Worthmetroplex during the 90s and aughts,
so she would have been exposed to it.
(13:58):
But on the other hand, her and I havebeen together for 10 years, so it's
possible that if this jingle was justsomething that I made up, she was
just repeating back to me somethingthat she had heard me sing earlier
at some point in our relationship.
It seemed possible that the Poncho'sMexican Buffet jingle was an example
of the so called Mandela Effect, so...
(14:20):
Before jumping in head first to thisand scouring the furthest reachers
of the world wide web, I decided thatit would be best to first establish
that this jingle did in fact exist.
I wanted to ask other people if theyremember the jingle, and if so, if
they knew where I could find it.
So I decided that I would make apost on Reddit to see if anyone knew
(14:41):
anything, and this is where I raninto the first of many roadblocks.
I had just started a new Reddit accountfor this podcast, and as such, I didn't
have enough karma to submit a self post.
So, I spent the next few weeks buildingup karma by putting my Google fu and
knowledge of all things obscure towork, and answering questions on the
(15:02):
HelpMeFind and TipOfMyTongue subreddits.
That took a few weeks, and kindof ended up going to waste anyway,
since I decided on a different namefor the podcast, so I no longer use
that Reddit account, but I digress.
Once I had finally built up enough karma,I made a post to the Houston, Dallas, and
AskDFW subreddits that went like this.
(15:25):
Does anyone remember theponchos Mexican buffet jingle?
It went something like this.
Raise the flag, raise the flag, ifyou're ready for a little more ponchos,
raise the flag, raise the flag.
You're ready for a littlemore Ponchos Mexican Buffet.
I believe this jingle was primarilyused in radio spots, but it could
(15:45):
have been used in TV ads as well.
It seems like everyone I talked to thatgrew up around a Ponchos, at least in
the DFW area, remembers this jinglevery well, but I haven't been able to
find any trace of this jingle online.
I've found a couple commercials, butso far I've been unable to locate
any trace of the iconic jingle.
(16:06):
Is there anybody out there that hasa recording that features the jingle?
Does this jingle stillget played on the radio?
Please help, I justwant to raise the flag.
And there were quite a few responses,many of which confirmed that they
remembered the jingle, and that I hadgotten the lyrics right, which was good
(16:26):
enough for me to reasonably say thatthis wasn't just some Mandela Effect
thing that I had made up in my mind.
But the responses mostly consisted ofpeople sharing memories of ponchos, which
was fun, and But didn't really help me.
There were a few interestingresponses, though.
There were a few replies about otherpeople's unsuccessful search for the
(16:48):
jingle, which made me feel betterbecause at least I wasn't the only
one out there who couldn't find it.
But there was one response that reallystood out by a user who said, If I'm
not mistaken, there were actually a fewdifferent ads that featured that jingle.
The one with the baby with a fakemustache and sombrero standing out
the most, and others being morelike a regular restaurant ads.
(17:08):
The one with the baby lookedvery low budget and maybe from
much more obscure sources.
But the other was higher in budgetand maybe the product of an agency
that is still active in the DFW area.
I used to work in TV commercial productionin Dallas when these ads were in rotation.
I'll poke some old contactsand see if any leads shake up.
I find myself suddenlyinvested in this mystery.
(17:29):
Now that sounded promising.
But the user never got back to me.
Alright, so at this point, it'slooking like I'm just going
to have to brute force it.
I know this jingle exists,other people know it exists, but
nobody knows where to find it.
So back to YouTube.
So I just searched for Poncho'sMexican Buffet on YouTube and
(17:51):
went through every single video.
Literally.
I scrolled until therewere no more results left.
And I don't know if you know howmany results show up in a YouTube
search, but trust me, it's a lot.
The next place I looked was archive.
org.
I went through all the audio and videosearch results for Poncho's Mexican
(18:12):
Buffet, but Again, didn't find anything.
