On these pages last week, I shared my findings on the stories behind breakfast cereal icons, such as Tony The Tiger and Snap! Crackle! and Pop! These characters are feats of food marketing, drawing us in to the world of sugary treats at a young age. It’s not just breakfast, either. Fictional characters are used to sell tinned goods, sweets and syrups all over the world, and some of the better- known characters have similarly interesting origin stories.
Last week, we learned that Thurl Ravenscroft was the voice of Tony The Tiger in the US for 50 years. He was also the first voice of the Jolly Green Giant, though Elmer Dresslar Jr soon took over and voiced the giant’s deep baritone catchphrase Ho! Ho! Ho! internationally for nearly 50 years, until he died in 2005. The Minnesota Valley Canning Company launched Green Giant Peas in 1925.
The brand’s mascot, the giant, had started life as a caveman dressed in a bearskin until a young ad man, Leo Burnett, gave the giant an outfit made of leaves and painted a smile on his face in 1935. Burnett went on to found one of the most famous ad agencies in the world.
Don't you think it's a little odd that many of us fancied an animated rabbit when we were younger? Talk about the power of advertising. The Cadbury Caramel Bunny was drawn as an attractive lapin with wide eyes and a pretty bow, but it was arguably her breathy voice that sealed the deal. Miriam Margoyles, aka Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter series, was responsible for the Cadbury Caramel Bunny's dulcet tones throughout the entire UK campaign, which ran in the 1980s and 1990s.
There was an ill-judged attempt to bring her back in 2009, but the computer-animated update had her dressed in a short dress designed by Giles Deacon. Somehow putting clothes on her just made the whole thing even creepier.
Some of the most successful and long-running chocolate characters are the M&M gang. The Mars Company first launched M&Ms in the 1940s, after the founder of the company, Forrest Mars Sr, went on a business trip to Europe and saw second World War soldiers eating chocolate candy coated in a sugary shell. Some say the sweets he saw were Smarties, a version of which had been made by Rowntrees since the 1880s, and sold as Smarties since 1937. Mars went into business with Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey’s chocolate president, in 1941, and their combined surnames led to the name M&M.
Melted slogan It was the legendary advertising executive Rosser Reeves, thought to be an inspiration for the Don Draper character, who came up with the M&Ms slogan “melt in your mouth, not in your hands.” A 1954 animated TV ad sees two M&M characters taking a dip in a pool of melted chocolate, and telling us to look for the “M on every piece.”
Today, the M&M gang is made up of six members. Ms Brown is one of the newest additions and is voiced by Vanessa Williams, while Green is voiced by Cree Summer, whose tones you may know from her roles as Penny in Inspector Gadget and Susie Carmichael in Rugrats. Perhaps most unexpectedly is Yellow, who is currently voiced by Oscar- winning actor JK Simmons, taking over the baton from John Goodman.
Also owned by the Mars Company is Uncle Ben’s Rice. Since 1946, the Uncle Ben products have carried pretty much the same image of an elderly black man dressed in a bow tie and suit, some say modelled on a maitre d’hotel named Frank Brown from Chicago. The product remains known as Uncle Ben’s Rice, even though the Uncle term is seen by many as a pejorative way to describe an elderly submissive black slave, in the same vein as Uncle Tom.
Perhaps more objectionable is the Aunt Jemima character, seen on bottles of pancake syrup and boxes of pancake mix. She has had a makeover since she first appeared in 1889, unapologetically as a “mammy”. In the last century, she lost her red bandana, bright red lipstick and apron, and now sports a smart hairdo, and wears pearl earrings and a lace collar.
In a 2007 interview on NPR, Maurice Manring, author of Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima (1998) spoke about the implications of damaging stereotypes being used as a marketing tool, and shared his thoughts on why Aunt Jemima was such a successful saleswoman.
Much like the Washington Redskins – or our own Apache Pizza – surely it’s time for companies to take a closer look at the fictional stereotypes used to sell their wares. I understand that rebranding is a risky and costly process, but the issues around their problematic characters are only going to become increasingly heightened as people continue to wake up to misrepresentation on packaging.
