Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Cuckoo for Snowclone Puffs: An Essential Part of an Insane Vocabulary. The words I've been pondering lately are Sonny the cuckoo bird's Dennis Hopper-esque admission “I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.” That catchphrase has become a snowclone—one of those repeatable, adaptable, fill-in-the-blank idioms such as “Not your father's X,” “Post-traumatic X disorder,” “I for one welcome our new X overlords,” and “X is the new Y”. The Cocoa Puffs snowclone creates memorable phrases such as “cuckoo for cuckold puffs” and “cuckoo for robo-puffs”, comprising a prolific and undocumented slice of insanity-describing slang that, I reckon, is as fun as a monkey in a top hat juggling slinkies.