Funny Face Drinks Commercial From Pillsbury – Footnotes
Ho, boy. We’ve gone over a lot of commercials on this site, but this one might take the cake. And I don’t mean that in a good way. I like to think commercials back in the day just didn’t understand racial sensitivities, but…who knows? Let’s awkwardly dive into this Pillsbury Funny Face Drinks commercial.
Funny Face Drinks Commercial: “These Drinks Are Fun”
The only non-fruit lines in the Funny Face Drinks commercial are kids sing-saying, “Funny Face is fun to drink!” The drinks are “pre-sweetened,” and even Goofy Grape (our narrator) warns not to add any sugar. “I’m already sweet when you buy me,” he coos with an odd sense of pride.
Too bad the sweetener was calcium cyclamate, which was banned in the United States starting in 1970. Saccharin replaced the cyclamate, which proved wildly unpopular. Then the Funny Face Drinks ended up being sold with zero sweeteners.
One of the kids in the ad is Family Affair actor Johnny Whitaker. I guess that’s kind of cool.
Those Fruit Names, Though
Let’s just quickly run through the names of these characters:
- Rootin’-Tootin’ Raspberry (okay)
- Freckle Face Strawberry (fine)
- Loud-Mouth Lime (we all know a loud mouth)
- Goofy Grape (reminds me of Gilbert Grape)
- Chinese Cherry (hmm…I don’t know about that one)
- Injun Orange (I’m sorry…what?!)
While the other characters get at least some kind of greeting, Injun Orange says “HOW” in a deep voice, and Chinese Cherry says, “gong noise.” And by that, I mean it literally just makes a gong noise.
What are you thinking here, Pillsbury?! You can easily have a Funny Face Drinks commercial without…well, two of these characters. Why not Chaotic Cherry and Outrageous Orange? Boom. There. I just solved your creative dilemma. Give me a raise.
Or maybe I solved nothing. Pillsbury stopped selling Funny Face Drinks in 1980. Somewhere, the Kool-Aid Man is saying, “OH YEAHHHH!”
