Kool-Aid Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

The Monkees, Bugs Bunny and Kool-Aid

Talk about putting two things together that you wouldn’t expect — The Monkees and Bugs Bunny selling Kool-Aid!

But the first thing I noticed was that there are only three Monkees here. Peter Tork had already left the group in December 1968, leaving Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Michael Nesmith to carry on as a trio. By this point their NBC television series was over too, but that wasn’t the end of The Monkees on television.

In the fall of 1969, CBS brought the show back as Saturday morning reruns, and General Foods’ Kool-Aid was a sponsor. That explains a lot about why these commercials exist. The Monkees were suddenly being introduced to kids all over again, and Kool-Aid had three very recognizable spokesmen ready to go.

Bugs Bunny wasn’t new to Kool-Aid either. I found that the “Make Friends with Kool-Aid” campaign was already using Bugs several years earlier, so pairing him with The Monkees was really a combination of two existing advertising ideas.

There’s another interesting connection from this period. Their 1969 album The Monkees Present was also tied into a Kool-Aid promotion. The group was well past peak Monkeemania by then, Peter was gone and Michael Nesmith would soon leave too.

And for anyone wondering where the Kool-Aid Man is — he wasn’t the television star yet! That familiar walking pitcher didn’t make his big TV debut until 1975.

Looking back, this commercial is almost a snapshot of The Monkees right near the end of their original run.

Do you remember this commercial, or do you remember The Monkees more from their Saturday morning reruns?

Who remembers when Bugs Bunny was actually on the Kool-Aid package?

This commercial takes us back to around 1965, when Bugs and Elmer Fudd weren’t just Saturday morning entertainment — they were helping General Foods sell the relatively new Pre-Sweetened Kool-Aid

What I love is that they didn’t just drop the characters into a generic ad. Elmer is still chasing that “wascally wabbit,” Bugs is still one step ahead, and somehow the whole thing turns into a Kool-Aid commercial

Legendary animator Tex Avery, who helped shape Bugs Bunny’s personality years earlier, returned to direct some of these commercials. Mel Blanc was still Bugs, but Elmer was voiced here by Hal Smith, who many of us remember better as Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show

Pre-Sweetened Kool-Aid itself was fairly new, introduced in 1964 so you no longer had to add your own sugar. Bugs became so closely tied to the product that his picture appeared right on the packages

And then this commercial gives us another nearly forgotten memory — Kool-Pops. The frozen treats had been around since at least 1960, giving General Foods another way to turn Kool-Aid into something kids could beg Mom to buy

It’s funny how one short commercial can bring back so much at once — Bugs and Elmer, the old Kool-Aid packets, Kool-Pops, and the days when cartoon characters regularly helped decide what ended up in the grocery cart

Do you remember Bugs Bunny on the Kool-Aid packages — and does anyone remember Kool-Pops?

Hey, Kool-Aid!

Two thirsty kids call for Kool-Aid, and suddenly a giant smiling pitcher comes charging through the park barrier to save the day. This mid-1970s commercial used the wonderfully ridiculous formula that made Kool-Aid Man one of advertising’s most unforgettable characters.

Kool-Aid’s story began in 1927 when Edwin Perkins turned his bottled drink concentrate, Fruit Smack, into an easier-to-ship powder called Kool-Ade. The spelling was later changed to Kool-Aid.

The smiling pitcher mascot was created in 1954 by advertising art director Marvin Potts, who was reportedly inspired by his son drawing faces on a frosted window. In 1974, Grey Advertising’s Alan Kupchick and Harold Karp gave the pitcher arms, legs and a larger-than-life personality, creating the Kool-Aid Man seen crashing through walls, fences and nearly anything else in his way. The exact person who first suggested the crash-through entrance is not firmly documented, but the famous campaign came from Grey Advertising.

The exact songwriter for this particular commercial is not clearly credited. However, commercial jingle writer and producer Richard Berg provided Kool-Aid Man’s original voice, including that unforgettable “Oh, yeah!”

Did you ever shout “Hey, Kool-Aid!” and secretly hope he would come crashing through your fence?

Fizzies-What Was Your Favorite Flavor?

Fizzies came in seven flavors- orange, cherry, grape, lemon-lime, strawberry, and root beer. Each package contained eight tablets for just eighteen cents. The tablets were made by the Emerson Drug Company, the same company that made Bromo-Seltzer in 1957. In 1962 Warner-Lambert bought the company and made Fizzies available internationally.

You simply dropped a tablet into water and watched the water come to life with bubbles as it turned the water to the color of the flavor. My memory was that it gave a diluted flavor to the water. Adding additional tablets did little more to add flavor. Was my memory the same as yours?

By 1968 Fizzies had double the sales of Kool-Aid. Fizzies were sweetened by either cyclamates or saccharin which were both banned by the Food and Drug Administration. They reissued the tablets with instructions to add sugar, but by then the attraction to Fizzies fizzled out.

Fizzies made a come back in the 1990’s sweetened with NutriSweet but it was short lived when the company went out of business. There was also another short-lived attempt to revive the product in the early 2000’s but only lasted until 2016. Probably the closest on the market today would be the orange flavored Airborne Immune Support Supplement.