I can picture it clearly. My dad had bought a 12 foot-tall Christmas tree. The rec room (and yes we called it that) had cathedral ceilings, thanks to dad and his friends who built the addition (mostly his friends), and we often found a tree that would fill the available space as best as possible. There is still a scratch on the hardwood of the ceiling attesting to the fact that sometimes we took the challenge to find a big tree to its limits.
This particular year we were fortunate to have a tree at all, as it had rolled off the roof on the way back from the lot at St. Phillips-in-the-Field. The Scouts had not done a particularly great job of knot-tying, and the tree went left when dad turned right onto Crescent.
Traditionally, we watched Christmas specials or listened to dad’s favorite oldies while trimming the tree. This year, we did both as a trio of desiccated grapes sang a cover of the Temptations cover of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I think of that often, perhaps too often.
Pop culture and advertising are inextricably linked, but we pretend they exist in separate cultural realms. I mean, sure, we’re all accustomed to the model of creating television content to drive toy sales ( perfected in the 1980s with G.I. Joe, in my humble opinion), but those were things selling themselves–not some monstrous corruption of things that sell other things suddenly selling themselves, too. Sometimes the veil between worlds thins a bit, however, manifesting the absurdly true horror that is the banality of culture…sorry, I’ve been reading a good bit of weird fiction lately.
As I was reflecting upon this memory recently, it occurred to me that I have never seen this as a half-ass listicle before, so there we go…
The California Raisins
The concept was a natural. Raisins singing “I Heard it through the Grapevine.” I mean, the ad writes itself, and I’d imagine it only came into being because the gag was so obvious and the California Raisin Advisory Board had some money to spend. What allowed it to transcend the premise was the actual talent of the singers–with lead vocals by the late Buddy Miles–and the miracle of Claymation–the stop-motion stylings of the also-late Will Vinton.
The first commercial hit in 1986. Motown nostalgia was at its 80s peak, and the music and animation together were a knockout.
In typical, more-is-more fashion, the Raisins produced a slew of merchandising, albums (five recordings alone in 1988), the aforementioned Christmas special, and many, many more commercials. The Christmas special was a chance for Vinton to show off his non-Raisin work, but they were the star attraction. The Raisins even had a traditionally animated tv series, which lacked the charm of stop-motion, and a comeback special in 1990, to complete the narrative.
By the 90s, however, the shtick played out. The California Raisins weren’t characters, after all, just a gimmick to sell actual raisins, and people will only buy so many raisins. Ultimately, the Raisin Advisory Board realized the advertising cost its members far too much versus what they expected to earn.
The California Raisins today are best remembered for the occasional PVC toy you’ll find at the bottom of a bin at a swap meet or flea market. That is, until the inevitable reboot CGI disaster.
The Noid
Also, in 1986, the Raisins gained a competitor in stop-motion mascotery: the Dominos Pizza Noid. Yes, in fine cartoon mascot fashion, the Noid was that which should be avoided, for it would steal your food, like the Trix Rabbit. Like the Trix Rabbit, the Noid also had bunny ears for some reason, but it was clearly meant to be a guy in a red bunny suit.
The Noid spawned two forgettable video games and almost a tv series, according to Wikipedia, which provides this info:
In 1988 a Saturday morning cartoon series called The Noids was planned by CBS that would have featured the Noid, but the series was scrapped amid complaints that it was merely an advertising ploy and not a show for children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Noid
You would think that this hardly seems likely—hadn’t Saturday morning cartoon series become a haven for toy advertisements masquerading as entertainment? Yes, but I think this goes to the heart of what I said earlier—it is a mascot selling itself as well as its product is just a bridge too far on the long, cynical road of commercialism.
In a dark twist, a mentally ill man with the last name Noid held two employees hostage at a Georgia Domino’s, demanding that the company stop persecuting him with the Avoid the Noid campaign. The five hour standoff ended peaceably, but it ended the appeal of the Noid character.
The Spot
In 1987, the 7up Spot entered the mascot-as-entertainment pool. No stop motion, this time, I’m afraid. In the late 70s & early 80s, this also-ran mixer (really, a 7 & 7 is just brand recognition, not a drink—7up can do nothing to improve upon ginger ale in a mixed drink) gained some steam with the admittedly cool Uncola campaign. Hell, you say the word “Un-co-lahh” and the ghost of Baron Semedi laughs in your ear.
It too, got its own video game for some reason, called Cool Spot. You don’t care about Cool Spot, and neither do I. So, here’s a video of Geoffrey Holder cackling.
Incredible Crash Test Dummies
No, not the 90s alt-rock band known for Brad Roberts’s bombastic bass-baritone, but the similarly named 90s Incredible Crash Test Dummies, which eked into popular culture through a series of seatbelt-promoting public safety ads by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
As incredible as it is to believe, seatbelts only became standard issue through Fed regulations in 1968, a mere 23 years before Vince and Larry (the aforementioned Dummies) appeared on tv—and only about 5-6 years after the first seatbelt laws went into effect. Yes, when I was a kid, we never wore seatbelts in the back seat and, frequently, we’d ride free in the “wayback” of the family Impala wagon. Hell, I don’t think
“You Can Learn A Lot from A Dummy” was a pretty good slogan, the ads were pretty clever, and Hot Wheels quickly figured it could make money selling toys that exploded on impact. After all, engineering high speed collisions was pretty much the point of owning Hot Wheels. It quickly expanded into a forgettable tv cartoon series that lasted three years and as many rebrandings.
At some point, I think people at Mattel realized that selling entire families of test dummies (including an infant!) and their road kill pets were a bit too much.
The Geico Cavemen
You need to hand it to Geico for getting America to think far too much about insurance through their non-stop series of absurdist 15 second ads. And I need to hand it to the Geico Cavemen for introducing me to Röyksopp.
The Cavemen gag was a weird play on identity politics and racism that seams almost impossible from our hyper-aware vantage point in 2020. I’d argue it was fairly brilliant because it played with those tropes in a relatively harmless fashion, poking fun at big-mouthed humans and Cavepersons alike. They became breakout characters and briefly had a TV series (live action for a change) before people realized that the joke was better in 15 second increments.
+ Mr. Whipple
Mr. George “Please Don’t Squeeze the Charmin” Whipple was the bedraggled shopkeeper whose obsessive compulsive disorder brought him into conflict with a series of middle class housewife stereotypes.
Mr. Whipple was a fixture on television between 1964 and 1985. He was portrayed by ubiquitous television character actor Dick Wilson, who probably never played another role again.
I only bring it up because I rewatched the Incredible Shrinking Woman recently where Wilson played, essentially Mr. Whipple. It is a bizarre movie that combines a critique of consumerism with not-entirely-irrational fear of chemistry. Neither great nor terrible, it was a good reminder that folks in the past were fairly self-aware.
Fun note: special effects artist, actor, maker, science aficionado and all-around cool nerd Adam Savage got his showbiz start as Jimmy the Stockboy in a Charmin ad. I can’t find an example, but I swear it is true.