Plop-plop. Fizz-fizz. Oh what a genetic freak he is.

Dick Beals, who took the genetic lemons life handed him and made Alka-Seltzer, has died at the age of 85. Deprived of puberty by a glandular condition, Beals kept his child-like voice his entire life, beating out hundreds of children for the role of Norman Normanmeyer Jr. in the ABC cartoon series of “The Addams Family” – at the age of 65. When producers realized they could get a college graduate to voice any child – boy or girl, of any age – and not have to deal with stage mothers, Beals would never go hungry again. Among his many roles – 50 years as Speedy, the anthropomorphized Alka-Seltzer tablet, the first voice of Gumby and Goliath’s boy Davey, he was a Campbell’s Soup kid, proclaimed that he’d love to be an Oscar Meyer wiener, and was the voice of the Vaseline mascot, curiously named Sticky, which to me suggests you would be using the product incorrectly.