Inside Angle: Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz

For those of us middle-aged and for all of you seasoned citizens (geezers), the Alka-Seltzer “Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz” TV commercial from the 1970s is recognized as one of the most iconic advertising buys in American pop-culture history. The stick-to-your brain jingle and instructive visuals have become ingrained in popular culture. Memorable images of two round white tablets dropping into a glass of water and fizzing up set the stage for an amazing sales increase in Alka-Seltzer tablets. What the fizz does this have to do with boats? Hold my beer.

Created by the Wade Advertising Agency, the television commercial featured said catchy jingle that became a cultural phenomenon. “Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is.” But here’s the takeaway: The actual dosage of Alka-Seltzer was only ONE tablet. Overcome by the lyrics and all the fizziness, Alka-Seltzer addicts in the 1970s would follow the moving picture propaganda accompanying the jingle and started dropping two tablets in their water glass. Boom! Sales skyrocketed.

This became a legendary marketing success story. Every one of the Alka-Seltzer commercials from that point on showed two tablets dissolving mostly peacefully in a glass of water, visually cementing the brilliant use of the words “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” in the public’s conscience.

This was so effective that the marketing department doctored the directions on the package to say to take two tablets. Furthermore, small foil packets containing two tablets nestled together like peas in a pod were added to the packaging. With these inspired changes, Alka-Seltzer doubled its sales.

Alright, boats. Start counting outboards these days. Where we once bolted one or two outboards (think of them as the Alka-Seltzer tablets) on our transoms, the directions on the package (the bigger, wider and faster design of today’s day boats) have changed to require a triple—or quadruple, quintuple or sextuple—dose of outboards on modern boats. In the 1970s the average boat purchase resulted in the sale of one outboard. But in 2025 the average new boat purchase results in the sale of 2.4 outboards. Brilliant!

Not an overnight doubling of sales, but oh, what a relief it is for the likes of Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda and Mercury. And a huge encroachment into the mid-size boat market heretofore owned by stern drives and diesel inboards. Yesteryear’s outboard-powered boats maxed out at 28-feet or so in length with maybe two Johnsons or Mercury “Towers or Power” behind them. But consumer demand, engineering factors and marketing prowess have resulted in more and more pistons hanging off the transom in more and more engine blocks, carving out large swaths of new sales territory for factories from Fond Du Lac to Fukuroi City.

By way of example, let’s look at Viking’s Valhalla brand with their 55-foot center console with up to five 600-hp Mercury outboards. The boat weighs around 46,000 pounds and hits 60 knots with these 3,000 horses. For comparison’s sake, in the 1990s a Viking 53 weighed in at 68,000 pounds and had 2,400 inboard diesel horsepower (from a mere two engines) for a top speed of around 37 knots. Viking still builds diesel boats, of course, but multiple outboard “dosages” are making incessant inroads.

The same is true at another quality American builder, Tiara. 43 feet of Holland, Michigan’s best gets you 1,200 horsepower from two Mercury outboards today, netting 44 knots. The same size boat from Tiara 30 years ago came with two ancient Detroit Diesels, which smoked their way to 32 knots WOT.

Even legendary Cigarette has gone outboard-wild. No more stern drives like the famous 38 Top Gun from the 1980s. I mean, they’ll still build you one if your gold chains blind them into it, but the focus on new product today includes fifty-some-foot boats with SIX outboards corralling forty-eight pistons. Plop plop plop…

What’s your preferred dosage of outboards? Is one enough? Two? Triples? Quads? Have you “overdosed” on outboards? The fine men and women at Mercury and Yamaha thank you.

This article originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

View the original article to see embedded media.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/inside-angle-plop-plop-fizz-fizz