Got Milk?

Without the helpful input of highly compensated celebrity endorses, how would we ever know what to like? Certainly we as consumers can't be trusted to make these sort of decisions for ourselves. Just imagine all the crazy things we would get into without the ever-sage guidance of paid spokespeople. No, we need to be told what to do from people we know from movies, sports, music, and television. They're pretty much our only reliable sources.

In 1994, the dairy industry had fallen upon hard times. Kids had tasted the forbidden sugariness of soda and it seemed that they had reached the beverage point-of-no-return. The once-ubiquitous cafeteria milk cartons had been replaced by Coca-Cola sponsored vending machines sure to fund our schools and cavitate our teeth. Our bones were brittle, our blood sugar was high, and we knew little of the beloved milk of our forebearers. Milk producers knew it was time to take action.

Milk producers knew they needed something a bit punchier than "Milk: it's Cool" Cafeteria Milk Machines

The bottom line was that kids were not convinced that milk was cool. I know what you're thinking, kids weren't won over by the glamorous lives of those in the dairy industry? Next thing you're going to tell me is that they were careless about maintaining their calcium levels. Hard to believe, yes, but milk's image was on a downswing. It was as if milk was some washed-up celebrity past her prime; once cast in great roles, she was now generally relegated to grandmother and old-version-of-young-starlet type parts. Milk producers knew they had to act fast if they were going to bring their former key player into the spotlight again after 30 years of poor management and competition from sexier thirst-quenchers.

Milk was down, but it was not out. Advertisers knew that if they could just convince the youth market that milk was hip and happening, kids would drink it up. Ripped straight from the dark imaginations of focus groups, the initial campaign focused on the horrifying consequences of finding oneself in a situation that demanded milk but where none was available. Frightening, I know. Just imagine, a mouthful of cookie with nothing to chase it down. A dire crisis, indeed. Marketers even referred to this as the "Milk Deprivation Strategy," to give you an idea of the seriousness with which they approached their dalliance with dairy.


Milk knew it needed to get by on more than association alone. Sure, cookies had reasonable child street cred, but they could only take milk so far. Advertisers knew they needed to up the ante a bit and inject some humor to hold people's interest and draw attention to their campaign. Continuing on their general milk deprivation theme, they released this television spot:



We can all relate to this situation. How many times do you find yourself, a devoted Aaron Burr historian and enthusiast, faced with the most simple question in your major area of study yet unable to answer due to unfortunate peanut butter stickiness side effects? Too many to count.

Soon, the phrase "Got Milk?" was everywhere, and as you can imagine, it did not dwindle in its humor or become even minutely annoying the 467th time you saw a t-shirt emblazoned with a "Got _________?" slogan. Endlessly hilarious.




The true heart of the campaign was in the print ads we all so know and love. Originally christened with such creative and demanding slogans such as "Where's your mustache?", these teen-attracting ads were soon absorbed under the larger Got Milk? ad campaign umbrella. Celebrity models sported somewhat unfortunate-looking milk mustaches as marketing teams superimposed witty first-person copy clearly not to be attributed to the person pictured in the ad. Regardless of the falsified text, preteens adored these ads. Young girls plastered the walls of their rooms with them, as if these omnipresent magazine advertisements were rare and collectible. There was even a book published full of these ads featuring behind-the-scenes information about the mustachioed celebs. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I owned this book and possibly read it cover to cover, seeking the goodness of milk in light literary form.

These ads were well-targeted and smart. Marketers knew that 90s children pledged essentially undying and unwavering devotion to their celebrity role models. Despite the fact that these celebrity teen role models were generally unqualified to preach anything and would go on to make all sorts of unfortunate life choices, in the 90s their innocence was still intact:




Aren't you glad we listened to these wise, learned teen stars and drank all the milk we could get our hands on? At the time, we wanted to grow up to be just like them. Unfortunately, at the time these ads ran, these adolescent celebrities had yet to grow up themselves. The versions of them that we looked up to had yet to reach their milk-inducing potential. Nowadays, these all-grown-up former teen sensations may not be the picture of wholesomeness and stable health, but at the time we saw them as pure milk success stories.

Sure, the ads also featured real role models like triumphant Olympic athletes, but if you weren't into sports it seemed the best you could wish from milk was to end up like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan. Now aren't you glad you listened to these good mustachioed people and drank your milk?


