Randy's Brain » etymology http://www.randysbrain.com 8 out of 10 people wonder how the hell they ended up here. Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:52:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 PSA – Gangbusters http://www.randysbrain.com/left_brain/psa-gangbusters/ http://www.randysbrain.com/left_brain/psa-gangbusters/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:48:24 +0000 randy http://www.randysbrain.com/2008/04/28/psa-gangbusters/ Having the attention span of a caffeinated humming bird leads me to ask the important questions at the most unimportant times. So while taking a break from my highly rewarding day job, I wondered why does stuff “sell like gangbusters”?
Gang Busters was an immensely popular radio series based on the cases of the FBI. The show aired between 1936 and 1957 and also inspired a serial from Universal Pictures and later a TV show. The radio show’s opening contained loud police whistles, gun fire, and sirens.
From that vigorous intro the term “coming on like Gang Busters” was termed. It is not until the 1970’s that the term gangbusters starts to be used as a term of success, like in the phrase “go gangbusters”. So, we finally end up with the term being used today to describe an item with vigorous sales. (Don’t worry I am only going to use the word vigor one more time.)
So remember anything that is done in Gang Busters’ style has to be done with vigor (No, I really have no idea where my thesaurus is.) and zeal. Knowing is half the battle.


Listen to Gang Busters
Listen to Gang Busters

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