In addition, he included Seadog, the faithful companion. He also came up with the crew of kids (to better sell the cereal to kids) based on the first four letters of the alphabet resulting in Alfie, Brunhilde, Carlyle and Dave. Allan Burns later took that same expertise and invented The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”īurns was inspired to come up with the character of the seemingly ageless captain from the fictional Royal Navy officer, Captain Horatio Hornblower. Bill Scott told me in 1983, “You know the Cap’n Crunch commercials? The good ship Guppy and the crew and the adventures and the pirates and the strange creatures and so forth? That world was invented by Allan Burns who was at that time a writer for Jay Ward. In addition, Baker was a huge fan of Ward’s work.Īllan Burns was one of the very few people still at the studio so had to meet with the executives. On July 1, 1961, Jay Ward had decided that his entire studio should have a summer vacation when Bruce Baker of Compton Advertising approached the studio about doing some animated commercials for a new cereal and that the main character had to have the word “crunch” in its name.Īt the time, many cereals had animated mascots and Ward had already produced three years worth of commercials for General Mills, a competitor of Quaker Oats. September was the same month that the Cap’n’s first animated commercial produced by Jay Ward was also released. Quaker put roughly five million dollars behind launching the cereal that they had spent nearly two and half years developing. “It’s got corn for crunch, oats for punch, and it stays crunchy even in milk!”Īccording to the Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns, cereal owner Quaker Oats (now PepsiCo) once used eighty percent of their advertising budget solely on Cap’n Crunch.Ĭap’n Crunch first appeared on a cereal box in September 1963 and went on to become one of the most beloved and long-running cereal spokesmen.
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