I looked up videos of commercials thatwere taped off the local DFW affiliates
of Fox, UPN, and CBS, which was only abouttwo hours all in all, but again, no dice.
So I scoured Archive.
org for radio broadcast recordingsfrom the Texas markets that used
(18:33):
to have Poncho's restaurants.
I listened to over 25 hours of old Texasradio broadcasts from 1986 to 2012.
And while there was some fun andinteresting stuff in there...
Hi, it is Lisa and it's back.
We have another virus.
This one is called the Killer Resume One.
And this is just...
Once again, the Poncho's MexicanBuffet jingle was nowhere to be found.
(18:58):
As a last ditch effort, I went throughevery single snapshot of the Poncho's
website on the Wayback Machine.
I found some music files, but it was justsome generic, southwestern sounding music.
(19:18):
And it was at this point that Ifirst began to have some serious
doubts about whether or not I wouldever be able to hear the Poncho's
Mexican Buffet jingle again.
I had pretty much exhausted every avenueat this point, and I'm just one guy with
limited resources and no connection tothe food service or advertising world.
And while there had been a fewpeople along the way that did express
(19:41):
some interest in helping me findthe jingle, their investment into
tracking it down was only fleeting.
No one seemed to care as much as I didabout a decades old restaurant jingle.
No one, that is, except Kevin Toomey.
I've been living with a mystery.
On February 5th, 2021, Kevin posteda short documentary chronicling his
(20:04):
13 year journey to find the singer ofa radio jingle for a Columbus, Ohio
pizza restaurant, and he went to greatlengths tracking the singer down.
A thing I've been wrestlingwith for a decade of my life.
Got in the horn, started making calls.
(20:24):
I can go down the Gloria Estefanwormhole as deep as that sucker goes.
And while he did not initially findan answer, by May 2021, he had posted
a follow up documentary finallyputting his jingle mystery to rest.
And watching Kevin's documentarygave me the strength I needed
to forge ahead in my own search.
(20:46):
And I continued my questwith renewed vigor.
And, in fact, my next leadactually came from Kevin.
When I reached out to him to ask forhis permission to include clips from
his documentary in this podcast,He not only responded, but he also
provided me with some helpful info.
In a message on Instagram, he said, Forwhat it's worth, don't think much of it
(21:08):
is included in my dot because it didn'tend up going anywhere, but I was in touch
with an old producer guy who had a hugejingle production company in Dallas.
He was certain he'd help me find thejingle, but never actually was able to.
If your jingle comes from theDallas area, you should email him.
You can tell them I suggested you reachout since they were helpful in my search
(21:29):
for the Rotelos Pizza Jingle Singer.
He's a Dallas based jingle producer.
And I did reach out to thatperson, but I never got a response.
Well, thanks anyways for trying, Kevin.
So at this point, it was prettyobvious to me that if the Poncho's
jingle is on the internet, it's notanywhere that I'm going to find it.
(21:51):
And, at least so far, reachingout to other internet sleuths
hasn't led anywhere either.
So the only logical thing to do was totry and contact someone who was actually
involved with Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
So I went to the ponchos website,and I noticed that they had a page
where you could subscribe to emails.
(22:11):
So I signed up in the hopes thatI would receive a welcome letter
and that I'd then have an officialPoncho's email address to respond to.
The welcome letter never came, so mynext option was to start calling Ponchos.
And yes, these are actual calls.
(22:38):
Phone ringing Poncho, make some movement.
Hi, I was wondering if you had thecontact information for the owner?
Um...
Okay, give me one second to unplug.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you for calling Patchos.
Hi.
Uh huh.
(22:59):
Are you the owner of Ponchos?
No, I'm just a man of the year.
Oh, I was wondering if you had anycontact information for the owner.
Uh, for what?
Um, I had a question about, uh, an oldad campaign that used to run on TV and
the radio, and I was wondering if hemight know any information about that.
Mm.
