Forgotten Advertising Characters of the Era

[vitanola]

Grebe Radio had the inscrutable Doctor Mu:

A generation before Dr. Mu, an entire town of characters celebrated Sapolio:

Of course, Nipper, the Victor dog, while not forgotten, is one of the great advertising characters of all time.

 

[2jakes]

The only known photograph of Nipper and Frances Barraud working on one
of the 24 copies of “His Master’s Voice” that were commissioned by the Victor Company.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Barraud tried first to sell the painting to the Edison company, but they weren't interested -- so he painted over the Edison phonograph originally shown and changed it to a disc machine. A Boy before his time.

RCA never seemed to appreciate what they had in that image -- after buying out Victor they seemed to be very ambivalent about Nipper, pairing the image with their own "meatball" logo, reducing it in size and prominence, reviving it and then ignoring it again, and just generally treating it like an unwanted obligation rather than the indelible image that it is. Its successors have been no better.

 

[Fading Fast]

...

Of course, Nipper, the Victor dog, while not forgotten, is one of the great advertising characters of all time.

View attachment 89022

Is this still in use? I'm with Lizzie as I believe it is meta-iconic - and would still have power today if managed and used with thought. I have some very vague memory that I read - in the recent past - that it was retired, but am far from sure of that as I could be confusing it with some other iconic image that was retired.

 

[scottyrocks]

And poor old Sunny Jim, the very first advertising character used to market breakfast cereal, who was crowded off the shelf by younger, snazzier upstarts.

What the heck is sticking out of the back of his head?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The rights to Nipper are spread out all over the world -- RCA only ever controlled it in the US and Canada, and when RCA broke up, the trademark rights for those territories ended up owned by Technicolor (another famous trademark that's not what it used to be.) I don't believe you find Nipper on any products here anymore, but likely someone somewhere in the world is still using the image.

RCA itself, of course, is basically just a portfolio of licensed trademarks now -- both the Meatball and the 1968-style "RCA" letters turn up on all sorts of oddball products. The other day I bought a can of "RCA" brand compressed air. General Sarnoff is oscillating in his sarcophagus.

 

[Fading Fast]

The rights to Nipper are spread out all over the world -- RCA only ever controlled it in the US and Canada, and when RCA broke up, the trademark rights for those territories ended up owned by Technicolor (another famous trademark that's not what it used to be.) I don't believe you find Nipper on any products here anymore, but likely someone somewhere in the world is still using the image.

RCA itself, of course, is basically just a portfolio of licensed trademarks now -- both the Meatball and the 1968-style "RCA" letters turn up on all sorts of oddball products. The other day I bought a can of "RCA" brand compressed air. General Sarnoff is oscillating in his sarcophagus.

Funny that you mentioned Technicolor as, until today (literally, more in second), I didn't even know it still existed, but then I was reading about the Weinstein Company this morning and caught this in a WSJ article:

One of Hollywood’s largest postproduction vendors, Technicolor , has stopped extending credit to Weinstein Co., people close to the companies said. It will do work on the studio’s films and television shows, including sound, color and visual effects, only if payment is received immediately upon delivery.

That move comes after Technicolor’s chief executive, Frederic Rose, sent an email to executives this week discussing whether the company should cease work on Weinstein projects entirely until the current issues are resolved, said a person with knowledge of the message.

A Technicolor executive, president of production services Tim Sarnoff, was on Weinstein Co.’s board of directors until last Friday, when he was among a group of directors who resigned because they felt blindsided and betrayed by the allegations, according to a person with knowledge of their decision.
​

All these things - Technicolor, the rights to Nipper or RCA - get turned round and twisted by market forces and time, but still survive in some form or another that, usually, bare little resemblance to what they once were or meant.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What the heck is sticking out of the back of his head?

That's a pigtail, in the style of the early 19th Century. Sunny Jim was supposed to be a Dickensian type character who started out as a Scrooge-like figure but became Sunny when he cleaned out his spastic colon with a big bowl of Force flakes. Here he is spiffed up a bit in the late 1930s, but still looking as Dickensian as ever. I'm surprised this image hasn't been turned into one of those "Haters Gonna Hate" memes.

(All joking aside, this really is a gorgeous specimen of 1930s package design, even more attractive than the very similar Wheaties box of the same era.)

Jim was heavily merchandised in the early years of the 20th Century. The most popular premium item was a make-it-yourself Sunny Jim soft doll kit -- you'd send away and get a piece of printed oilcloth in the image of the sunny gentleman, and you'd cut it out, sew it up, and stuff it with rags or cotton waste, and give it to the baby to chew on until it fell apart.

Force flakes disappeared from the US market by the end of the 1940s, but they remained popular in the UK for decades onward, and modern reproductions of the Sunny Jim doll were popular there for a very long time.

Or as popular as anything so closely resembling a garden shrew with glasses on could be.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Funny that you mentioned Technicolor as, until today (literally, more in second), I didn't even know it still existed, but then I was reading about the Weinstein Company this morning and caught this in a WSJ article:

One of Hollywood’s largest postproduction vendors, Technicolor , has stopped extending credit to Weinstein Co., people close to the companies said. It will do work on the studio’s films and television shows, including sound, color and visual effects, only if payment is received immediately upon delivery.

That move comes after Technicolor’s chief executive, Frederic Rose, sent an email to executives this week discussing whether the company should cease work on Weinstein projects entirely until the current issues are resolved, said a person with knowledge of the message.

