Passing parameters into the Backbone events object of a backbone view

You could put the extra argument in a data attribute on the clickable item instead; something like this:

<a id="top-all" data-pancakes="1">

And then topProducts can figure it out itself:

topProducts: function(ev) {
    var pancakes = $(ev.currentTarget).data('pancakes');
    // And continue on as though we were called as topProducts(pancakes)
    // ...
}