Thursday, November 9, 2017

Toonfomercial: Remember Charlie the Tuna? (1961)

StarKist tuna introduced Charlie the Tuna to television audiences in 1961. While folks were trying to figure out why Charlie wanted to willingly sacrifice himself to be inside a can of StarKist, the ad campaign soldiered on for more than 20 years before the gimmick was retired in the 80's.

Herschel Bernardi (ex-Peter Gunn) began his voice acting career with these ads, and would subsequently be hired by Terrytoons (The Mighty Heroes). There was a period in the 70's & 80's where Charlie would be joined by a smaller fish (Henry Corden), but the campaign stayed the same. In 1999, even though he wasn't appearing in ads anymore, Charlie was brought back as a corporate mascot, a gig he still has today.

Most of the ads in the 60's & 70's were produced by DePatie-Freleng, but I am not sure if Marvel assumed the contract when they purchased DFE in 1981.

Right now, let's take a look at a spot from 1980. Danny Dark (Super Friends) is the announcer.



Today, Charlie appears on all the StarKist packages, but not on TV.

3 comments:

phairhead said...

Good ol'Herschel Bernardi! My parents saw him perfom as Tevye at the Starlight Theatre in the early 70s. He was such a talented man :D

hobbyfan said...

He only had one leading role, and that was the sitcom, "Arnie", in the early 70's. I didn't find out until much, much later about his work on "Peter Gunn".

MichaelSar12 said...

Actually, Charlie still shows up on TV every so often nowadays. I believe that he's currently voiced by either Tex Brashear or Jeff Bergman.