(23:19):
You know, Panchos, it's been, uh,we have been sold like five times
in the last, in the last 23 years.
Yeah.
I I How long have you worked there?
Since 98.
So you probably remember thoseraise the flag commercials?
Yes.
One in the morning.
(23:42):
. . Yeah.
So that's actually whatI was trying to mm-hmm.
reach out to the ownerabout, is to try out.
Find out some more information about that.
Well, there's two.
One of them is not in the country.
Okay.
He travels a lot.
And the other one, he's always busy.
He doesn't want me to share hisphone number or email, but he
(24:03):
wants you to leave a message.
But if you want to catch him, if you,you don't live in this area, right?
No, not anymore.
If you want to catch him, he's here.
I want to say, he always comesby to pick up some paperwork,
or you can leave your message.
(24:24):
If you leave your message, I'mnot going to guarantee that
he's going to call you back.
You know, unless it'ssomething super, super big.
That's the only reasonwhy he calls you back.
But if you want to catchhim, he's always here.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah, the, the message isjust, uh, that I have some
(24:44):
questions about that ad campaign.
Yeah, he was a run.
He's been with Pancho's forlike 50 years, so he was a run.
Okay, um, sir.
Uh huh.
Um, so, I mean, there's probablynot a big chance of him getting back
to me on this, but I'll go aheadand leave my number if that's okay.
yes.
Yeah.
(25:04):
This is all I can do, okay?
I'm just a messenger.
No, no, I understand.
But if it's like, uh, something big, thenI give it to them, and they call you back.
They only call you back whenthere's, like, complaints,
or, you know, big things.
Oh, no, I don't have any complaints.
Okay.
Let me see, what's your phone number?
(25:26):
It is, uh, 505...
Your name?
Chris.
And you don't work for a company, right?
No, no, this is just personal interest.
Sounds good.
Uh, we'll give it to him.
Alright, well, thank you
(25:47):
It didn't sound likely that I would everget a response from the owners of this
poncho's, but luckily I knew that thefive remaining poncho's Mexican buffets
were not all owned by the same people.
It's kind of hard to tell, butI think there are possibly three
separate groups of owners forthe five remaining restaurants.
One company owns the Arlingtonand Fort Worth locations.
(26:08):
That much seems pretty clearbecause on PonchosMexicanBuffetDFW.
com, those two locations are bothlisted on the Our Locations page.
But on that same website...
Under the About Us section,there is another page called
Other Locations Not Affiliated.
This page lists the Mesquite,Humble, and Houston locations.
(26:33):
Then if you go to the About Us pageon ponchosmexicanbuffethouston.
com, it states, quote, With threeconvenient locations, You need
not look for authentic Mexicanfood any further, end quote.
However, if you go to their locationspage, they only list the humble location.
And here's some unfortunate news, folks.
(26:55):
The reason the Houston locationis no longer listed is because
that apparently shut down sometimearound September 2022 after I had
already started digging into this.
So there's actuallyonly four Ponchos left.
But interestingly, neither the DFWnor the Houston Ponchos websites claim
ownership of the Mesquite location,which definitely is open, because
(27:17):
at the time of this recording, thereare Google reviews for the Mesquite
location from just two days ago.
All of that is just a long windedway of saying that, just because the
company that owns the Arlington andFort Worth companies probably won't
get back to me, all hope is not lost.
So I called the Mesquite locationwith the ambiguous ownership first.
(27:39):
I figured they only have one location.
They don't have an official website.
It's probably owned by a smallercompany and maybe they'll be
more likely to talk to me.
But they just hung up on me.
So I called the humble location next.
Hello, and thanks for calling.
To be put through to therestaurant, please hold.
(28:01):
Do you know you can orderonline to get the best deals?
We've just sent you a textmessage with a link to order
online, so why not try it now?
Phone ringing We got a bunch of snap here.