Check it out:
Official Got Milk? Website
MooMilk: A Dynamic Adventure into the Dairy Industry
Got Milk? Ads Photostream

Drug PSAs

Drug Public Service Announcements: love 'em or hate 'em, they're here to stay. Drug-centric PSAs skyrocketed to popularity in the late 80s and early 90s based on research that kids, well, enjoy drugs. Luckily, adults were here to put a stop to all that to-be-expected teenage experimentation by use of scare tactics and what can only be characterized as unfair equivocations. For instance, a logical human being may not immediately associate a single puff of a joint with a future of relentless crackheadery, but alas, there was a reason they hired the "creative" types for these ad campaigns.

The themes and approaches of 90s drug PSAs were all over the place; this was certainly not a well-thought out, focused approach. No, that kind of reasoning would be too effective. Instead of banding together to fight a common cause, anti-drug groups felt it better to create a free and unfettered marketplace of anti-substance ideals in which any organization could put out any ad as they saw fit. Never ones to be outdone, all sorts of people in the entertainment industry came out of the woodwork eager to put forth their own PSAs, such as in the following Ninja Turtles' sponsored Anti-Drug Ad. We can only assume that Leonardo really pushed for this as a positive career move for our half-shelled friends, as the notion that any actual human writer with limited functional brain capacity would ever conceive of the following ad is too much to take:





Oh no! Joey's in a jam! Joey's in a jam, indeed. You have to love the way that every anti-drug ad explicitly depicts drug users as overly eager to share their expensive and limited supply of drugs with uninterested others. The way the agressor states, "I've got some stuff you've just gotta try!" you'd think he was begging someone to take these joints off his hands. This kid looks all of 12 years old, so I'm not exactly sure what his major source of income is, but I think it's pretty safe to say that he wouldn't be overly eager to share the fruits of many weeks of allowance-saving with a casual acquaintance who clearly wants no part of it.

I also love the way that they cut to the Ninja Turtles doing a Q&A postmortem on the peer-pressure scenario video segment with a random elementary school class. Usually, when I'm in jam not unsimilar to Joey's, I use my Zack Morris "Freeze!" power to assemble a bunch of random children to talk out my problem with the TMNT themselves. At least the turtles keep it light with their pizza jokes. Get real, Michaelangelo. You also have to love the eagerness with which that kid in front shrieks, "Get out of there!" With enthusiasm like this, it's fairly certain that there are no marijuana users in this classroom.

So way to go, Joey. Call him a turkey! Take that, bully five times Joey's size! And as the turtles say, drug users are dorks! Who better to trust than martial-arts trained sewer-dwelling half-masked pizza-loving mutant turtles? Who, I ask you?

If that one didn't quite jive with you as a child, there was always this more, er, subtle approach:




Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Backtrack a second. I see what you're getting at here with your extended metaphor and all, but...really? I have quite of few points of contention with this ad, the foremost of which being that it's obviously and blatantly insensitive. Of course, though, it doesn't end there! Why does the narrator insist on referring to native Africans of 400 years ago as "African Americans"? They weren't African-Americans when they came here, they were Africans. What a total shot in the dark attempt to be PC in an utterly un-PC commercial.

Oh, voiceover, what gem of wisdom will you share with us next? Oh wait, if I am of African American descent and use drugs, I'm directly dishonoring my ancestors and reenslaving my people? You were always one for subtlety, disembodied voice.

If you still weren't off drugs forever after watching that sobering ad, you could always wait a couple of years to be influenced by this one:




N*Sync, your light and playful tone will surely deter heavy drug use, especially among alternative kids. I don't know if it ever occurred to somebody that N*Sync fans may not be the population most heavily correlated with drug use, but here they are telling us what they're into. And boy, do they have some hilarious fake hobbies! Oh, scriptwriters, have you got these boys pegged. As a former synchronized swimmer, I may have to take some offense to JC's jab, especially because the other lines they give him ("baroque minimalism!") implies that synchronized swimming is in some way wacky and insane (if you are unaware, it's not). You have to enjoy the pre-outed Lance Bance shrieking effeminately, though. At least they had the wisdom to throw some foreshadowing in there for good measure. Oh, and to have him say he's into acting. Touche, scriptwriters. I guess those girls are in the ad to illustrate how desirable N*Sync is. I can't really fathom any alternate explanation for their presence. If anyone was yet to question N*Sync's crediibility and/or masculinity as musical artists, I think this ad probably sealed the deal.

