Patty Cake - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In film:

  • Bing Crosby and Bob Hope used this rhyme in many of their Road to... pictures (1940–62) when physically threatened, distracting their attacker, and at an appropriate point would switch from patting the "cakes" to suddenly slugging their assailant. On some occasions, they made a self-referential remark that the antagonist in question had/had not seen their previous movies.
  • In the short film Baker's Men, by Harriette Yahr, two little girls de-construct the rhyme coming up with humorous yet poignant insights about it.
  • In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Eddie Valiant takes revealing photographs of Marvin Acme inside Jessica Rabbit's dressing room where they can be heard (and later seen) literally playing "patty cake" and Jessica moaning in her characteristically sultry manner.

In TV:

  • In the episode "Hammer Into Anvil" (1967) of The Prisoner, as a part of his plot to drive Number 2 into madness, Number 6 sends a message coded in morse that turns out to be the words from the song.
  • The joke used by Crosby and Hope was also attempted by Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and his old army buddy, Sid (Don Rickles) in the Get Smart (1965–70) episode, "The Little Black Book"; in their case, it failed.
  • In several episodes of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Mario and/or Luigi would either play patty cake or chant the rhyme to a star. Their variation was "Patty cake, Patty cake, Pasta man. Give me pasta power as fast as you can."
  • In an episode of LazyTown (2004–7), Stingy says the last part of the rhyme: "And mark it with an 's' and put it in the oven for me."
  • In the Oobi (2004–7) episode "Uma Sick", Oobi and Kako are playing pat-a-cake, pronouncing it like "pah-a-cake."

In popular music:

  • Bill Haley & His Comets recorded a rock and roll version of the nursery rhyme in 1953.
  • The Clipse song "Grindin'" (2002) uses the lyric "patty cake patty cake I'm the bakers man, I bake them cakes as fast as I can".
  • Composer Martin Wesley-Smith (b. 1945) used the tune in his composition "White Knight Waltz".
  • Medeski Martin & Wood play their version of this rhyme in their album Let's Go Everywhere.
  • New Orleans rapper Curren$y references the rhyme in the song "Life Instructions" on his mixtape Covert Coup as "Patty cake, patty cake, I'm baked my man".

In musical theatre

  • In the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Tobias Ragg recites the rhyme in the last scene, just before he kills Todd, briskly changing the words from "bake me a cake-" to "bake me a pie...to delight my eye..."

In comics

  • Patty-Cake is a comic book created by artist/writer Scott Roberts, which ran from 1995 to 2005. The title character, named Patty-Cake Bakerman, also appeared frequently in Nickelodeon Magazine. The series also ran under the title "Patty-Cake & Friends."
  • The rhyme features in the Batman series The Long Halloween, where the Scarecrow recites a disjointed version, along with other nursery rhymes. Upon reaching the final part, he sings "Mark it with 'B'. And put it in the oven for Batman and me."

'In internet'

  • Patty-Cake is a mental discipline technique used by Nappa, in Dragon Ball Z the Abridged Series. The rhyme is "Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Bakers Man, make me a cake as fast as you can!" Nappa defeated both Piccolo and Krillin in this way.

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