Little Mikey was a character of a young boy played by John Gilchrist in an American television commercial created by art director Bob Gage (who also directed the commercial)[1] and copywriter Edie Stevenson (died December 13, 2011, aged 81) of the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency for Quaker Oats to promote their breakfast cereal, Life.[2]
First airing in 1972, the popular commercial would be in regular rotation for more than twelve years, ending up as one of the longest continuously running commercial campaigns ever aired.[3][4]
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The iconic commercial centers on three brothers eating breakfast. There 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.[2] It was also often referenced in retrospectives of classic television advertisements: in 1999, TV Guide ranked it as the #10 commercial of all time.[5] Despite the commercial's age, a 1999 survey noted that 70% of adults could identify the spot based on just a "brief generic description."[6]
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.[7]
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.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10][11]
A few years after the commercial appeared, a false urban legend spread that the actor who had played Little Mikey had died after eating an unexpectedly lethal combination of Pop Rocks (a type of carbonated hard candy) and soda, causing his stomach to inflate with carbon dioxide. However, as Pop Rocks contain less carbon dioxide than half a can of soda, the legend is false.[12]
Introduced in 1975, Pop Rocks fizz and pop when dissolved in the mouth. The popping sensation is caused by highly compressed carbon dioxide bubbles in the candy. The belief in the spread of the rumor is that the carbonation in the candy, when mixed inside the human stomach with a carbonated beverage, would create a lethal reaction where carbon dioxide would be released at such a rapid rate that the stomach would explode, presumably killing the person who ate the candy and drank the soda.[12]
As with most urban legends, there are variations of the myth. Other versions involve Fizzies candy instead of Pop Rocks, or other child actors (Mason Reese[13] for instance) who have been noted as the victim. It is entirely unknown why Little Mikey was the target of the myth,[12] though some believe that it is because the actor who played Mikey did not appear in any commercials after the legend began to spread.[3][12]
The myth has been thoroughly debunked in multiple media, including Snopes[12] and the first episode of the television series MythBusters:[14] the actor who played Mikey is still alive today, and there simply is not enough gas produced in the combination of the candy and soda to cause an explosion.[14]
During the height of the rumors of the possible lethality of such a combination, General Foods, the manufacturer of Pop Rocks, spent thousands of dollars on print advertisements trying to debunk the rumor.[12] General Foods ceased marketing Pop Rocks in 1983, and this fact has been used as supposed proof that the rumor is true.[12] However, further disproving the myth, the product was not removed from stores at all, but was sold to Kraft Foods in 1985, and is now distributed by a company called Pop Rocks, Inc.[15]
Thomas Riggs, ed (1999). "MIKEY Campaign". Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns. Detroit [etc.]: Gale. ISBN 078763042X. http://www.jiffynotes.com/a_study_guides/book_notes_add/emmc_0001_0001_0/emmc_0001_0001_0_00240.html#MIKEY_Campaign.