Snake Oil - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Poppy: W. C. Fields's film about a Western frontier American snake oil salesman complete with a surreptitious crowd accomplice. His demonstration from the back of a buckboard (transparently fraudulent to the movie audience) of a miraculous cure for hoarseness ignited a comic purchasing frenzy.
• Disney's Pete's Dragon : The greedy "Doc" Terminus, played by Jim Dale, gave a testament to the persuasive power of the snake oil salesman.
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer : Mark Twain presents Aunt Polly as a true believer in various sorts of snake oil, though not always in the form of an alleged medicine.
• Flåklypa Grand Prix: In this animated movie, Snake Oil is used as a name for a shady oil company.
• Steve Earle's "Snake Oil": Singer-songwriter Steve Earle recorded a song critical of the Ronald Reagan administration entitled "Snake Oil" for the album Copperhead Road, released in 1988.
• Red Dead Redemption: A number of missions involves John Marston working with a snake oil salesman, Nigel West Dickens, as a shill, so he can sell his tonics to ignorant farmhands, despite them not doing anything.
• Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves: In the song by Cher, the singer's father sold bottles of "Doctor Good" at a traveling show.
• Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas: In the TV special, a running joke explains the title character's sold snake oil, "but nobody wanted to oil any snakes."
• "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" sees Arthur Weasley head up a department restricting the sale of counterfeit magical protection items that wizards claim will protect others from Dark magic.