Poppin' Fresh, more widely known as the Pillsbury Doughboy is the mascot for the Pillsbury Company since 1965. Hence the name, he is a boy made of dough who normally helps people with their baking. Most of his ads end with the live-action stars of the commercial poking him in the stomach, causing him to giggle. He was voiced by Paul Frees until 1986 and Jeff Bergman took over the role until 2014, succeeded by JoBe Cerny.
History[]
The Pillsbury Doughboy was created by Rudolph 'Rudy' Perz, a copywriter for Leo Burnett, a longtime advertising agency for Pillsbury. His creation came when one day on March 18th, 1965, Perz was sitting in his kitchen, exhausted while trying to come up with an idea for an advertising campaign for Pillsbury's refrigerated products. It was when his copywriter, Carol H. Williams imagined a dough boy popping out of one of the dough cans that the potential for the doughboy was realized and his first commercial was aired on November 7, 1965. For coming up with the idea, Carol H. Williams was inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame in 2017.
Initially, Poppin' Fresh was conceived to be 2D animated until Perz saw a stop-motion technique in the opening credits for The Dinah Shore Show and changed his mind. Cascade Pictures was hired to create the first Doughboy puppet at the cost of $16,000. Paul Frees was chosen as the Doughboy's first voice actor and would continue to voice him for twenty-one years until he died in 1986. Jeff Bergman took over the role until 2014 and JoBe Cerny is now the current voice actor. He has also been briefly voiced by Peter New, Fred Young, and Jeremy Geller. In the UK he was voiced by Peter Hawkins in two 1976 adverts, and animated by David Allen. In the early 90s, he reappeared in UK advertisements but disappeared once again in the early 2000s as the Pillsbury brand started to fade away.
The stop-motion animation in the main Doughboy commercials was first replaced with CGI in 1992 in a commercial where the Doughboy dances the Mambo dance. Older stop-motion commercials would continue to be rerun until the mid-90s.
Since his conception, Poppin' Fresh has appeared in more than 600 commercials for Pillsbury, advertising more than fifty of its products. He has also appeared in numerous commercials for other brands such as GEICO, Mastercard, Got Milk? and Sprint Phone Company.
Merchandise[]
Poppin' Fresh has received countless merchandise over the years, one of the most well known is a 1970s collection of a Pillsbury Doughboy family, who were sold individually and in the form of various playsets. Family members included Poppin' Fresh, Poppie Fresh (it is debated whether she is Poppin Fresh's wife or sister), Granpopper and Granmommer, Popper (boy), Bun-Bun (baby girl), and Flapjack and Biscuit (dog and cat). Another member called Uncle Rollie was later added to the family but in the form of a PVC finger-puppet that came with a plastic car.
Trivia[]
- Perz was worried that the original design idea for the Pillsbury Doughboy might look too much like Casper the Friendly Ghost but when he hired designer, Milt Schaffer, his design helped resolve that.
- Paul Winchell, the original voice of Tigger, Dick Dastardly, Gargamel, and the Scrubbing Bubbles mascots auditioned for the doughboy but lost out
- Poppin' Fresh appears in the 1987 stop-motion animated film The Puppetoon Movie.
- In one 1960s commercial, the doughboy makes chocolate chip cookies with 6-year-old Maureen McCormick who would later go on to play Marcia Brady in the family sitcom The Brady Bunch.
- A spec-ad for Got Milk? featured the Pillsbury Doughboy being burned alive in an oven.
- Fellow ad mascot, Jus-Rol Janet was stated to be a cousin of the Doughboy on the General Mills Tumblr. Jus-Rol is owned by General Mills who own Pillsbury.