Sequels
A series of "Today's Mikey" ads, with Gilchrist reprising the character as a college student, aired in the mid-1980s.
In 1996 Quaker Oats, via longtime Snapple ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, New York, commissioned director Rick Schulze of Industrial Light & Magic Commercial Productions to digitally composite a bottle of Snapple, then a subsidiary of Quaker Oats, into the original Life ad. This time, however, in an ironic twist, Mikey doesn't like the product.
Life's ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding in Chicago resuscitated the Mikey character for two campaigns in the late 1990s. In 1997, Quaker Oats initiated a nationwide search for the "next Mikey", settling on 4-year-old Marli Hughes out of more than 35,000 applicants. She also appeared in a TV commercial, "Better Life" directed by Howard Rose, where she is seen telling her classmates how she won the contest and travelled to New York to do some TV shows. She adds that as the new Mikey she gets to eat as much Life cereal as she wants. In 1999, Quaker Oats remade the commercial word for word with an all-adult cast acting like kids. Mikey is portrayed by New York-based actor Jimmy Starace.
Read more about this topic: Little Mikey