As I despaired before, I’m often asked to appraise dolls, and of course they DO NOT agree with me. This resulted from a scary doll experience at five years of age. But HG sent me a rather interesting doll, a little Pillsbury Doughboy, and wonders what it’s worth. The doll’s worth comes with ties to our country’s creation of advertising icons, back in the 1960’s.
The toy’s original name is Jonathan Pillsbury, aka ‘Fresh,’ or aka ‘Poppin’- and he goes by the phrase “say hello to Poppin Fresh!” Then of course he gets poked in the belly and emits that strange haunting laugh. Poppin Fresh has a birthday – November 7, 1965…
Pillsbury Doughboy Beginnings
Back in the 1960’s Rudy Perz, head of Leo Burnett Chicago (a great ad agency) accepted the challenge to find a lovable icon for Pillsbury. Rudy began to ponder, ‘WHAT shall I create?’ He sat in his kitchen, with his young daughter, in the suburbs of Chicago, holding one of those cylindrical tubes of Pillsbury dough. His idea turned out remarkable for its sweetness and simplicity, and the rest is history. He birthed an enduring American advertising icon, that little fat blue eyed marshmallow of a creature, the Pillsbury Doughboy.
From 1965 to 2005 Pillsbury used this Doughboy in all their ads. This little icon became so BIG that ‘Poppin Fresh’ (his name!!) had dinner in other commercials with other icons: the Jolly Green Giant, the Morton Salt Girl, the Vlasic Stork, and Count Cholula. in over 600 commercials, in fact, which ran hundreds of times. Previous to that, American Kids wrote fan mail to him in the 1960s. “Poppin Fresh” received at least 200 letters a day. His image, white and spectral, blown up HUGE, floated for years over the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Famous magazines, when they didn’t see “Poppin Fresh” float over that parade later than the date of 2014, said he died of a yeast infection.
Geniuses Behind the Icon
George Pul “made” him in stop motion clay animation in the 1960s. Milt Schaffer designed his image, and Paul Prees gave him voice. GEICO picked up the lovable image for their commercials in 2009-2017, after the Doughboy retired from Pillsbury.
Doughboy became so successful that in the 1970s the Pillsbury’s ad agency unveiled a toy family around the little guy. The names are hilarious. Poppie Fresh was his wife, or girlfriend, or sister…depending on if you believe the Doughboy “married.” Then of course, they gave him lovable grandparents, named Grandpopper and Grandmommer. If the marriage, in the public’s mind, gained ‘legs,’ two babies resulted somehow, Baby Popper and Bun-Bun. If Poppin Fresh had a wife and kids, he must, by rights, in the 1970s, have had a family dog and a cat. So they added the dog Flapjack and the cat Biscuit.
Every family has in irritating uncle, so of course, enter stage right, the Poppin Fresh family, Uncle Rolle. I wonder if he told embarrassing stories around the Thanksgiving dinner table like my Uncle George. It always amazes me that grown men in major ad agencies think of these gimmicks so close to real life, so relational.
Yes, all these toy figures have a fan base today, and all have value, but I suggest HG hangs onto his Pillsbury Doughboy, because since his “creation” in 1965, he has grown more and more iconic. The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago premiered an exhibit: “A Salute to Advertising’s Great Icons,” which featured Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, Morris the Cat, Mr. Clean, and Ronald McDonald. And of course, the headliner, the Pillsbury Doughboy was featured among the greats, as well as his creator, Rudy Perz, who died a month before the exhibit.
What a company to be among! I find the value of the little rubber doll at $50.