Hi, um, I was wondering if you could giveme some contact information for the owner?
(28:22):
The owner is not in right now,and uh, she's on vacation, so she
won't be here until next week.
Alright, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Bye.
Okay, I guess I'll try again next week.
Once again, at this point, I'mquestioning this whole thing.
I'm calling buffet restaurantsand bothering people to
(28:43):
find a 30 year old jingle.
This is what an insane person does.
So my next step was to start reachingout to everyone that had ever worked
for the Ponchos Corporation on LinkedIn.
I'm exaggerating, but I did go throughevery LinkedIn profile that listed
Ponchos Mexican Buffet as an employer,and there were a lot, as you can
(29:03):
imagine, but there were two that Ikeyed in on that sounded like they
might actually be able to help me.
One was the former vice presidentof marketing for Ponchos Mexican
Buffet, and the other was theformer director of marketing.
If, IF they got back to me, that wouldbe amazing because they both worked
(29:23):
in marketing for Ponchos during thetime when the commercial played.
But I didn't have much hope, however,because I had to reach out to one of
them via Facebook, which means thatthey would first have to accept a friend
request from someone they don't know,and the other person, I had to send
an email to their current employer.
Via the contact page on their websiteand hope that not only did they actually
(29:47):
read the email But that they wouldthen route it to the right person and
then they would read it and decide torespond So at this point all I could
do was wait Wait for the owners of theArlington and Fort Worth locations to
call me, wait for the Humble owner toget back from vacation, and wait for the
two former employees to respond to me.
(30:09):
So that's what I did.
I waited.
And while I waited...
I began to retrace my steps.
I was just looking for something, anythingthat I missed that would aid me in my
search for the Poncho's Mexican Buffetjingle, but I couldn't find anything.
And after waiting weeks and getting noresponse from any of the people I had
(30:30):
reached out to, The only thing I had leftto do was call the Umble location again.
Phone ringing.
Ponchos, how may I help you?
Hi, I was wondering if you had any,uh, contact information for the owner?
(30:50):
Give me just one second.
Okay.
I waited on hold for ten minutes,but no one ever got back to me.
Clearly, nobody at the remainingPonchos restaurants wants
to talk to me about this.
And these aren't the onlycalls that I made, either.
There were several more that I didn'tinclude in the interest of time that
(31:13):
all ended very much the same way.
Either they did not want to talkto me, or they didn't have any
information about the jingle.
I decided that, for now, it's probablybest to stop calling them for a while.
There's a fine line between beingpersistent and being annoying, and I felt
that I had started to cross that line.
(31:36):
And that's it.
No one was willing to talk to me aboutthe Poncho's Mexican Buffet jingle.
My internet sleuthing had reached itslimits, and as much as I've laid out
for you here, there was a lot moreinvestigating that I didn't really go
into because it all led to dead ends.
We're talking newspapers,obituaries, public relations
(31:57):
firms in Colorado, dead forums.
I put in a ridiculous amount ofeffort trying to find this jingle.
And at this point, it was all for naught.
It seems that I'm no closer to hearingthat jingle than I was when I started.
I may never get to raise the flag again.
And that's a depressing thought.
(32:18):
But why?
Why do I care so much about amid 90s jingle for a Mexican
buffet on the verge of collapse?
In an article on inverse.
com about the power of nostalgia,psychological scientist Clay Rutledge
said that Nostalgia is one of the toolswe use to remind ourselves that we matter.
(32:38):
And maybe that's why I care so much.
Maybe this whole thingwasn't about ponchos at all.
Maybe it was about me andmy place in the world.
Because if something that was so belovedby so many people could just be discarded
and forgotten so easily, what's to stopthe same thing from happening to me?
(32:58):
And how can I remind myself thatI matter if the things that matter
to me don't matter to anyone else?
Does anything matter?
An existential crisis, courtesyof Poncho's Mexican Buffet.
