The
premise of today's blog entry may seem outlandish, but if you’ll bear with me I think I
can prove it out.
A
few months ago I was doing some research for my gig on The Forrest Carr show on
Tucson’s PowerTalk 1210 when I came across a TV commercial online that just
blew me away. The spot, dating from the
early 60’s, had appeared originally in The
Flintstones, what was then billed as a prime time animated series aimed at
equal parts children and adults. Barney
and Fred had just walked into the back yard and were noticing that their
spouses, Betty and Wilma, were doing the chores. “Man, I hate to see them work so hard,”
Barney opined, at which point Fred agreed:
“So let’s go around back where we can’t see ‘em.” At which point the two of them decide a
cigarette break is in order; they proceed to bust out with a package of
Winstons. Barney blows out a cloud of hot
air big enough to have rescued Dorothy and Toto from Oz while Fred rolls off
with a verse of the Winston Jingle, which you may remember if you’re old
enough: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette
should....” I remember that first line,
and as well I should; in 1998 Advertising Age voted it the 9th most effective
TV jingle of the 20th century.
Yes. The jingle appeared on the scene in 1954.
It’s not clear when it made its debut on the Flintstones show, but we do know the
run continued until the advent of the third generation of Flintstones in the
form of Pebbles and Bamm Bamm in 1963. Remember, the target audience for the
Flintstones was both adults and children.
Perhaps that bothered some people.
R.J. Reynolds also sponsored the Walter Cronkite news program, but Uncle
Walt steadfastly refused to read the jingle.
Think you know the grounds for his objection? Pfaw.
His problem with it was that the slogan
was grammatically incorrect. (It should
have been “Winston tastes good as a
cigarette should.” We all have our
issues and perspectives, don’t we?)
As
I recall, we kiddies didn’t read it either.
We had our own version: “Winston
tastes bad like the one I just had. No
filter, no flavor, just a roll of toilet paper.” I’m not sure who was corrupting whom here. But the salient point remains is that here we
were, kids aged anywhere from 3 to 9, singing
about cigarettes in our own homes, school hallways and playgrounds. What a coup for the tobacco companies! The idea that cigarette smoking was a
completely safe and pleasurable activity was firmly implanted in kids’ heads from
that day forward.
And
it also got implanted that cigarette smoking was an adult activity. When I asked my father, at the tender age of
6, if I could try one, he let me know in very certain terms that just like beer
drinking, cigarettes were strictly for adults.
This was more marketing genius; an explanation of that type made me only
want to try it more.
There
was nothing like the effect TV advertisements had on kids in the 60’s, and
never will be again. I’m still feeling
the effects, half a century later. Yesterday
it caused me to go on another Cap’n Crunch run.
If
this hard left turn here in the blog narrative toward Cap’n Crunch lost you,
hang on because there is a connection. I
told you recently that I couldn’t eat Cap’n Crunch because of (1) lactose
intolerance and (2) it sometimes goes down wrong, leading to a sensation not
unlike shoveling gravel down my windpipe, which in turn leads to a long bout of
coughing and hacking (in the research, Cap’n Crunch “taking off the roof of
your mouth” turns up as a common consumer complaint). I suspect this would be tough enough for a
non-asthmatic to handle, but it was really rough on someone like me. When I checked one of my favorite stores
earlier this week, they only had a Cap’n Crunch knock-off called “Crunch
Berries,” which sounded a lot like something my high school gym coach used to
threaten to give me if I didn’t haul my butt down the track quickly enough. I never did meet his satisfaction, because my
parents and pediatrician had withheld from both of us the fact that I was an asthmatic
from whom treatment had been withheld, on the grounds that knowledge of my
condition could cause me to view myself as a life-long cripple. So my school athletic life was filled with endless
threats and derision and the occasional crunch-berry vision, but never with the
thrill of victory. I did,
however, come away with a love of Cap’n Crunch that continues to this day. Alas, I decided yesterday that even though I
did find the stand-alone product available for sale, in my current medical
condition I just can’t risk another asthmatic or breathing panic attack. I mean, the consequences of swallowing this
stuff the wrong way can be brutal. Imagine
a conveyor belt filled with big chunks of brick pavers, asphalt, rock debris of
all kind—you’re the conveyor. The taste might actually be worth it if you live
though the experience, an issue that sometimes can be in doubt for an hour or
so. Yesterday I was having bad chest
pains so I gave it all up as a bad idea.
I
did resume my search for my little buddy Quisp, though. Quisp is a little space alien who came out at
roughly the same time as Cap’n Crunch.
The serial, shaped like little flying saucers, was roughly the same in
taste and texture, but softer and less likely to go down the wrong way. Alas, Quisp was discontinued from the market
after only a few years, but interestingly Quaker Oats does offer it for sale on
line through Amazon, and perhaps other places.
I have always thought that Quisp was discriminated against
for having a lisp—and if that’s not so,
why did Quaker Oats find it necessary to come out with a manly-man companion named
“Quake” as a sidekick? I have not gotten
over Quisp and think it’s time for him to return and fight for his rights. There is no reason in the world why some
stuffed-up executive should be allowed to continue depriving me of my childhood
buddy.
And
besides, it was those boardroom buttheads that got me addicted to these sugary
cereals and other bad things in the first place. Shame on all of you. And for the record, whatever happened to
Wheaties as the epitome of athletically-tuned nutrition?
Actually,
I’m not nearly so worked up about the sugar thing and should probably be
grateful. After the collapse of my taste
buds during chemotherapy, my sugar tooth is about all I have left. Doctors put me on notice that anything I find
appealing and will eat, I should eat.
Apple Jacks, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms—all of them are as tasty to me
now as the day I first tried them out.
My weight is going up, which is a good thing. The only bad thing is that my face is looking
blocky, a predictable side effect of the steroids I’m using to enhance my
appetite.
But
for the second-hand smoke allures of Fred
Flintstone and the others, we’ve got some serious talking to do. My cancer so fits the profile not of second
hand smoke but of primary smoking that I’m not sure I ever did convince my
doctors that I have never smoked. My
diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic abdominal cancer is now six months old. I lay blame for it directly at the feet of
executives who worked so hard to insert tobacco smoke into what should have
been a childhood sanctuary against illness and disease—and succeeded.
Marketing
is a war, not a battle. The marketers
fought hard to put tobacco into the Carr household and they won—true, these specific
teams didn’t get their particular brands placed (my parents smoked Kents, not
Winstons). But I was exposed to
second-hand smoke for my entire childhood. I’d be eating Quisp cereal today were it easily
available—but it’s not. Instead there
are plenty of other sugary products to choose from. In either case, I think the battle of
hard-working marketing executives is done here, don’t you?
###
No comments:
Post a Comment