Toot Sweets facts for kids
"Toot Sweets" is a song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 musical motion picture. In the film it is sung by Dick Van Dyke and Sally Ann Howes. "Toot Sweets" is also featured prominently in the multi-award-winning stage musical of the same name which premiered in London at the Palladium in 2002 and on Broadway in 2005 at the newly refurbished Foxwoods Theatre (then the Hilton Theatre). The song was written by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman (also known as the Sherman Brothers).
The song title is a play on words, a humorous Anglicisation of the French expression "tout de suite", meaning "at once" or "right away". During World War I British soldiers serving in France, most of whom could not speak French, adopted the phrase as "toot sweet" to mean "hurry up" or "look smart".
In the context of the film and stage musical, "Toot Sweets" is about a piece of confectionery ("sweet" being a noun in British parlance that is a synonym for a piece of confectionery) invented by the main character, Caractacus Potts, which has holes in it, making the sweet playable as an edible whistle that makes a "toot" sound when it is blown into. Unfortunately for Potts, the toot sweets act like dog whistles, calling all the local canines into the sweet factory, ruining the sanitary conditions of the factory and turning love interest Truly's father against him.
External sources
- Sherman, Robert B. (1998). Walt's Time: From Before to Beyond. Santa Clarita: Camphor Tree Publishers.
