Long before Mr. Square Pants dominated cable television in a way not seen since Chachi was in his prime, the most famous sponge was of the contraceptive ilk. That’s a remarkably ineffective opening to a post, but it’s a long weekend and I’ve been wanting to get sex, Chachi and Sponge Bob into the same sentence since I launched this site.
At the height of its pop culture fame, The Sponge was featured in a Seinfeld episode — Elaine would only use one if she was dating a guy she deemed to be spongeworthy.
It has not been an easy road for The Sponge. It was around for about a decade before being taken off the shelves in 1994 because of manufacturing problems. Later it returned but its parent company went bankrupt after about two years. And it never was necessarily that protective. It has had failure rates of up to ten percent. (I think saying, “Come on, just don’t worry about it” only has a failure rate of about eight percent.)
But as of this weekend, the Sponge is back.