Even though I've done everythingin my power to find this jingle and
come up with nothing, I'm not readyto say that I'm done searching.
(33:22):
More like, Poncho and I are on a break.
By the time this episode releases, Iwill have been looking for the Poncho's
jingle for over a year to no avail.
jingle.
Because, I just want to raisethe flag, one last time.
(33:48):
Update.
I originally began writing this storyon October 27th, 2022, and by that point
in time, I had already done most of theinvestigation detailed in this episode.
I had already gonethrough YouTube, Archive.
org, and seemingly the entire internetwith a fine toothed comb in search of
(34:12):
the Poncho's Mexican Buffet jingle.
Well, it's now July 23rd, 2023, at 8.
54pm, just under 10 hours beforethis podcast is set to premiere, and
I have some exciting news, folks.
The Poncho's Mexican Buffetjingle has been found.
(34:33):
At least partially.
I was at my computer just makingsure that all my I's were dotted
and T's crossed before premieringthe podcast tomorrow, or...
I guess today, as you guys are hearing it.
And I just decided to, once again,do a quick search for the jingle.
And there it was.
After searching for it for so long,it was just sitting on YouTube.
(34:57):
I almost couldn't believe it.
Apparently on March 20th, 2023, YouTubeuser Chen with Rules uploaded a video
of commercials that aired on May19th, 2002, on the Dallas-Fort Worth
Local Fox affiliate, K D F W, and twodays after that YouTube user sate.
(35:20):
Uploaded a single commercialextracted from Chen with Rules video.
That commercial features thePoncho's Mexican Buffet jingle.
Poncho's All You Can Eat MexicanBuffet invites you to experience
real food at best food prices.
For around 6 bucks, choose fromover 35 authentic Mexican recipes.
All made from scratch every day.
(35:41):
Got little ones?
At Poncho's, children under 5 eat 3.
And our Big Kids Buffet is just...
2.
99, ponchos, fresh handmade Mexicanfood, great prices, and family fun.
Still hungry?
Raise the flag!
Raise the flag!
You're ready I must have just sat hereand listened to it about 20 times.
(36:04):
I am irrationally excited about this,but I can't yet put this case fully
to rest because if you'll notice,this commercial contains only an
abbreviated version of the full jingle.
The entire jingle goes, raisethe flag, raise the flag.
If you're ready for a little moreponchos, raise the flag, raise the flag.
(36:28):
You're ready for a littlemore ponchos Mexican Buffet.
And the version featured in thisspecific commercial omits the first part.
Raise the flag, raise the flag.
You're ready So, yeah, this mysteryisn't fully solved yet, but damn am
(36:49):
I excited that I can finally listento at least part of the jingle.
You better believe I immediatelydownloaded the video from YouTube
and uploaded it to Archive.
org.
This episode was fully recorded,edited, and ready to go out tomorrow
with a completely different ending,so I'm just super excited about this.
(37:11):
Anyways, uh, thanks for listening tothe series premiere of Mount Molehill.
Mount Molehill is written, produced,and edited by me, Chris, with
music by myself and Alex Painter.
Any voices other than mine featuredon the podcast are computer
(37:32):
generated, unless otherwise noted.
All of the sources used in thisepisode can be found in the show notes.
This podcast features materials protectedby the Fair Use Guidelines of Section
107 of the Copyright Act, all rightsreserved to the copyright owners.
Special thanks to Kevin Toomey on thisepisode for trying to help me out.
(37:54):
If you have a molehill that you'd likeme to turn into a mountain, whether it's
a mystery that you just can't solve,or just an interesting topic you'd like
me to delve into, please reach out.
You can email me at MountMolehill podcast@gmail.com,
or you can call and leave me avoicemail at 5 0 5 2 1 8 6 8 9 4.
(38:15):
Follow us on Instagram to see updatesand supplemental material for the show.
Thanks for listening, I'll be backwith another episode in two weeks.
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