Funny Face Drink Mix - banned commercial

Here's a commercial that didn't last long on the airwaves. In the early 1960s, Pillsbury decided to compete with Kool-Aid and came out with their own line of instant drink mixes. These "pre-sweetened" mixes contained cyclamates instead of sugar ("so you don't mess up the kitchen adding sugar") and each flavor was assigned a cartoon character: Goofy Grape, Freckle Face Strawberry, Loud-Mouth Lime, and Rootin' Tootin' Raspberry. However, two of these characters met with widespread disapproval: Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry. The backlash from protesters caused Pillsbury to pull these racially-insensitive characters almost immediately; subsequently they were changed to Jolly-Olly Orange and Choo-Choo Cherry.

By the 1970s, cyclamates had been outlawed by the FDA, and Funny Face drink mixes became "sugar sweetened." By that time, Loud-Mouth Lime had been changed to Loud-Mouth Punch, and a new flavor, Lefty Lemonade, had been added to the group.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Funny
• Face
• drink
• mix
• 1960s
• 60s
• banned
• commercial
• animated

[TheAdultChild101]

Chinese Cherry was great with vodka...

[impCaesarAvg]

But one thing nobody notices: Forget about cyclamates, to drink Funny Face, you had to mix it with dihydrogen monoxide.

[blackhawknj]

Not so much Political Correctness as perhaps a little more sensitivity. Kellog's had to pull its "Cornfucuius Say" commercials with Homer and Jethro because of complaints from the Chinese community. Iron Rule of Advertising-you don't want to offend.

[decemberschild1217]

@JohnnyGNV I remember injun Orange being my favorite and when it first got changed over i got my mom to go through the food fair shelves to see if there was any "Injun" behing the "Jolly Olly"

[jpico1935]

I never did like the taste of any artificial sweetener.......It always left an aftertaste that tasted horrible.....I would rather less real suger or no sugar at all for that matter.....but I did buy the sugar kind and added extra water.........

[henslin1955]

Cyclamates and saccharin ? If they had more dough they would still be around. You know like cigarettes.

[SsicTim]

WHERE IS LEFTY LEMON?!?

[altfactor]

I think Injun Orange and Chinese Chery were changed within a year of Funny Face being introduced.

I think (I was a small tyke then) Funny Face came out in 1964, and that the changes to the names of the Orange and Cherry flavors were made in 1965.

[IamSuperMooMoo]

Has anyone else notices that at the beginning, Injun orange is 1st in line, but as they start singing their names goofy grape is 1st? Creeepy.

[JanineC4]

The sad thing is cyclamates never really caused cancer. Anything force-fed upon those critters in the same amounts would cause cancer. It was actually lobbies and industry pressure that really forced the ban. Saccharine took over but tasted terrible. Cyclamates were the only sugar substitute that tasted decent. Diet Rite cola used to be my favorite. If they had never banned cyclamates, I would never have stuggled with weight or tooth problems!!

[nanlisa]

I definitely remember this from when I was a kid. (I'm 53 now.)