Hong Kong sings the Rubber Duckie tune

HONG KONG — Hong Kong is singing the Rubber Duckie tune these days. The bustling metropolis has fallen in love with a huge visiting rubber duck that has turned Victoria Harbour into a large bathtub. The yellow guest arrived last May 2 to a warm welcome from thousands of admirers that included a brass band playing Rubber Duckie from the kiddie TV show Sesame Street.

Since then, Hong Kong residents and tourists have taken to visiting the harbor to check out the duck everyday. They certainly make for a happy sight with smiles all around as they lug their rubber duckie souvenirs home. The situation is actually a constant duck watch as even workers in nearby buildings are known to take short window visits to see if the duck is floating by. They are doubtless reliving memories of their carefree childhood. I believe they will keep on doing so until Rubber Duckie sails away on June 9.

The inflatable rubber duck is an installation created by the Dutch artist Florentin Hofman. It measures 16.5x20x32 meters. It stands 54-ft. high, or is roughly as tall as a six-storey building. It is made up of 600 kilograms of PVC piping and has already visited Amsterdam, Holland; Sydney, Australia; Aukland, New Zealand; Osaka, Japan; and Sao Paolo, Brazil in the spirit of friendship. The rumor is out that the next stop for the seafarer is a port city in the US. But nobody really knows where it is headed, until only a few days before its arrival. Hofman has arranged the duck’s itinerary in such a way that it comes as a surprise, a bit of childhood whimsy for the haggard workers of the world.

This is the reason why Hofman has aptly titled his giant creation Spreading Joy Around the World. “The rubber duck knows no frontiers,” he says in his website. “It doesn’t discriminate people and doesn’t have a political connotation. The friendly floating duck has healing properties. It can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. It is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages.”

Hofman has certainly endowed the rubber duckie with a lot of powers, so much more than it has ever had since somebody thought of making a yellow duck with a flat bottom a bathtub toy many years ago. It was really just an ordinary thing created to keep babies busy while taking a bath. That is until Jeff Moss wrote a song about it and gave it to puppeteer Jim Henson to sing as Ernie in Sesame Street. That is the one that goes “Rubber Duckie, you’re the one/ you make bath time lots of fun…”

Ernie and his partner Bert are two of the most popular characters from Sesame Street. The duo is credited with several hit songs like Dance Myself To Sleep, Pat Pat Patty Pat, But I Like You, La La La and Imagination. There are also other hit tunes from the show. Cookie Monster had his C Is For Cookie. Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch had If You’re Happy And You Know It. Grover sang There’s A Hole In The Bottom Of The Sea while Elmo had Are We There Yet? For his solo outing, Bert had a big seller with Let’s Do The Pigeon.

The most popular of them all though was Ernie’s Rubber Duckie. The song went mainstream instantly and continues to get lots of YouTube views these days. It was even nominated for a Grammy Award in 1970 and was also recorded by rock star Little Richard. Because of its success, the songwriters at Sesame Street came up with other tunes about Ernie’s rubber duck like Do De Duck, Duck and D.U.C.K.I.E but none of them had the same cultural impact as Rubber Duckie.

 Ducks, like other animals, have always been present in children’s stories. Remember Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling or Jemina Puddle Duck from the Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and songs like Three Little Ducks. Just like the Teddy Bear, it has also been one of the favorite toys of childhood and beyond. Then Ernie’s song and Sesame Street happened and gave the duck iconic status.

Myth, or legend or rumor has it that Queen Elizabeth II of England keeps a rubber duck in her bathroom. She is not alone. There are no more kids in the house but we still have one yellow rubber duck at home. And a few days ago, I gaped and took photos of that rubber duck in Hong Kong. He looked wonderful and I felt young and happy.

Now I begin to wonder. Will I ever see him again? Do you think he will one day sail into Philippine waters? The answer is only a big maybe. But one never really knows for sure with this duck. So I am hoping that somebody will get Manila Bay cleaned up fast.