Even More Ads!
Next up, we have a few ads that Muppets, Inc. did for the Chesapeake and Potomac phone company, plugging such seemingly (at least today) standard things as dialing “1” before placing a long distance call and using the phone directory. The set-up for the ads are again quite similar to Wilkins and Wontkins and Mack/Kermit, particularly in regards to the “bad things happen to people who don’t do [x]” conceit. In these, however, Mack goes from the abuser to the abused. In the ads with Kermit, he was the Wilkins character. Now, that part has been taken by a “sweet” little girl named Suzy who punishes him for not doing what she wants. Except, that is, in the third ad, when he actually does and is rewarded with hearts and celebratory confetti. Because “good things happen to people who use the directory!” You can watch three of these ads here, here, and here.
And then we come to Southern Bread, a really fun and clever set of short ads that don’t follow the Wilkins and Wontkins model, or if they do at all, do so with a significant twist, which is that instead of one person putting another into ridiculous situations for refusing to try their product, in this one, a single character who loves his product puts himself through ridiculous situations in order to prove his love for his product! The fact that he’s a genteel Southern plantation-looking gentleman who looks more than a little a bit like Col. Sanders (in fact, his name is “The Southern Colonel”) makes this even funnier. In the first ad I watched, which you can see here, he vows to stop a moving train with his bare hands to prove his love for Southern Bread. It…doesn’t go so well for him. And after being run over, he says, adding insult to his own injury, “On top of it all, I get paid in Confederate money!”
And in the second ad, he faces what is perhaps an even worse indignity for a proud Southerner such as himself: a trip to Yankee Stadium!
And then we have the third ad here, in which he agrees to be shot out of a cannon, reaching positively meta proportions when he asks himself afterwards, “Why do I do these things for Southern Bread?!” In addition to these ads being very entertaining, the manner in which the Southern Colonel interacts with the outside world, involved in at-times-elaborate on-location stunts (in one I didn’t get a chance to see, an arrow is shot at an apple on his head, a la William Tell, by an actual archer, which was an act of bravery on Jim’s part, as well, because he was indeed standing there, holding up the puppet, trusting the guy not to hit him!), both foreshadows larger-scale on-location events in Muppet films and the Traveling Matt sections of Fraggle Rock, as well as likely helped Jim, his puppeteers, and creative team experiment with techniques they would put to even better use in those later productions.
And our last ad for today, Aurora Bath Tissue, which is distinct from almost all previous ones we’ve seen in that it doesn’t rely on any sort of wicked humor, or even a punchline at all, rather just being footage of a lovely, delicate puppet made of a simple hand glove with mascara-like eyelashes and “fluffy” hair to cover the puppeteer’s wrist, dancing around the product, doing its best to draw attention away from the fact that it’s selling toilet paper. While this is one of the less purely entertaining of his ads, being neither funny nor witty nor biting, it does show how Jim delved into all sorts of puppetry, not just those with the traditional Muppet look. This resembles some of the more experimental sort he would sometimes showcase in musical numbers later on The Muppet Show.
And before I sign off for today, I need to mention two more milestones from this time period. The first: in 1965, Jim brought Jerry Nelson on board to Muppets, Inc. Nelson would go on to be one of the most important Muppet players, later arguably best known for being the voices of the Count and Snuffy on Sesame Street and Gobo Fraggle on Fraggle Rock. The second: in April of this same year, John Paul Henson was born, Jim and Jane’s second son and fourth child overall.
And the next month, Jim finally debuted his completed short film, Time Piece, which he had been working on in the background throughout the year, at the MoMA in New York City. And that’s what I’ll be covering tomorrow!
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