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Part of the theme tune of the 1990s cartoon series Animaniacs has these words:

We're Animaniacs!
We have pay-or-play contracts.
We're zany to the max
There's baloney in our slacks.

I do not understand the meaning of that latter line. What makes matters worse is that some sources indicate that the line contains a double-meaning (innuendo) and I don’t understand that either.

I’m led to understand that baloney has two meanings: nonsense, and some kind of sausage. Slack, furthermore, has many possible meanings.

The on-screen imagery accompanying this line is the following:

There’s baloney in our slacks

This seems to take the line literally: they throw slices of baloney (the sausage) into Yakko’s slack (the textile oversize). But this makes no sense to me whatsoever.

So, my questions are:

  • Why this particular type of sausage, why would anyone want to put sausage in their pants, and why is this funny?
  • What is the innuendo/double-meaning that I’m missing?
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    Really? you have zero idea what the innuendo might be?
    – Alan Carmack
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 3:27
  • Hm, I guess that if you're thinking dirty on this one, you should consider that for what it's worth there's a girl in the gang, and they clearly say "There's baloney in our slacks". Even though she's not wearing a slack, and neither is Wakko...
    – Joao Arruda
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 3:38
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    @Wyatt Please remember that when people learn a new language, they may understand the literal meaning of a statement, but have difficulty seeing much further than that. At least for me, when I study Spanish I find that occasionally I can parse the meaning of each individual word in a sentence, but get lost when trying to understand the meaning of it as a whole. Furthermore, I know of at least one person for whom English is not her first language, who has told me that she takes longer to "get things" in English as opposed to Spanish, even though she speaks both languages fluently.
    – silvascientist
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 4:43
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    A minor note: it's "into Yakko's slacks" not "into Yakko's slack". Slacks is one of those strange words that's always plural, when it means pants. (And pants is another one that's always plural...)
    – stangdon
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 12:12
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    @JoaoArruda - Yes, but that chart tells you nothing about the meaning or context of "slack". "Slack" has many other meanings besides "pants". That's why I said "when it means pants." I suspect the increase in the usage of "slack" over the last few years has to do with the popularity of Slack.com, which makes a tool that is very popular with businesses right now. Trust me, when we mean pants, it's "slacks".
    – stangdon
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 16:22

4 Answers 4

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Considering that the Animaniacs were a bit... Lunatic... I think they're just expressing that they are crazy, to the point of carrying baloney slices in their slacks?

Or maybe its innuendo lies on the fact that baloney is a slang for nonsense as you stated, and the only piece of cloth the character is wearing is a slack. So, that means they are full of nonsense, so that their clothes are filled with it.

The "funny" bit (if one could say it's funny) lies on the literal visual interpretation of the sentence, which the viewer gets confused as to think "no, it's not possible that this is literal, this HAS to have some hidden message". But they do it literally anyway.

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  • Not just that, see other answer, but including that, yes, nice way to put it.
    – Nikana Reklawyks
    Commented Nov 18, 2019 at 23:03
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In English at least, pork meat is occasionally used to suggest the male member. It is rather crude. Now there is the question of whether the creators had that innuendo in mind. I'm hard-pressed to find a reasonable case that they did not. It seems that they kept it just subtle enough so that there would be no chance that the kiddos would get it, but not much more. That being said, I have not seen a single episode of Animaniacs since I was probably ~10 years old, so this is a real eye-opener for me.

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    Bear in mind the show frequently featured innuendo-laden jokes that Yakko would respond to with "Goodnight everybody!", so it's not even remotely beyond possibility that the writers of the theme song knew exactly what they were doing with the baloney line.
    – John Clifford
    Commented Mar 15, 2016 at 9:30
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When the series director was asked the question directly (about whether this line was literal), he pretty much answered: yes on Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's (apparently, very specific I know).

But I would not be surprised if its meaning could be interpreted as "sausage inside your pants" (if that makes it more obvious for you), as an innuendo because it is the type of joke that the Animaniacs would totally make.

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Maybe they mean the dick because Saussure can mean weiner so it seems like they mean They mean “There’s A dick in our slacks “

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