Learning Day: How To Have Fun With Billy Bob Teeth

You know a toy is going to be a hit when it requires an hour-long VHS to explain to children how to play with it. This isn't a complicated toy. We're not trying to program a Furby to sound less possessed by the devil. It's actually the simplest toy on earth, Billy Bob Teeth, but there was apparently some concern that children and adults might not understand how to have fun with them.

To be fair, I don't have the slightest idea how to have fun with Billy Bob Teeth. Launch them into space and watch them explode, maybe? Bite your victims and become known as The Serial Killer With No Sense of Humor? They've always seemed to me like an excuse for annoying people to dig deep and find a new persona that's somehow even more annoying. They're a toy developed by a deranged dentist who also sells mouse traps. That's right, Billybobproducts.com has expanded beyond Billy Bob teeth to products ranging from rat traps to mouse traps to rodent traps.

How To Have Fun With Billy Bob Teeth opens as it must because the prophets dictated it. It opens with a rap called "The Billy Bob Boogie." To set up the rap, we're shown a man named Hollywood Sam, who's looking for "the next big thing." People come and pitch him various costume products that already exist and were dated in the '90s, like Sonny and Cher wigs and Tarzan bone necklaces. Finally, our hero enters, a man carrying a large grey bag labeled TEETH. Ladies, always remember that a man carrying a huge bag labeled TEETH is a red flag. It's probably too late, though. He's way too close.

A man with a TEETH bag is not welcome anywhere, except in this sketch, where he's allowed to distribute the teeth and sing a song about them because Hollywood Sam is a deeply sick man. Here's a taste of some of the lyrics to The Billy Bob Boogie because I know you're dying to find out what a rap about Billy Bob teeth could possibly entail. It's mostly a description of how Billy Bob teeth make you look stupid. This is the chorus:

“Up down, all around

Get yourself up

Get you Billy Bob down

Move your belly muscles

Do the Billy Hussle

Trailer Park Hip Hop

Take it to the top.

Do the Billy Bob Boogie

The Billy Bob Boogie

Have a ball

Collect them all!”

While teeth bag man performs this, the other freaks waiting to pitch wig ideas to Hollywood Sam dig into his bag of loose, hopefully clean teeth and join the song and dance. They love it. They are going to collect all of the freak teeth. At the time, 2004, one of the big additions to the Billy Bob family was Austin Powers teeth, which they promote with a few extras dressed in Austin Powers costumes just off brand enough to make me ask, did they have a deal with the Austin Powers franchise or what?

This sketch was made specifically to lure you in with its flashy dance number, original song, large cast, and somewhat high production values. It's a great opener, and it's a trick. You look at this song and dance and think, maybe this will be the quality of a VHS tape you would watch in high school science class, but it isn't. The rest is closer to the quality of an unsolicited Jackass audition tape seized as evidence because someone died.

Five minutes in, post song and dance, this asshole comes in and is all, "Hi, I'm your host Steve Canton." Who? I just watched a man do a fun rap, and he's no one? You can't afford a triple threat like the Billy Bob Boogie guy for the rest of the video? Booo Steve Canton. Booooooo

Steve Canton's portion of the video has no raps at all! Although, you do learn at the end of the video that he is the genius lyricist behind "The Billy Bob Boogie." So, he could be rapping at us the whole time. He just chooses not to. What he does instead is harass strangers while wearing the Billy Bob Teeth. He approaches women at a public pool wearing the teeth and asks them to rub sunscreen on his back. They sensibly flee from him.

You might think that to make your product seem cool and fun, you shouldn't show women retreating from it like it's Jeffrey Dahmer. That's not the vibe of the men who run the show at Billy Bob Teeth. Upsetting and annoying people is the fun part of the product. We meet the inventor, Rich Bailey, and he tells us that word for word. Apparently, he was in dental school learning to make prosthetic teeth when he thought, what if I made some stupid-looking ones? He then used those teeth to frighten new patients at his dental practice…probably why he's more of an entrepreneur than a dentist now. "People are nervous coming into the dentist in the first place, and I just terrorize them" is a direct quote.

While Rich Bailey is explaining his love for torturing his dental patients, Steve is in a little box in the upper left corner, making stupid faces to ensure we don't lose interest because Rich is pretty boring. I appreciate this kind gesture on Steve's part. It's for the TikTok generation. I would rather watch someone play Temple Run in that corner, but I'll take a man making silly faces if that's all I can get.

Sorry, did that frighten you with no context? Yes, it frightened me too when I saw it pop up randomly in the middle of the video after just some dope footage and Steve jumping off a high dive wearing Billy Bob Teeth. Steve says, "Ho, ho, ho, you could have a Merry Christmas like this," and then we're on to the next sketch. There's no real order of quality or length for the sketches. Things just happen too quickly, and you're like, was that…was that the whole bit? It's hard to write a sketch when the punchline has to be 'Look, it's silly teeth' every single time.

At one point, Steve says they're going to journey to The Ohio State Fair and a national twin convention, things they absolutely could do. I was assuming this would be more stuff like the swimming pool bit, but no. They fucking got me, dude. The national twin convention is Steve introducing a woman and then telling her to call over her twin and guess who her twin is… it's the same woman wearing Billy Bob teeth. We've all been HAD!

The punchline is, 'See this woman who had normal teeth? They're silly now.' They do not hold for applause. Lou Weeze disappears, and Steve announces we are now at The Ohio State Fair. I don't believe a damn thing you say now, Steve.

Steve eventually visits a fair or carnival, where he performs character work as the two-headed, dysfunctional superhero. The characters are named Billy and Bob, and their Superhero name is the Sons of Bob. It sounds a little Handmaid's Tale to me. The sons of Bob just sort of have fun together at the carnival while we watch, and other Carnival goers glare at them in disbelief.

Again, this video does such a good job of showing the absolute revulsion the general public will treat you with if you use this product, and that is, I guess, cool? There's a warning at the beginning of the video that you shouldn't bother people while wearing Billy Bob Teeth the way the main character of this video absolutely is about to do, but that is clearly the point of the teeth. All we see this man do with the teeth is upset people. Otherwise, you're just sitting at home alone, feeling the satisfaction of having silly teeth all by yourself. Steve even harasses women in an elevator, which should be a federal crime. I've never seen three women stand further away from someone in such a small space.

The movie ends with a reprise of the Billy Bob Boogie, and credits for every actor that appeared in that section of the video. They literally had five minutes of movie, and fifty five minutes of adult men wearing Billy Bob teeth and frolicking. I have to say, those men did have fun with the teeth. Everyone else around them was miserable, but that was the point. Billy Bob teeth are the patriarchy! I used to feel no particular way about them, and this promotional video has made me want to rise up against novelty teeth. We ride at dawn for the evil dentist's compound!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Sean Chase, a man who absolutely does not have a large sack that says teeth on it why would you even assume that. Now if you could kindly unlock your front door, he'd appreciate it.

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