When Friends’ Joey Thought THIS British Book Was About Cheese

“Welcome to the real world; it sucks.”-Monica Geller

I was eighteen when I watched Friends for the first time, and while there was a lot that I did not understand about the show at that time since it was a fairly new concept, this particular quote resonated with me for the largest part of my life. The idea of randomly finding a group of people who would stick by you till the tenth season’s tenth episode of your life was a little unfathomable for me, still is, but something that was even more unfathomable to me were the pop-culture references and jokes that were intertwined with it’s various storylines but were rarely evident as references that we might or might now have known.

One such joke was brought up in the fourth season of the show in the episode ‘The One With The Dirty Girl’ when Chandler bought a book titled ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ for Kathy, Joey’s girlfriend’s birthday, because he was in love with her and wanted to gift her something special but had to give it to Joey to give to her.

Joey had gifted the book to Kathy, saying, “I know you like books, and I know you like cheese.”

Decoding the joke

While none of us would have thought that there may be anything other than a usual punchline by Joey since he was shown to be a little less smarter than the rest throughout the Friends’ series. There is actually more to the joke than what we could imagine.

The joke made by Joey in the episode, however, did refer to The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real), a British children’s book written by Margery Williams (sometimes known as Margery Williams Bianco) and illustrated by William Nicholson. However, since Joey was unaware of the book’s background and content, he inadvertently believed that the book was about cheese. This reference connects the Velveteen Rabbit to the Velveeta cheese brand, which was invented in 1918 by Emil Frey (1867–1951) of the Monroe Cheese Company in Monroe, New York. So, when he stated Kathy liked cheese, he meant that the book was about Velveeta cheese and rabbits.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Nonetheless, The Velveteen Rabbit is about a stuffed rabbit who, with his owner’s affection, wishes he could come to life. The story was originally published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1921, with illustrations by Pamela Bianco, Williams’ daughter. Since its initial publication as a book in 1922, it has been reprinted multiple times.