• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, September 26, 2024

I’ve written before about nostalgia being all the rage these days in advertising.

Legacy brands seem to be upcycling earlier messaging in hopes of tickling our collective memory banks in a wistful way.

Whatever the content, it gets emotional sometimes to remember that innocence.

As Madge the Manicurist once said, “We’re soaking in it.”

Speaking of nostalgia, Quaker Oats recently debuted a new Mikey character for Life Cereal.

Of course, it’s ridiculously hard to live up to the original, which featured that freckled, adorable picky eater of a kid who “hates everything,” but “likes it!”  It hit airwaves in 1972 and was universally beloved.

A true crowd-pleaser, the Mikey commercial ran for an unprecedented 14 years  -- till 1986—which is like 126 in human years. It also garnered awards of all stripes, including admission to the Advertising Hall of Fame.

In the intervening years, perhaps nostalgia for the nostalgia of it was the case, as the company updated Mikey twice, in 1997 and 2019. Both campaigns took the form of a contest to find Mikey replacements, and get kids engaged. The latter campaign took a timely turn when the winner, still named Mikey, was female.

But why did the original low-budget spot, from DDB, reach such heights and linger in our pop cultural DNA?

Part of it was the unexpected casting: three actual brothers, all good actors with dark Moppet hair and adorable faces. The set-up was exquisitely simple, but ultra-relatable. The two older bros sit further away from four-year-old Mikey at the breakfast table, saying “You try it,” “No ,YOU try it” and finally send the bowl over to Mikey, he of the bowl haircut and messy grip on the spoon. Mikey starts shoveling it in, and they celebrate with the now hallowed lines, “He likes it! Hey, Mikey!”

Mostly, there was a fantastic naturalness in the way it was written, shot and acted that connected. It was a far cry from the usual phony, overproduced formally scripted family scenes, mom in an apron and Dad heading off to work, with junior needing a scolding, that were still seen at the time.

And it also had a subversive message, underscored by the silky-voiced male announcer, who comes in at the end and sets up a secret pact with the parent (most likely Mom.) “When you bring Life home, don’t tell the kids it’s one of those nutritional cereals you’ve been trying to get them to eat,” he says.  “You’re the only one who has to know.”  Wink.

So clearly, even though those kids were unsupervised at the table, up to who-knows-what, the announcer establishes that the parent is firmly in charge, serving healthy food to boot.

And while this latest update, released in mid-September, has plenty of callbacks to the original, it’s got a different vibe.

The spot showcases an older Mikey (maybe 10-ish), still going with the bowl haircut, singing about his family.

It opens on a chaotic scene in the morning in Mikey’s household. Played by the actor Hudson Uebelhardt, Mikey sings, “It’s the start of another day/ I wish that I could say everything is always peachy keen/ But my brother’s in his underwear, mom’s got toothpaste in her hair, Daddy’s still not had his caffeine.”

It’s brave to diverge this way, with a musical number.  The spot is undeniably cute and sweet.

But this time it’s the kid holding it all together, singing the tag line, “I really love my life.”

It interests me sociologically. It shows an utterly contemporary scene. Many families juggle in just this way-- with everyone needing to get out in the morning, the three kids to school and the mom and dad to their respective jobs. Seemingly, there’s no hierarchy at all, except for whatever it takes to get it done.

But after all the skirmishing, they do make time to sit down at the table, and the siblings send the bowl over to Mikey in the original way. He delights in it, and even holds his spoon incorrectly in the same way as the four-year-old. (Sorry, that’s my mother.)

Mikey ends with singing, “I really love my life.”

In this incarnation, family life is stressful and overloaded.

There’s no one worrying about what’s “nutritional.” 

But they’re used to it. Mikey likes it. And the kids are alright.