The junk-food advertising icons that would never be allowed now

We take a look at the colourful mascots set to disappear from our TV screens as part of a crackdown on obesity

When you think back to the cartoon characters of your childhood, appearing with such ubiquity that they felt like family friends, your mind probably goes to the likes of Fred Flinstone, Homer Simpson, or Tom and Jerry. 
But in reality, no matter how square-eyed you went watching these colourful creations each day, it’s likely that group hardly made a dent compared to another menagerie of friends stalking your formative years.
This ever-present collection watched you over breakfast. They lived in your fridge. They loomed over you in the supermarket aisles. And they had you in the palm of their… paws. They are, of course, the junk food mascots. And they may well be going extinct.
Successive governments have attempted to crack down on junk food advertising as part of a drive to improve public health and reduce the burden inflicted on the NHS by obesity, but for various reasons, they have largely failed. 
Now, Andrew Gwynne, the public health minister, has confirmed that junk food TV advertisements are to be banned from airing before the 9pm watershed, while online ads for products that are high in fat, salt and sugar will be outlawed altogether.
It’s excellent news for campaigners and health experts who’ve long demanded such a change, but not such a welcome development for Tony the Tiger, the Honey Monster, and the rest of their grinning, hyperactive friends, from Ronald McDonald to the Milkybar Kid.
“[A ban] makes sense, we have a growing obesity crisis in this country and it’s an extension really, from cigarette advertising to alcohol, to unhealthy foods,” says Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University. “Taking away the advertising impetus would help change behaviours.”
Their demise is probably for the best. But before we prepare to bury them completely, let us celebrate these Pied Pipers of ultra-processed food. Farewell, friends. You gave us a lot of highs, and a lot of lows. Such is the nature of sugar.
“We talk about brands having personality, and in a way, the characters used by brands try to match the personality of the brand,” Spence says. He points to a healthy example first: the “Quaker Man” used on Quaker Oats packaging since 1909, who looks hale and hearty, and like he knows about slow-release energy. So too the shot putting Highland Games hunk on Scott’s Porage. The message? Eat this and you’ll look like him. If only. 
Children aren’t quite so vain; they can’t be forced to buy one coffee brand just because George Clooney tells them to. But they can be drawn to broad outlines – of bright colours and a general vibe of energetic fun. 
“There are things you can do to anthropomorphise packaging, such as even a slightly upturned line to look like a smile, and studies have shown we prefer these,” Spence says. “Bright colours are obviously attractive, especially to children, but if every company knows this and uses bright colours, you need another way to stand out, and that’s where characters come in.”
Nobody represents this more than Tony the Tiger, the anthropomorphic mascot for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes (or Frosties) since 1952. Tony, a thick-set feline who’s nude but for a red neckerchief and entirely naked in his proselytising for the cereal. He was created by Eugene Kolkey at the US ad company Leo Burnett and named Tony after a colleague there. 
Tony was designed by the same group of former Disney animators behind the Jolly Green Giant, Snap, Crackle and Pop, and the Baltimore Orioles mascot – and developed a catchphrase: “They’re Gr-r-reat!” 
For five decades, it was voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft, who also lent his baritone to various Disney films and rides, as well as having a successful singing career. He’s the uncredited vocalist on “You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch.” And that’s great.
What is he? Good question, and one that children probably don’t stop to ask when they tear open the box and drown its contents in milk. But a bear, it turns out. Sugar Puffs were introduced in 1957, with the promotional character a real European brown bear, a female called Jeremy. They were made by the Quaker Oats Company for a long time, and have always featured the voraciously hungry, slightly chaotic monster in adverts. 
In 2014, knowing that having the word “Sugar” in the name of the cereal might put undue emphasis on, well, sugar, the Honey Monster took things into his own paws and rebranded with his name on the box. A well-deserved promotion. The new cereal also had 8 per cent less sugar and 20 per cent more honey. 
A legend of the game, and the bête noire of obesity campaigners. “Yes, absolutely we would like to see a ban [on the Coco Pops monkey],” Tam Fry, spokesman for both the National Obesity Forum and the Child Growth Foundation said in 2015. “Children are particularly vulnerable to quirky, brightly coloured animals which spew out very simple messages that may not be healthy for them.” 
Yet Coco lives, and here’s a very fun fact: the man who voices him, Gavin Inskip, also presents the pub quiz at Soho House. But what’s more notable is that initially, Coco Pops were advertised in the UK by Mr Jinks, the cat from the cartoon series Pixie Dixie and Mr Jinks. He gave way to Sweep, the Andrew Ridgley to Sooty’s George Michael before Coco made the position his own in 1963.
In some ways it’s surprising he’s still around: in 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, MP Fiona Onasanya criticised Kellogg’s for using a monkey on a chocolate cereal.
“We do not tolerate discrimination,” a Kellogg’s spokesperson said. “As part of our ambition to bring fun to the breakfast table, we have a range of characters that we show on our cereal boxes, including tigers, giraffes, crocodiles, elves and a narwhal.”
Ronald McDonald and KFC’s Colonel Sanders still reign over fast food, but it’s surely the former, a creepy clown who cannot stop smiling, who’s had the greatest impact as a mascot. Ronald was introduced as “Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger-Happy Clown” in 1963 and was played by Willard Scott, who’d previously played Bozo the Clown. 
He has since been “officially” played by seven different actors and has appeared in TV spin-offs, comic strips and, obviously, a lot of adverts – sometimes with his close friend, the Hamburglar. At one time, 96 per cent of all schoolchildren in the US recognised Ronald, meaning he was second only to Father Christmas. McDonald’s doesn’t use him quite as much as they used to, but look at the colours of any of the chain’s restaurants: they’re Ronald’s. 
Along with Animal, the furious and wretched Peperami mascot, Mr Strings was the cylindrical chief of school lunchboxes in the late 1990s. In a way, they represented a departure from the traditional junk food mascot, which tended to be an animal or creature bearing no relation to the product. Think the Cadbury’s Mini Eggs parrot, Chewie the Chewitsaurus for Chewits, the Coca-Cola polar bear, or even the Milkybar kid.
Mr Strings and Animal, on the other hand, *were* the product – something only M&Ms and Monster Munch had dared attempt before, albeit less explicitly. They didn’t just tell you to eat the product, they told you to eat them, literally. 
In fact, Mr Strings was physically ripping himself apart, a smile fixed on his face, in order to convince you to do the same and dismember more of his kind. It’s best not to dwell on that, nor the 2010 campaign in which he was given pert buttocks. Suffice to say, the kids love it. But for how much longer?