A 'blue zillion'

[David Bowie]

I recently had a student (army brat, so she doesn't have a cohesive
linguistic background) use the phrase "blue zillion", meaning "lots", in an
email to me. The relevant bit (including a typo from the original, ellipsis
points also in the original):

  "I went to the library to look at for articles online, and i found
   a blue zillion...i looked through some of them, but gave up and
   went to look at the periodicals in the library."

Googling this, i get 61 (after duplicates are eliminated), most of which
unambiguously have this meaning, in both unhyphenated and hyphenated forms.
As a single compound word, Google gives me 13, only a few of which have this
meaning. (Only 3 non-duplicate ones with this meaning in the plural, both of
which have the form "blue zillions".)

An interesting hit is a letter that starts:

  "I know you receive a blue zillion e-mails every day, so I've made
   my third attempt a bit easier with an easy "yes and no" format."

The response to the letter (same page, ellipsis points in original) begins:

  "A blue zillion? . . . . Well, not every day. Some days only a light
   mauve billion, but others, a jungle-red gazillion. But who's
   counting, right?"

No idea whether the playing with it in the response is evidence of playing
with a familiar form, or playing with a to-the-writer novel form.

Anyway, anyone else run across this?

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.