Trivia

Members were lead singer Dinho, keyboardist Júlio Rasec, guitarist Bento Hinoto, bassist Samuel Reoli, and drummer Sérgio Reoli.

Bento and the Reoli brothers formed the metal trio Utopia in the suburbs of São Paulo in 1989. They reinvented themselves as the comedy band Mamonas Assassinas after Dinho (principal singer and lyricist) and Julio (keyboardist, composer) joined in 1992.

Their self-titled 1995 debut album sold 2 million copies in eight months, and was still going strong when the band met its untimely end in a private plane crash.

Although their songs touched on adult themes, Mamonas Assassinas were most popular with young people for their juvenile humor and cartoonish stage antics.

Made only one official music video, Mamonas Assassinas: Pelados em Santos (1995). The yellow hatchback they are crammed into is a Volkswagen Brasília, which was manufactured from 1974 to 1982. The band and the vehicle are now inextricably linked in Brazilian pop culture.

At the time of the accident the band was set to embark on a tour of Portugal, their first step in pursuing international fame.

The moniker Mamonas Assassinas is indicative of the group's humor. In Portuguese "mamona" is the term for castor oil plant, the beans from which are used to produce a laxative, and it's also a pun on the word for a woman's breast. The band translated the name into English as "Killer Big Breasts" and this was made explicit on their album cover. A cartoon of a spiky green castor bean with a smiley face was adopted as a more family-friendly logo.

Over 100,000 people attended the band's funeral on March 4, 1996. They are buried in two adjacent plots at the Primaveras I Cemetery in Guarulhos, Brazil.

At 11PM on March 2, 1996, Mamonas Assassinas were heading home from a show in Brasilia when their Learjet 25 crashed in the Cantareira Mountains, 20 miles north of Sao Paulo. All nine aboard perished: the five band members, both pilots, the band's bodyguard and a roadie. Their bodies were recovered the next day.

There is a fair amount of video of Mamonas Assassinas in live concert performance and from their appearances on Brazilian TV.

The band's resting place at Primaveras Cemetery is identified by a large overhead banner hung between two trees. On the 25th anniversary of their fatal plane crash in March 2021, a vintage yellow VW Brasilia (the car in their "Pelados em Santo" video) was parked near their graves in tribute.

The band's double-entendre name was directly inspired by model Mary Alexandre, who was the cover girl of Playboy Brazil in April 1992. Her attributes were caricatured in the cover art of their only studio album.

In 1994 a demo by Mamonas Assassinas reached Joao Augusto Soares, an artistic director at EMI Records. He hated the music, but his teenage son went nuts over it and this convinced him to sign the band.