Inspried by the thread about the Frito Bandito guy
Who was or is your favourite character from a food?
I mean store food, not fast food or resturant food or characters that were famous first then became cereals. In other word characters developed specifically to market food. And they have to be fake not real people like Mr Whipple.
Examples are:
[ul]
[li]Frito Bandito[/li][li]WC Frito[/li][li]Chester Cheetah[/li][li]Mr Peanut[/li][li]Bazooka Joe[/li][li]The Kool-Aid Pitcher Guy[/li][li]Jolly Green Giant[/li][li]Speedy Alka Seltzer[/li][li]Twinkie the Kid[/li][/ul]
[above are just examples of what I’m looking for, don’t limit yourself to just these]
Also did you ever own any merchandise by any of them
I recall I had a Frito Bandito and WC Frito erasers and I also had a stuffed Jolly Green Giant doll I got by saving up labels.
So who are your favourites, and if you must, who did you detest
The Quisp cereal alien. He was cute, onion-headed, and had a propeller on top of his head. He pandered to my love of all things SF, he didin’t have annoying TV commercials, and occasionally I’ll still find a store that carries it.
I grew up so poor we couldn’t afford brand name food, or even the tier 2 food with obscure mascots. When I saw the title, my first thought was the black guy in a white suit with the vaguely Caribbean accent who peddled 7 up, but I guess he’s out.
Do fictional mascots count? I would vote for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.
If not, I guess I would go with the Pilsbury Doughboy.
Mine was the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I used to have Pillsbury toaster strudels ever day for breakfast and he looked really cute and huggable in commercials. I remember I tried to sew a doll based on his character.
I have fond memories of Kool-Aid, the big walking pitcher who said “Oh yeeeeeah!” But as an adult, I realized, he was a jerk! He was constantly walking through people’s walls and fences, causing all kinds of property damage, just to sell his sugar water! Damn you Kool-Aid! You’d better have some insurance, or a good lawyer!
The Sugardale pig. I don’t know if he has a proper name. I always enjoyed how psychotically happy he appeared to be while selling the flesh of his brethren.
Toucan Sam fan here. But I can’t really explain why. He didn’t have much of a personality. Maybe I just liked the colors? But I always get a soft sentimental smile when I think of him (which admittedly isn’t often).
I used to work for Quaker (which made those cereals, as well as Cap’n Crunch). Quisp, Quake, and Cap’n Crunch (and, the original TV ads, as well) were created by Jay Ward, of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” fame. We had a reel of all the old ads (many of which were 60 or 90 seconds long, more common for ads back in the 1960s). They were a lot of fun to watch.
It was the other way around. The characters were created by the ad agency where I work, for an ad for the California Raisin Advisory Board. The ad was so popular, the characters were then spun off and licensed for other uses.
