The Pillsbury Doughboy makes his first TV appearance - November 7th, 1965

On this day in 1965, the Pillsbury Doughboy appeared in his first TV commercial. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those interested in the big and small moments
of history. I'm Gay Bluesier, and today we're talking about
one of advertising's longest running mascots, a squishy little baker
with a bold sense of fashion and a heart of dough.

(00:32):
The day was November seventh, nineteen sixty five, the Pillsbury
dough Boy appeared in his first TV commercial. The ad
was called Dancing Fingers, and it featured the dough Boy,
brought to life through stop motion, dancing on a kitchen

(00:54):
counter with the hand of a real life actress. The
debut spot established many of the character defining traits, including
his friendly appearance, cheerful personality, and eagerness to help out
in the kitchen. It also introduced a gag that since
become the dough Boy's signature, a human hand poking him
in his little pot belly and causing him to giggle.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
If fictional people made out of doe had birthdays, the
Pillsbury dough Boys would be March eighteenth, nineteen sixty five.
That's the day when a copywriter named Rudy purs first
came up with the idea for the character. He was
working for the Leo Burnett ad agency in Chicago and
had been tasked with coming up with a new brand

(01:39):
mascot for the Pillsbury account. One day, he was testing
out some Pillsbury refrigerated dough in his kitchen when he
started imagining a miniature person made of Doe popping out
of the tube. Pers pitched the idea to his colleagues
and they started brainstorming names for the character. One early
contender was Jonathan Pillsbury, but thankfully the team eventually settled

(02:02):
on something less generic. No, not the Pillsbury dough Boy.
That's more like the character's job title. His official name
is actually Popin' Fresh, a reference to the popping noise
you hear when the can is opened and to the
freshness of the product. The name is rarely mentioned in
Pillsbury ads today, but he still goes by it in

(02:23):
his private life. Purrs and his team brought in Disney
artist and animator Milt Schaeffer to create concept art for
the new character. The result was a series of cartoon
illustrations depicting a stout little dough boy with blue eyes
wearing nothing but a white chef hat and a neckerchief.
The character was instantly endearing, but pers worried that the

(02:45):
final animation would look too much like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
To get around the problem, Schaeffer took the drawings of
a flat two d dough boy and redesigned him as
a three dimensional clay figure. The change in media made
clear that the character wasn't a ghost, and it also
allowed him to stand out from the many other cartoon
mascots of the era, most of which were hand drawn cartoons.

(03:09):
Once the dough Boy's design was finalized, the agency partnered
with Cascade Studios in Los Angeles to bring him to
life through stop motion animation. The popin Fresh scene in
today's ads is computer generated, but until nineteen ninety two,
the character was a completely practical effect. As Perrs later explained, quote,

(03:30):
we made two dough boys. One was a rubber dough
boy with an armature inside, and you could move his
arms a little bit at a time, and the other
was a hard dough boy, and you shifted the head
or you shifted the body. The hard model included five
bodies and fifteen heads, all of which could be swapped
around to give the character different expressions and gestures. Those

(03:52):
initial models cost sixteen thousand dollars to develop and required
a good deal of effort to use. In fact, the
model had to be posed and photographed twenty four times
to produce just one second of the commercial. Dozens of
actors auditioned to become the voice of the Pillsbury dough Boy,
but the job ultimately went to Paul Freeze. The comedic

(04:14):
actor was a household name thanks to his work in
Some Like It Hot as well as a host of
live action films for Disney, but he had also lent
his voice to several cartoons, such as Ludwig von Drake
and Boris Badnoff in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. With
all the pieces in place, Popin' Fresh was finally ready
to make his TV debut. He introduced himself by name

(04:38):
in a commercial that first aired on November seventh, nineteen
sixty five. Take a listene, who are you?

Speaker 3 (04:46):
I'm Popin' Fresh, the Pillsbury dough Boy. May I have
this dance? A house smells so nice when you bake
in the oven. Nothing says loven like something from the
oven And pills Barry says it best.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
The friendly, helpful dough Boy charmed viewers from the start,
and the Pillsbury company was quick to commission more print
ads and commercials that featured him. That investment paid off too.
Within just three years of the character's launch, the Pillsbury
dough Boy had an eighty seven percent brand recognition among
American consumers. He became so popular that at one point

(05:26):
he was receiving two hundred fan letters a week, in
addition to about fifteen hundred requests for autographed photos. Pillsbury
took note of the character's growing fan base, and by
the end of the decade, it began rolling out a
line of dough Boy branded merchandise, including plush toys, baking utensils,
and flower jars. Then, in nineteen seventy two, the company

(05:49):
introduced a seven inch vinyl doll of the character that
quickly became one of the top selling toys in the country.
The following year, a copy supervisor at LEO Burnette named
Carol H. Williams was assigned the job of growing the
dough Boy brand and its accompanying toy line. She started
by creating a character called Poppy Fresh, the Pillsbury dough

(06:11):
Girl Poppy was used to advertise the company's sweet products,
beginning with the Pillsbury Danish, though Williams insisted that the
character not be poked in the stomach like her male
counterpart O. That same year, Poppy got her own final doll,
which was soon followed by a whole extended dough family,
including Grandmommer and Grand Popper, Uncle Rollie, two children, Popper

(06:36):
and Bunbun, and two pets, Flapjack the Dog and Biscuit
the Cat. Poppy was the only member of the family
to appear in commercials alongside Popin' Fresh, but sadly she
was eventually phased out like the rest and hasn't appeared
in marketing for decades. Of course, the same can't be
said for pop and Fresh. He remains the face of

(06:57):
Pillsbury products to this day, having appeared in well over
six hundred ads for more than fifty different products. He's
also been a fixture of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
since two thousand and nine, which means he'll be floating
his way through the streets of New York City in
just a few weeks. Be sure to keep an eye
out for him. If you plan to attend in person,

(07:19):
just keep in mind that he's about sixty feet tall
in balloon form, so if you want to poke his belly,
you're gonna need a really long finger. I'm Gabe Lucier
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you want to keep
up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,

(07:39):
and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have
any feedback to share, feel free to pass it along
by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks
to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to
you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow
for another Day in History class attended the Peer the