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When Italy lost its head over a picture card

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“They look for it here, they look for it there, where it is, no one knows…” (The Scarlet Pimpernel by E. Orczy).

Everyone was looking for it and few found it. For four years the Saladinomania virus shook Italy. It was a frenzy that crossed the country from the Alps to Capo Passero, from Ventimiglia to Trieste. Everyone was hunting for the figurine of the Ferocious Saladin.

La figurina del Feroce Saladino

In the 1930s, Italy literally went crazy for the radio show I 4 Moschettieri by Nizza and Morbelli and for the collection of Buitoni-Perugina stickers. At the time, there were few radios and in Italy there were many areas where electricity had not yet arrived, but everyone made do to listen to the amazing adventures of the 4 Moschettieri at 1:30 pm on Thursday. It took just a few months and the show was moved from Thursday to Sunday due to general protests: on Thursdays we work and we all want to listen to I 4 Moschettieri.

Starting from October 18, 1934, Italians discovered the charm and power of the radio. Nizza and Morbelli, the young authors, revolutionized the way of making radio, no longer stiff programs but a crackling program like a revue, satirical like the vaudeville, full of characters from every era, rich in music like the operetta and imaginative like the new cartoons. The lyrics were comical, the popular songs of the moment were distorted, the music was the same but the words were changed to adapt them to the sketch on the air and there was no shortage of double meanings. The authors took their characters not only from Dumas but from history, cinema and all literature: Athos, Portos, Aramis and D’Artgnan with the servant Harlequin were accompanied by Hamlet, Buffalo Bill, Nero, Cleopatra, Greta Garbo, Mata Hari, Josefine Baker. They also made an incursion into the Bible with the beautiful Sulamita and then Tarzan and the Count of Monte Cristo. The adjective: ferocious was attached to the Sultan of Egypt Saladin. They left nothing and no one behind.

I 4 Moschettieri. Foto sito Perugina

The show was an immediate success, but to become a cult show, something more was needed. And the most came with the game show. Radio + games + prizes was an absolute novelty. Aldo Spagnoli, son of Luisa Spagnoli, had the idea of ​​linking the show’s characters to Perugina products. The idea took shape with the support of Giovanni Buitoni and together they commissioned Angelo Bioletto to design 100 stickers to collect and stick in an album. Each sticker was a character and only one sticker inside each Buitoni-Perugina product. The stickers were stuck in the album and at the end, the winners won Buitoni pasta specialties, or Perugina chocolates, sweets or cocoa, Deruta ceramic objects (also by Buitoni), boxes of Perugina chocolates printed in Buitoni’s printing shops and – listen up – for every 100 complete albums, a Fiat Topolino was won, the little 500 that everyone liked but that few owned. It seems that in just 4 years 200 were given away. In 1938 the regime decided to close the broadcast because the satire was subtly political and because the industrialists were envious of the success of the two companies from Perugia. In four years Buitoni and Perugina had earned a lot and their products were now known to everyone, many radios had been sold, EIAR subscribers had gone from 400,000 to 1 million and Fiat had more cars on the roads. A resounding success. A question comes spontaneously: but what does the Ferocious Saladin have to do with the Musketeers? Nothing. He was one of the characters, all imaginative and not very credible, inserted into the broadcast by the creativity of the authors.

The Ferocious Saladino, drawn by Bioletto, was definitely ugly like all the bad guys, and had on his head a helmet made from a colander with a crescent moon on top, but he was the rarest figurine, the one that allowed you to complete the album, the one that made Fiat Topolino dream and the one that became a legend.

 

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