THANK YOU to everyone who participated in our Monkey Mad Lib. Sounds like Sock Monkey enjoyed his vacation despite everything you guys put him through! As promised, here’s the completed story:

While visiting the beach, Sock Monkey knew how (SNOTTY) the sun was and covered his (NAUGHTY) body with (MAKERS MARK) for protection. He then (ELEVATED) into the water to cool off and (CLAPPED) in the waves.

After (52) hours, Sock Monkey got out to dry off with a (DOG) and quickly noticed everyone on shore (SNIFFING) him. Confused, he looked around and suddenly realized his fur had turned into (PURPLE POLKA DOTS)!

(HAPPY), Sock Monkey ran to the (BATHTUB) to fix his appearance.

However, upon looking in the mirror, Sock Monkey was actually (EXCITED) with his style and (HAPPILY) (FARTED) back to the beach. He (PLAYED) the critics and enjoyed the rest of his day with his new look!

We have a special love for classic, vintage games and toys and found it more than appropriate to create our own Mad Lib in honor of Leonard Stern and Roger Price (Who?! – keep reading). Our interns, Laura and Emily, put together this AWESOME Mad Lib and we need your help. Yes, YOU!

Starting next week, each day we will tweet and post the kinds of words we need to complete our Mad Lib. This is where you come in. YOU (<- See?) respond with CLEAN coordinating words you’d like to see in the blanks. We’ll then randomly choose a word from everyone’s responses to complete our story. On Friday, we’ll reveal the entire crazy funny story that YOU helped create.

Seriously. We know how you all are. Please keep your responses clean.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN:

As a writer for several television shows in the 1950’s, Leonard Stern was struggling to come up with an adjective to describe a character on the show, The Honeymooners. At the most (in)appropriate time, Roger Price, a humor writer, walked by. Stern asked Price for a few adjectives and before Stern could tell him what he was describing, Price blurted out, “clumsy, naked!” and the two immediately burst into laughter.

Dying to know what Stern was describing?? Stern needed a description for a nose – more specifically – the nose of Ralph Kramden’s boss.

Together, the witty writers created Mad Libs, a game in which players are asked to fill in blanks with certain parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) to transform a somewhat normal story into a seriously hilarious turn of events. The pair first introduced the game on “The Steve Allen Show” after Stern convinced host, Steve Allen to introduce comedian, Bob Hope by using Mad Libs given by audience members. Hope was introduced as follows, “And here’s the scintillating Bob Hope, whose theme song is, ‘Thanks for the Communist’.” Audience members were absolutely tickled, they loved being involved in the show and in on some of the jokes.

Because no one thought this game would take off, Stern and Price published 14,000 copies of Mad Libs themselves. Since 1958 there have been over 120 volumes of Mad Libs and more than 150 million copies have been sold. Since 2008, more than 2 million Mad Lib apps have been downloaded to the world’s greatest technologies: smart phones and iPads. (Take that all you publishers who turned them down!) It’s pretty safe to say, a LOT of people love this game.