Adscape 1: Captain Tootsie vs Nature
Oh how I enjoy the advertising mascots of the past, with their one-page adventures and monomaniacal outlook on life ("Only Grape Nuts can effectively stop those robbers, Timmy!") and so: Adscape, a place to discuss ads of the past.
Today, the first of what will probably end up being five or six looks at former Tootsie Roll mascot Captain Tootsie, the man who knows that a brief sugar rush is just the thing for any emergency. Specifically, we’ll be looking at the Captain’s troubling relationship with the beasts of the forest.
Here we find Captain Tootsie in the woods with the group of young children that constituted his Secret Legion of minor crime-fighters. Suddenly, an old man dressed like an 1800s frontiersman bursts into their campsite and tells them that there’s a killer bear on the loose. Shortly thereafter, there’s a disturbance at the local girls’ camp - turns out that the bear has stolen some food. Captain Tootsie has a couple of Tootsie Rolls for quick energy and then:
Bear: gunned down. Candy: distributed. Mountain Man: impressed.
I’m all for respecting the opinions of the elderly and the marginally insane, but did this bear - this fleeing bear - just die because Coon Tail Charlie called it a killer? Because the bear only really gets up to two things in this ad, stealing food and growling, and I’m pretty sure that those are half of a bear’s job description, along with swiping salmon out of streams and riding the occasional tiny motorcycle. I guess that it’s somewhat possible that Charlie had a scrapbook full of mauling-related newspaper clippings with him, but as far as I can tell this is a case of the good Captain really wanting to hang a large animal from a tree.
Another day, another camping trip. Oops, a rattlesnake. What’s a Captain to do?
That’s right, it’s the old rock-to-the-brain maneuver.I guess that I’m not condemning this as much as I do the wanton bear-slaughter above. Rattlesnakes plus children often ends in tears after all. Still, this is a bit of a troubling pattern that is emerging (especially taking into account Tootsie’s ability to capture a similar snake using only a stick, seen in the latter part of the same ad).
What really cements my opinion that Cap Toots should just stick to the cities and leave the fauna alone is this next one:
Another day, another nature hike. Note that they have not seen a bear. They have found fresh tracks and Captain Tootsie doesn’t have a gun. What to do? Rapidly retreat in the opposite direction?
Not a chance.
Yup, that’s right. Captain Tootsie hates nature so much that when he found himself without a way to kill a bear, he went out of his way to make sure that it was deprived of its freedom. They spent hours on that pit, folks. They could have been two counties over if Cap hadn’t insisted.
And he does it all while staying on-message.
Truly a complex and fascinating man, Captain Tootsie.
Here, by the way, are the original ads: 1 2 3
Fawcett should have stepped up their game– this Captain looks suitably sue-able, the Big Red Toot.
Wow. I’d love to see what happens when Capt. Tootsie goes after endangered species!
Capt. tootsie is a little fruity-in-the loops, I mean he lets CHILDREN in on so-called “dangerous” missions. not only that but he lets them help while there on a hyped-up suger rush state. Plus his super hero name choise worries me, just a little…
I probably would have gone with a name like T.R. HERO or COMMANDER T. ROLL.
I hope these ads escalate to the point where Capt. Tootsie is frustrated with the lack of bears so he makes the kids dress like bears so he can hunt them.
When he was a child, Captain Tootsie watched his parents being murdered by a bear, and so he spent the following years honing his mind and body int the ultimate weapon to fight his one-man war on bearkind.
Were they trying to push Tootsie Rools as a health food or a meal-replacement bar(or just as not-candy)?
Captain Tootsie seems to treat Tootsie Rolls like some people treat Red Bull - slam half a dozen of them back and you’ll temporarily have the vim, vigor and jittery nerves required for any physical task. I’ll bet that both are about as effective, too.
Something about the way Coon Tail Charlie is drawn makes me think that his personal odour serves as basically a pretty-much-impenetrable force field with about a 15-foot radius.