The "Woomba" Terrorized the Women of SNL In Tina Fey's 2005 Parody
It was the rise of the pink cleaning robots in this hilarious sketch from Season 30.
In the weeks leading up to February 16's three-hour 50th anniversary celebration on NBC, the team behind Saturday Night Live has selected one sketch from every single season — 50 seasons in 50 days — to reflect the show's rich legacy across five decades. Presenting the sketch that represents Season 30: "Woomba" starring cast members Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey.
It was the rise of the pink machines in "Woomba" from the March 12, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live.
In the hilarious commercial parody, the Woomba looked just like a pink Roomba, the autonomous vacuum robot that cleans your floors. But the Woomba's "next generation of freshness" was actually "the world's first fully-automated robotic feminine hygiene product."
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"Woomba" starred Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey
The pink "small disc-like object takes care of all your feminine hygiene needs," explained the voiceover. "Once activated, Woomba is entirely self-sufficient. It cannot be turned off, and will do its job whenever and wherever a woman needs cleaning."
As with any cautionary tale of new technology, the machine developed a mind of its own, with the Woomba getting more and more...insistent with its cleaning.
The robot soon ran rampant through a woman's house. It crawled under the bed covers, waking Rachel Dratch up mid-slumber, went up Amy Poehler's pant leg as she tried to bake, and even followed Maya Rudolph outside.
But Rudolph wasn't frolicking in the woods — she was running for her life, trying to escape the little pink robot.
"Woomba" was part of a string of feminine product commercial parodies on SNL, kicked off by "Kotex Classic" in March 2002. "Woomba" debuted in the March 12, 2005 episode hosted by David Spade.
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In an excerpt from Tina Fey's 2011 Bossypants book published in The New Yorker, she wrote about the origins of "Kotex Classic," a sketch written by Paula Pell.
"The idea was that Kotex was trying to revive those old nineteen-sixties sanitary napkins that hooked to an elastic belt. It featured the women in the cast enjoying fun 'modern gal' activities with giant sanitary napkins poking out of the tops of their low-rise jeans," recalled Fey. "It seemed to me to be an excellent parody of nostalgia-based marketing while also being a little shocking and silly."
SNL producers Steve Higgins and Jim Signorelli didn't initially understand the concept of "Kotex Classic." But Fey said "they trusted Paula and me, so we made the commercial, and the commercial worked."
Thus, paving the way for future SNL feminine product parodies like "Woomba" and "Annuale."