A Technicolor executive, president of production services Tim Sarnoff, was on Weinstein Co.’s board of directors until last Friday, when he was among a group of directors who resigned because they felt blindsided and betrayed by the allegations, according to a person with knowledge of their decision.
​

All these things - Technicolor, the rights to Nipper or RCA - get turned round and twisted by market forces and time, but still survive in some form or another that, usually, bare little resemblance to what they once were or meant.

"Tim Sarnoff?" If this guy is related to the General, that would even more surreal.

 

[Fading Fast]

...

Or as popular as anything so closely resembling a garden shrew with glasses on could be.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Tim Sarnoff?" If this guy is related to the General, that would even more surreal.

Good catch - I'll do some web work on it.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Tim Sarnoff?" If this guy is related to the General, that would even more surreal.

Surprisingly harder to get an answer than I thought, but I found this on IMDB:

...If David Sarnoff’s grandson, Tim Sarnoff, were to decree his own law, it might be: “The art and science of storytelling is really about the science of telling the story artfully.”

For Tim Sarnoff — whose father was also a broadcasting mogul — the fundamentals of entertainment haven’t changed much since his grandfather’s time....
It comes from this link: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765445/news?year=2014​

If you click through, it appears that it is the same Tim Sarnoff from Technicolor today.

My only hesitation is that I brought up several articles and bios on Tim Sarnoff of Technicolor and not one mentioned David Sarnoff which seems crazy. It's like discussing Patricia Hitchcock's career and life and not mentioning Alfred Hitchcock.

 

[scottyrocks]

That's a pigtail, in the style of the early 19th Century. Sunny Jim was supposed to be a Dickensian type character who started out as a Scrooge-like figure but became Sunny when he cleaned out his spastic colon with a big bowl of Force flakes. Here he is spiffed up a bit in the late 1930s, but still looking as Dickensian as ever. I'm surprised this image hasn't been turned into one of those "Haters Gonna Hate" memes.

(All joking aside, this really is a gorgeous specimen of 1930s package design, even more attractive than the very similar Wheaties box of the same era.)

That one does look like a pigtail. The first one looks like it could've benefited from the items in the prophylactic ads.

 

[Nobert]

Is this still in use? I'm with Lizzie as I believe it is meta-iconic - and would still have power today if managed and used with thought. I have some very vague memory that I read - in the recent past - that it was retired, but am far from sure of that as I could be confusing it with some other iconic image that was retired.

I usually get blank stares whenever I mention Nipper (not that this is a daily occurrence). I assume that wouldn't be the case if I were talking to someone from Albany.

By the bye, has it ever been confirmed that, in that original painting, the dog and Victrola are situated on top of a coffin?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Surprisingly harder to get an answer than I thought, but I found this on IMDB:

...If David Sarnoff’s grandson, Tim Sarnoff, were to decree his own law, it might be: “The art and science of storytelling is really about the science of telling the story artfully.”

For Tim Sarnoff — whose father was also a broadcasting mogul — the fundamentals of entertainment haven’t changed much since his grandfather’s time....
It comes from this link: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765445/news?year=2014​

If you click through, it appears that it is the same Tim Sarnoff from Technicolor today.

My only hesitation is that I brought up several articles and bios on Tim Sarnoff of Technicolor and not one mentioned David Sarnoff which seems crazy. It's like discussing Patricia Hitchcock's career and life and not mentioning Alfred Hitchcock.

At least he's not Bobby Sarnoff's son. Among his other blunders, Bobby's first priority when he took over the company was to get rid of both the Meatball and Nipper, and diversify into the frozen chicken dinner business. Nothing says "RCA Quality" more than a Banquet bag.

 

[scottyrocks]

Being Albany, that's Nipper listening for the sound of an honest politician.

 

[Nobert]

I noticed that in that animated short, the Gold Dust Twins also put in a brief appearance.

At first blush (and, as a culture, we should blush at the very least), it doesn't seem surprising that these two were consigned to the purgatory of minstrel shows, "coon songs," and pickaninny gamines, but that doesn't explain the longevity of Aunt Jemima and the Cream of Wheat chef, who even I remember from the 70s.

 

[scottyrocks]

Maybe it's just me, but the great majority of these characters are just downright creepy.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Goldy and Dusty lived long enough to appear on radio in the twenties as a musical act, and Gold Dust powder itself was still a thing into the 1940s, by which time the label had actually gotten *more* caricatured, not less.

In the '70s, when the Red Sox had Jim Rice and Fred Lynn as superstar rookies, they were commonly referred to in the press and on the radio as "The Gold Dust Twins." Lynn, a white guy, didn't care, but Jim Rice, understandably, took umbrage.

 

[Fading Fast]

Maybe it's just me, but the great majority of these characters are just downright creepy.

That's an interesting observation and - away from Nipper and the kilowatt guy - I agree as, to me, most of them feel "off" and some outright creepy, but IMHO, this is another example of how images, impressions, context, views, vibes in cultures change overtime.

I'm pretty comfortable that era's Boys From Marketing weren't producing advertising images that the general public back then felt were creepy. Clearly most were successful and probably created the same general good vibe that most feel today toward the Geico Gecko or Snoopy.

Writ large, it's why we should be humble when judging things from another era by today's standards. It's reasonably harmless when we say those advertising images look creepy (but as noted, probably weren't viewed that way when they were popular), but is more problematic when we apply all our modern political and social pieties to judging people and norms from other time periods.

Complete aside, I haven't seen the Jolly Green Giant or Little Sprout in a long time - are they still being used?