Season 5 Episode 18: Weenie Tot Lovers & Other Strangers

March 24, 1991

Published 03/24/91

This is the episode that gave the series Weenie Tots, and for that alone it earns a place in the canon. Kelly lands a job as the spokesmodel for the product, a deep fried pig-in-a-blanket substitute that Al regards as nature’s perfect food, and the gig comes with a year’s supply delivered to the house. Al is so overcome that he hand trucks the cartons into the kitchen himself. Then Peg notices there is a scratch and sniff sweepstakes printed on the packaging, and that one of the cards is worth fifty thousand dollars, and the Bundys discover they are holding the winner. The problem is the fine print, which Bud is the one to spot: contests of this kind bar employees of the company and their immediate families, and Kelly now works for Weenie Tots. Rather than accept that, Al and Peg recruit Marcy and Jefferson to claim the prize on their behalf, which requires the Darcys to pose as the winners and then be trusted to hand the money over afterward. Anyone who has watched this show knows how well that is likely to go, and the plan expands to involve Kelly as well before it starts coming apart. Along the way Al spends a long stretch of the episode at the Weenie Tot factory inventing a new life story for the benefit of a secretary named Flopsie, who is filing her nails and reading a magazine and not listening to a word of it. Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye wrote this one, their second in a row.

Episode Facts

Original air date: March 24, 1991
Season and episode: Season 5, Episode 18
Overall episode number: 98
Written by: Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye
Directed by: Gerry Cohen
Taped: February 22, 1991
Production note: Filmed seventeenth in the season but aired eighteenth.
Production note: The first appearance of Weenie Tots, which became Al’s signature food for the rest of the series.
Title note: A play on the 1970 film Lovers and Other Strangers.