"orville redenbacher" news and stories

The hell?

Seattle is thinking about banning microwave popcorn. The Justice Center has had to be evacuated eight times in the past three years because of burnt popcorn in the microwave making the smoke alarms go off. That means over 400 employees have to be evacuated each time. It is also happening in the city's Municipal Tower.

This isn't a joke: read the memo. If the problem continues, they're going to ban it in downtown buildings.

Last year, Sun-Maid's iconic mascot, the Sun-Maid maid, got a makeover so the brand would have a new look. Her overall appearance remained very similar, but she was digitized. The newly three dimensional character talks, does yoga and promotes California raisins, but even though she was one of the first ad icons to undergo this overhaul, she isn't the only one. Orville Redenbacher has recently been digitized so that he can continue to convincingly promote his famous popcorn brand over ten years after his death. The first ad to use digital Orville will air during the Golden Gloves and will depict "Redenbacher [pitching] popcorn while jiving to his MP3 player." A preview clip can be seen here.

With the amount of technology that went into the ad, it is the company's most expensive ever, but as we have seen from the movie industry, an expensive venture doesn't always yield blockbuster results. Opinions vary on whether this was a good idea or a bad one. Some, including Redenbacher's grandson, see it as a way to remember the man and even feel that he would have loved the idea himself. Others think that there is "a certain creepiness" to the revival of a long-dead man.

Click past the jump for a vintage Orville Redenbacher commercial.

Source

AdJab just posted a great list of their top eight male mascots in the advertising world, and poking around over there, I noticed that all of them, with the exception of Mr. Clean, are from food products. Guess that goes to show how important branding, marketing, and advertising are to consumer-packaged foods.

AdJab picks Orville Redenbacher, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird (cuckoo for CoCo Puffs!), Snap, Crackle and Pop! (they come as a package deal), Charlie the Starkist Tuna, Sugar Bear, Hamburger Helper Hand (which always freaked me out because he doesn't have five fingers), and Colonel Sanders.

Who are the food mascot "men" you remember?