Commercial Characters: Origins

[tv star collector]

There really was a Chef Boyardee. His real name was Hector Boiardi,
a hard-working Italian immigrant who parlayed his culinary skills into a million-
dollar industry. He opened a restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929 and it
became an instant success. In 1936, he and his brothers formed a company
to market Italian specialties. They named it phonetically "Chef Boy-ar-dee"
so it would be easy for customers to pronounce. They sold the firm to American Home Products in 1946 for $6 million. Boiardi remained on the board
as a consultant until his death in 1985 at the age of 87.

Mr. Peanut also found a new advertising career in commercials, becoming TV's smallest identifiable character. He came into being in 1916, when the Planters Nut & Chocolate Company of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,
held a contest to come up with a suitable trademark to promote its salted
Virginia peanuts. The winning entry was submitted by a 14-year-old boy who
drew an anthropomorphic peanut in a top hat.

Tony the Tiger made his debut in 1955. As originally designed by Martin
Provensen, an illustrator of children's books, Tony looked quite different in his
early days: he was thinner, flatter, and had a head shaped like a football.
Baritone singer Thurl Ravenscroft was the voice of Tony for many, many years
(and is also heard singing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in the TV special
based on the book by Dr. Seuss).

Snap! Crackle! and Pop! were designed by another illustrator of children's books, Vernon Grant.

In 1963, the S.S. Guppy sailed into television, beginning a series of
adventures of Cap'n Crunch. The cartoons, produced by Jay Ward (of
Bullwinkle fame, were long on visual humor and quite entertaining. They
featured the vocal talents of Daws Butler, June Foray and (as the narrator)
William Conrad.

Ronald McDonald first appeared for local Washington, D.C., McDonald's
franchises in 1965. The first Ronald did not speak because the clown was
played by a man with a thick Russian accent. The second Ronald was Washington weatherman Willard Scott, who later became The Today
Show's meteorologist. But it wasn't until the agency hired actor King
Moody (later KAOS agent Shtarker on Get Smart) in 1970 that the
definitive, national Ronald came into being.

[Sources: an unidentified magazine (Globe, I think) clipping about Chef Boyardee; the rest are from Jim Hall's out-of-print book Mighty Minutes: An Illustrated History of Television's Best Commercials (1984)]

[Hawkee]

Did Uncle Ben of Uncle Ben's Rice really exist? Because I think they use an model that looks like Uncle Ben in the boxes of rice. Also is there really a Mama Celeste who really created Celeste Pizza?
Bestie