"Escuire" is a verb, meanig the act a lord of a feudal village performs when he appoints a squire, thus making that youth an "Esquire" (a noun). Why is this almost-synonym of the name of the real product the title of this Wacky you may ask? Because "Expire" would imply that the shoe polish would cause you to die, and thus such a title would disparage the product. This is also why you DON'T have to shove Cram down someone's throat to get them to eat it. But such changes are executive decisions based on legal considerations. To make the change, the execs would just go to the dictionary and find another word that was close in spelling or sound to the original product name. By that time this stuff was out of the hands of the creative department, and the gag writers had already been paid and blew the money on Burger King food. Such changes happen all the time in the humor biz. My favorite example of this is that Ralph Bakshi movie...the one where Kim Bassinger does the voice of the main character.... Almost every gag in the movie was changed to the point where they make no sense. But if you watch it with that in mind, it is pretty easy to figure out what the changed gags were before the changes. Although that does get pretty tedious, and if you try to do that for all the gags in that film you get a headache and can't enjoy the movie.
