Coffee Fuelled Muppets
Did you know that the mastermind creator behind The Muppets, Jim Henson also created coffee commercials?
Well, let me tell you the tale, back in 1957 Mr Henson was approached by the local Washington DC coffee company Wilkins Coffee to make a ten second advert with the beloved Muppets.
That’s not very long, so it had to be grab the viewer’s attention efficiently and be memorable and Muppets fit the bill perfectly.
Jim also went against the traditional grain with the advert. The accepted method at the time was to try the hard sell with viewers. Instead of this, he opted for humour and of course, the Muppet specific style of slapstick violence that would have been unthinkable for human actors.
The two characters, Wilkins who loved coffee and Wontkins who hated it, in the first clip Wilkins blows Wontkins up with a cannon for saying he’d never even tried coffee! Wilkins then turns the cannon directly on the viewers and asked them what they think of Wilkins coffee.
It was an instant ‘hit’ with the audience and Henderson was then asked to do 179 other clips for Wilkins coffee.
Poor Wontkins got blown up, bashed with a club and stabbed amongst other hilarious demises.
The characters were so well loved that they were even made into vinyl puppets in 1958 available through the post for $1.00 and a coffee can label.
The series was so successful that Henson was commissioned to re-shoot and adapt his own brand of coffee fuelled Muppet advertising for coffee companies across America, more than 300 in total.
The same set up was used to pitch adverts for Kraml Milk in Chicago and Red Diamond Coffee, one of America’s oldest coffee brands.
Check out some of the classic ads here
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wilkins+coffee+muppets&search=Search
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