Mr Peanut

PARIS: This was the big night you had planned – a rendezvous with Mr. Peanut?

Mr Peanut is the advertising mascot for Planters Peanut Company, depicted as a peanut in the shell dressed as a gentleman, in top hat and monocle. Planters was founded in 1906 in Pennsylvania; Mr Peanut was created in 1916 after a schoolboy named Antonio Gentile won a design contest, with alterations made by artist Andrew S. Wallach.

Rory opens the door to Paris dressed in pyjamas decorated with Mr Peanut-like figures. (Rory’s pyjamas often have food themes; Lorelai said her “cutest” pyjamas had cupcakes on them).

Timberland

LORELAI: Luke, Rachel’s not the only woman in the world for you. You’ll meet someone, someday – probably at a Timberland store – you’ll ask her out.

Timberland LLC, manufacturer and retailer of outdoors wear, especially boots, headquartered in Stratham, New Hampshire. Shoemaker Nathan Schwartz bought a 50% stake in The Abington Shoe Company in Massachuttests; this later became Timberland. The Schwartz family retained control of the company until 2012, when they sold it to the VF Corporation, which sells outdoor clothing and workwear.

Although marketed towards hikers, climbers etc, Timberland is very popular for urban attire. The nearest Timberland store to Stars Hollow would be in the town of Clinton, about an hour’s drive away.

“A big, pretty dish of lovin’ with a spoon”

LORELAI: A big, pretty dish of lovin’ with a spoon made especially for you.

This sounds like a reference to the rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful, founded in Greenwich Village in 1965 by singer John Sebastian and guitarist Zal Yanovsky. Their hits include Do You Believe in Magic? (1965), Summer in the City (1966), and Daydream (1966). The band broke up in 1969, but have had a few revivals and reunions over the years. An influence on British bands such as The Beatles and The Kinks, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2006.

The band’s name is taken from a line in the song Coffee Blues, by blues singer Mississippi John Hurt, a tribute to Maxwell House Coffee. There is a link in blues songs between a “spoonful” of something and sex (sometimes drugs); it has been conjectured that the “lovin’ spoonful” in the song refers to the amount of ejaculate in a typical male orgasm.

This connection between coffee, sex, and love seems very apt for Lorelai! It’s as if the coffee Luke makes for her is a metaphor for something else that’s hot and wet.

Euell Gibbons

LORELAI: So, are you a healthy eater like Luke?
JESS: No. No one’s a healthy eater like Luke. Euell Gibbons wasn’t a healthy eater like Luke … Many parts of a pine tree are edible.

Euell Gibbons (1911-1975), outdoorsman and early health food advocate. He promoted eating wild food during the 1960s, having begun foraging for food as a teenager to supplement the family diet. His books on wild food were instant successes, and he became a celebrity, appearing on TV shows such as The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and The Carol Burnett Show, often good-naturedly sending himself up by pretending to eat wooden plaques and so on.

A 1974 television commercial for Grape-Nuts cereal featured Gibbons asking viewers “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” While he recommended eating Grape Nuts over eating pine trees (Grape Nuts’ taste “reminds me of wild hickory nuts”), the quote caught the public’s imagination and fuelled his celebrity status.

How Jess knows about Euell Gibbons and the advertisement, which was broadcast ten years before Jess was born, is a mystery. Teenagers seem to have an amazing knowledge of 1960s and 1970s pop culture in the Gilmore Girls world.

Lemon Coke

LORELAI: Sorry, it’s just. . .so excited about the ducks that, uh . . . do you want something to drink? You have good timing ‘cause we shopped yesterday, and in addition to a case of Maybelline Fresh Lash Mascara, I also bought some of that new, uh, freaky Coke with the lemon in it. It’s very addictive.

Coca-Cola with Lemon is a brand owned by the Coca-Cola company, introduced in 2001.

Maybelline Fresh Lash Mascara

LORELAI: Sorry, it’s just . . . so excited about the ducks that, uh . . . do you want something to drink? You have good timing ‘cause we shopped yesterday, and in addition to a case of Maybelline Fresh Lash Mascara, I also bought some of that new, uh, freaky Coke with the lemon in it.

Maybelline is a multinational cosmetics company, founded in Chicago in 1914, and now based in New York. Since 1996, it has been a subsidiary of L’Oreal, previously discussed.

Maybelline’s Fresh Lash Mascara has now been replaced with Great Lash Mascara. In 1981, their Fresh Lash Mascara was advertised on television by Lynda Carter, who played superhero Wonder Woman, previously discussed as one of Lorelai’s favourites. I can imagine young Lorelai buying the mascara because of the face of the brand and remaining loyal to it.

“Calgon, take me away”

LORELAI: So you came downstairs … to sit on an uncomfortable chair in an empty diner that smells like onion rings.
LUKE: Yes.
LORELAI: Calgon, take me away.

Calgon is a brand of bath and beauty products. In 1979, they came up with the slogan, “Calgon, take me away!”. Television commercials through the 1980s showed a woman escaping from her troubles in a relaxing bath filled with Calgon bubble bath.

Bouncin’ & Behavin’

[Jess walks out of the bathroom]
LUKE: You’ve been in there for two hours.
JESS: Yeah, well my hair just ain’t bouncin’ and behavin’ today.

“Bouncin’ & Behavin'” was the slogan for Pert shampoo advertisements in the early 1980s. It might seem hard to believe that Jess is referencing an advertisement from before he was born, but the phrase was so popular that it is still widely used when discussing hair care and products in general, even today.

Sephora

RORY: She’s a very cautious driver. She doesn’t roll through stop signs, doesn’t speed, she always signals before she turns.
LORELAI: Hm. Commendable, but not the person I want driving our getaway car.
RORY: What are we robbing?
LORELAI: Sephora. We had it all planned out.

Sephora is a French multinational retailer of beauty and personal care products, founded in Limoges in 1970 and now based in Paris. Since 1997, it has been owned by luxury conglomerate Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (commonly known as LVMH). Sephora opened its first store in the US in New York City, in 1998.

The nearest Sephora store to Lorelai and Rory is the one at the mall in West Hartford. Presumably this is where their imaginary heist would take place.

L’Oreal

RICHARD: Uh, what does [Sherry] do? Does she work?
CHRISTOPHER: Uh, she’s the East Coast sales rep for L’Oreal Cosmetics.

L’Oreal is a French beauty product company headquartered in Clichy, France, with a registered office in Paris. It is the largest cosmetics company in the world. It was founded in 1919 by chemist Eugène Schueller.

The US headquarters of L’Oreal are in New York City, but they certainly employ sales reps in Boston. Christopher says Sherry is the sales rep for the East Coast, as if they have only one! I’m pretty sure Sherry is only a sales rep for L’Oreal. Christopher loves to talk everything about himself up.

This does bring into question whether this business trip is really for Christopher, or was it for Sherry’s work? It seems like it’s actually her job that would involve travel, not his. Bearing in mind his comment about eating at White Castle (which is in New York), it could be that they were in New York for Sherry’s business, then decided to spend the weekend in Connecticut to see Rory. In which case, they could be staying as close as Woodbury, making their travel time to Stars Hollow even more achievable.