Original Commercial
The iconic commercial centers on three brothers eating breakfast. Lying before them sits a heaping bowl of Life breakfast cereal. Two of the brothers question each other about the cereal, prodding each other to try it. Noting that it is supposed to be healthy, neither wants to try it ("I'm not gonna try it—you try it!"), so they get their brother Mikey to try it ("Let's get Mikey"), noting, "he hates everything." Mikey briefly stares at the bowl. After moments of contemplation, Mikey begins to vigorously consume the cereal before him, resulting in his brothers excitedly exclaiming, "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!" Mikey's brothers in the commercial are Gilchrist's actual brothers, named Michael (the one on the left in the spot) and Tommy.
The advertisement was very popular, and won a Clio Award in 1974. It was also often referenced in retrospectives of classic television advertisements: in 1999, TV Guide ranked it as the #10 commercial of all time. Despite the commercial's age, a 1999 survey noted that 70% of adults could identify the spot based on just a "brief generic description."
Read more about this topic: Little Mikey
Famous quotes containing the words original and/or commercial:
“We Americans are supposed to be overly concerned about the child. But actually the intelligent care of children in our society is balanced by a crass indifference to the helplessness of infancy and youth. Cruelty to children has become more widespread but less noticed in the general unrest, the constant migration, the family disintegration, and the other manifestations of a civilization that has been torn away from its original moorings.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“There is every reason to rejoice with those self-styled prophets of commercial disaster, those harbingers of gloom,
Over the imminent lateness of the denouement that, advancing slowly, never arrives,
At the same time keeping the door open to a tongue-in-cheek attitude on the part of the perpetrators....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)