14 Shameless (or Successful) Attempts to Spin a Commercial Into a Whole Franchise
Doug Funnie had to cut his teeth selling grapefruit juice, and we’re glad he did. Baby Bob, on the other hand, should have gone the way of the Spongmonkeys, melting into pre-YouTube mythical obscurity.
Crash Test Dummies
The Department of Transportation really ate with a 1986 seatbelt PSA featuring two sentient crash dummies kvetching over their getting-mangled-for-science careers. The subsequent series of award-winning commercials were spun off into video games, comics, a CGI animated series and an actually extremely cool toy line.
Baby Bob
AOL-killer FreeInternet.com stunned the world when it invented the idea of talking babies in 2000. The character was so popular, it got two seasons on CBS. Bob later made a triumphant return to the advertising world as a spokefreak for Quiznos.
Doug
Before he was crushing on Mayonnaise, Doug was slurping on grapefruit. His first appearance was in a 1988 ad for Florida Grapefruit Juice, followed by a promo animation for the USA network, which also featured the first appearance of Porkchop.
The California Raisins
A San Francisco ad writer was completely sapped of enthusiasm for dried fruit when he blurted out, “We have tried everything but dancing raisins singing ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine.’” They tried exactly that in 1986, and the (problematic) ad was so popular, it spawned a cover album, a claymation Christmas short and two prime-time specials.
Heffer
Rocko’s Modern Life has its roots in a brief, bizarre MTV ad. Rocko’s best friend, Heffer Wolfe, was designed by cartoonist Joe Murray and first saw the light of day with the MTV logo branded on his ass. When Murray was later conceptualizing Rocko’s Modern Life, he teamed Heffer up with another character he’d been sketching in the same notebook, a wallaby who was named Travis at the time.
Uncle Drew
A 2012 Pepsi Max ad featuring Kyrie Irving in old man-face later became 2018’s Uncle Drew, a star- and comedian-studded film that made $47 million on an $18 million budget, so, good on ‘em.
Ernest P. Worrell
Before he ever went to camp or saved Christmas, Ernest P. Worrell was a fictional ad man created by Jim Varney for a Nashville ad agency, hawking Coca-Cola, Chex and various local products and services.
Ronald McDonald
“Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger-Happy Clown” was a local ad for a Washington, DC McDonald’s franchise in 1963, designed as a deliberate rip-off of Bozo the Clown. In 1965, the company unveiled the character nationwide at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. His instant success selling grease to children led to myriad TV shows, video games and children’s books.
GEICO Cavemen
If there’s one thing America is culturally prepared and willing to do, it’s take a hard look at racism. When GEICO made an ad series about cavemen reacting to the phrase “so easy, a caveman could do it” as if they’d heard a racial slur, America ate it up. The TV show spin-off was canceled after 13 episodes, but it did give a platform to early-career Nick Kroll.
Domo
Americans know Domo as the star of a stop-motion Nicktoons series, but he was originally the mascot of Japan’s public broadcasting corporation, NHK.
Max Headroom
Max Headroom was conceived as an MTV-esque bumper for the U.K.’s Channel 4. The character was intentionally, cynically conservative, intending to appeal ironically to counterculture youth: “a middle-class white male in a suit, talking to them in a really boring way about music videos.” Naturally, the besuited white males at Channel 4 loved the idea so much, they skipped the bumper idea entirely and fast-tracked it for a movie and a TV series.
Space Jam
Bugs Bunny appeared in a couple of commercials for Air Jordan, styling himself as “Hare Jordan.” They were so popular, Warner Bros. decided to get the entire gang involved and make an $80 million gamble.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Was an Ad for a Department Store
Chicago’s Montgomery Ward department stores had a holiday tradition of buying up a bunch of coloring books to give away to customers. In 1934, they decided to save some money by having an in-house copywriter come up with an “original” story (a deliberate rip-off of The Ugly Duckling). The writer’s boss almost kiboshed the red nose, because he thought it had too strong an association with drunkards.
Coke Turned Their ‘Hey Kid, Catch!’ Commercial Into a Movie
In 1979, Coke unleashed that iconic commercial where the Steelers’ Mean Joe Greene throws his dirty laundry onto a minor. It was so popular, they produced an entire made-for-TV-movie where Mean Joe and his teammates adopt the kid and teach him about life.
Please please please give us a Pepsi cinematic universe based around Kendall Jenner and those cops.
