Mr. Whipple, of Don’t Squeeze the Charmin fame, died today—he was 91.
He was replaced nearly twenty years ago by those stupid cartoon bears on Charmin’s TV commercials, who always gross me out. I can ask “does a bear s@#!s in the woods,” but I don’t need a cartoon, graphic re-enactment of it to influence my TP buying habits.
Mr. Whipple I liked. In closing, Mr. Wilson-Whipple—when you go, you gotta go.
Point of fact: the first Mr Whipple Charmin commercial was filmed in Flushing, NY.
3 users commented in " Sad Day Here: Dick Wilson (Mr. Whipple) Died Today "
I think that was arguably the best ad of all time – if you consider what an ad is supposed to do. EVERYBODY knew Charmin because of them. Was there another brand?
Maybe Taryenton Cigarette, better fight than switch…or Benson and Hedges, remember the broken cigarette because it was just too darned long…or VW classic ads…or the maytag repairman….but none as endearing or as uncool as Mr Whipple.
Having worked in newspaper advertising for 11 years (back in the good old days of the 60’s….I know that there were only 10 years in the 60’s but one of the years was in the 70’s) it has been really interesting to watch the way ad content has changed since television advertising has come into play. I’ll admit that the newspaper where I was advertising supervisor; proof reader; billing supervisor; switchboard operator and trainer; and, really whatever else needed to be done that I could squeeze into an 8 hour day was not terribly big but we published 6 days a week and typed our classified ads on manual typewriters. We were the largest paper in the state with the exception of the papers in Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita.
We had an editor that roared like a lion whenever anything went wrong with anything, which was not very often believe me! He served as a correspondent in Burma during WW11 and typed with two fingers and a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth……..he kept it in there from the time it was lit until it was apt to burn his lips (bringing on a roar) and I never ever saw him drop an ash.
Back to advertising ………we were not allowed to print ads that asked for male or female companions……if they were in the help wanted section (where some of the sly devils tried to sneak them in) we had to make sure that HELP was what they wanted and I don’t mean like in Viagra or LeVetra (which hadn’t been invented…….we were still trying to get to school walking uphill in the snow both ways……and solve the Vietnam problem). I see some of these ads, like the ones where the couple is cuddled up in a hammock or sitting in bathtubs looking out over a beautiful landscape and I think to myself, “Viagra’s not going to help you one bit in that hammock, in fact you may wind up crippled from falling out; and, hopping from bath tub to bath tub doesn’t seem like the most romantic idea in the world either. Besides, maybe she didn’t see the ad about the yeast infection cure so there may be many problems involved with that interlude, plus all the other STD’s. I’d much rather watch Mr. Whipple complain because folks squeezed the Charmin and I’m sorry that he crossed over.
I am at the age where I don’t understand all I know about a lot of things that I see on the tube………but, I aint so old that I don’t know that bears don’t use toilet paper (be it soft or rough).
Hope y’all have a good day,
Corky
Leave A Reply