This may be one of those commercials where one sentence became much more famous than the product being advertised.
Euell Gibbons looks into the camera and asks:
“Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.”
And if you were watching television in the early ’70s, apparently there was no escaping what happened next!
I found contemporary FTC records for this exact Grape-Nuts commercial dating it to 1972, even though it’s often identified today as a 1974 spot. Gibbons wasn’t some eccentric actor they hired either. He was a respected author and wild-food expert whose Stalking the Wild Asparagus had been around since 1962.
But that pine-tree line turned him into a pop-culture phenomenon.
John Byner spoofed him on The Carol Burnett Show, Johnny Carson made tree-eating jokes, and Match Game used Euell Gibbons repeatedly as material. One question joked that he had eaten the television camera! Even The Electric Company created “Early Gibbons,” who ate stumps, sticks and stones.
Gibbons even got into the act himself. When Sonny and Cher handed him what appeared to be a wooden plaque, he took a bite out of it. It was actually made to be edible.
And all those jokes certainly didn’t hurt Grape-Nuts. By the end of 1973, the advertising trade press reported that his commercials had increased sales by about 30 percent.
There was one unexpected ending. In 1975, the FTC stopped commercials showing wild plants as edible because regulators worried children might imitate Gibbons and eat something dangerous.
More than 50 years later, say Euell Gibbons to someone who remembers the ’70s and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll answer with something about eating a pine tree.
Do you remember the original commercial — or do you remember all the jokes about Euell Gibbons even more?
