Mr. Whipple

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mr. George Whipple is a fictional supermarket manager featured in television commercials and print advertisements that ran in the United States and Canada from 1964 to 1985 for Charmin toilet paper. In unvarying repetition, Whipple scolds customers (who were mostly women in those days) who "squeeze the Charmin," while hypocritically entertaining such actions himself when he thinks no one will notice.

The very first commercial set the tone of the advertising campaign. Mr. Whipple is seen looking off-camera at a female customer, commenting that first she's squeezing the grapefruits, then she's squeezing the melons, and then (in a classic comic "triple") when she gets to the Charmin, that's the last straw, and he walks over to her and utters his famous plea "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!" for the first time.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a competitor named Hoffmeyer came along, who encouraged his customers to squeeze the Charmin, and scolded Whipple on his hypocrisy. By the late 1980s, Mr. Whipple was encouraging customers who weren't buying Charmin to squeeze it. One commercial featured him using a fishing rod to place the product in a skeptic's shopping cart.

"Mr. Whipple" was played by actor Dick Wilson, a character actor who also played a recurring role on the television series Bewitched. Between 1964 and 1985, Wilson appeared as Whipple in more than 500 commercials for Charmin.^[1] Playing this role allowed Wilson the luxury of working only 12 days per year, while earning an annual salary of $300,000.^[2] In 1999, after a 14-year hiatus, Mr. Whipple returned to Charmin with various commercials involving why he could not retire (with the answer being that he had to inform the public about Charmin). A later series of commercials featured him with the new slogan, "Is Mr. Whipple watching?". In a subsequent advertising campaign in 2000, the Whipple character was eventually replaced with the Charmin Bears, a family of cartoon bears whose parents extol the virtues of Charmin to their bear-cub children.

Dick Wilson died of natural causes on November 19, 2007, at the age of 91, in California.^[3]^[4]

On November 28, 2007, a new commercial-tribute debuted on television, featuring old clips and paying tribute to Dick Wilson and Mr. Whipple. The tribute indicated that the deceased actor will be "In Our Hearts Forever".

[edit] Pop culture

According to a 1970s survey, "Mr. Whipple" topped then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter as the most recognizable face in North America. According to Charmin makers Proctor & Gamble, a 1978 survey found that "Mr. Whipple" was the third best-known American, behind recently-ousted President Richard Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham.

In 1985, the title track of "Weird Al" Yankovic's Dare to Be Stupid contains the lyric, "you better squeeze all the Charmin you can when Mr. Whipple's not around." Bob Rivers and Twisted Radio's "Deck the Halls"/Michael Jackson parody "Grahbe Yabalz" contains the line "Squeeze your buns like Mr. Whipple."

In the late 1980s or 1990s, A&W had commercials featuring known television icons. The ads feature a filming of the commercial with the actors messing up the shots with an irate director through voice-over. In one commercial, the director instructs the actor to pick up a can of root beer or cream soda in close-up range; each shot is ruined when the actor kept squeezing the can and making a mess. When the director asks the actor why he keeps squeezing the can, the camera pulls up and reveals Dick Wilson in response, "Force of habit, I guess."

The fictional character is not to be confused with the Nobel Prize-winning physician, George Hoyt Whipple.

Mr. Whipple's name was borrowed from George Carroll Whipple, Jr. a public relations executive at Beton and Boles, the advertising agency that created the ad. The real Mr. Whipple was paid one dollar for use of his name for a commercial that was to run for six months on the west coast. It became the longest running ad campaign in the history of television.