Of course, there was also the more serious (some may say, depressing) approach:




Cue up the maudlin music and watch an adorable inner-city black kid with the hi-top fade haircut dodge the drug pushers. As in the first ad we saw here, it's fair to assume that all drug users are out to force their expensive fare on us. They will not rest until every pocket-moneyless child is forced to try their limited supply of drugs free of charge.

Unfortunately, my favorite-ever anti-drug commercial from 1998 has been forever exiled into the black hole of internet obscurity. Despite an inordinate amount of time spent searching for my once-beloved animated anti-drug PSA, it seems to be completely absent from an otherwise well-stocked video cyberspace. Lucky for all of you, I took a memorization class in gifted summer school in 2nd grade* and have the words forever branded into my once-impressionable childhood brain. It goes a little something like this:

I'd rather eat a big old bug! Than ever take a stupid drug!
Drugs aren't cool, they can mess you up at school,
Drugs are a pain, they can hurt your body and your brain!

A big ol' bug with an ugly mug, is better than any stupid drug!

They make you sad, they make your parents mad,
Drugs are dumb, they make you clumsy, slow, and numb!

I'd rather eat a big old bug...

(Bug interjects:) Don't do drugs!

Than ever take a stupid drug!


There are a lot of confusing elements of this anti-drug jingle, so I'll try my best to break it down for you. First off, are we to believe that the size and age of a given bug are inversely proportional to its desirability relative to drugs? In which case, a young, small bug may not hold the same anti-drug message. Very interesting. And what a kind, selfless bug he is. Even though he knows his life to be at stake with such an anti-drug proclamation, he can tell right from wrong. You just don't see that sort of self-sacrificing sprirt in animated insects these days.

And another thing! Drugs can mess me up at school? My parents will be mad? Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, anti-drug commercial. I'd never considered any of these outcomes before, I was only thinking of the joys of ingesting plump, juicy insects as a healthy alternative to drug use. Now that you've shown me the light (or darkness, of it may be) of drug use, I will dutifully chomp down on this animated bug sandwich to do my part to deter childhood drug abuse. Thanks, Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

For any of you out there (and I assume you are!) thinking to yourselves, "But what of all my favorite non-drug related PSAs from the 90s? Are they doomed to never see the light of Children of the 90s?" Well, I'm sorry to cause you that brief moment of anguish and withdrawal, but fear not; as God as my witness, those PSAs will be here for your enjoyment in a multi-part series I like to call, "Educational Advertising in the 90s is Completely F-ing Insane." Stay tuned!

And if you don't, the drug dealers from that last videos will most likely hunt you down and force it upon you unprovoked. True story.



*This fact is embarrassingly and unjustifiably true

Daria

Hearken back, if you will, to a time when MTV's original programming budget could afford more than the middle school dropout scriptwriters they currently employ to pen Date My Mom and A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila. A time when intelligent sardonic cartoons could still capture the imagination of a preteen audience not yet contaminated by the likes of High School Musical. A time when a contemptuous misanthrope could hold spotlight rather than be banished to the supporting character category.

And if you didn't quite see yourself as a Daria, well, there was always Quinn.

Daria Promo


The characters in Daria ran the social gamut in a manner of sharp satire rarely found in teen-directed television. This was no Saved by the Bell. No, Daria told it like it was; humorously and critically chronicling the vast teenage wasteland of suburbia. It's rare that such an abrasive character can be so likable, but the writers seemed to strike that perfect balance between edgy and observant. Sure, Daria wasn't all rainbows and sunshine, but she was complex and interesting. Not to mention that relating to her made us feel smart.

Yes, Daria Morgendorffer was of a rare breed. It's odd to think that such a profound and well-conceived character was spun off of such an utterly idiotic show as Beavis and Butthead, but so it was. The Daria sense of humor was fully distinct from the crude, if sometimes admittedly funny juvenile style of Beavis and Butthead.

Daria...from humble beginnings

Daria and her peers were developed in an intelligent way that had eluded their show of origin. The show mainly utilized Daria's derisive eye and provided us with endless satirical jabs at our own high school experience. Her distinct outsider status gave us all an opportunity to pretend for a brief moment that we did not occasionally shamefully see ourselves in the mainstream peers that she so disparaged.

Let's explore our quirky Lawndale cast:

Our Hero

Daria Morgendorffer, sarcastic extraordinaire and our eponymous hero. Her deadpan monotone packed a lot of punch into her exceedingly judgmental and smart-alecky comments. She met her best friend Jane in self-esteem enhancement class, if that provides any clue as to how she was perceived by others. She was cynical, opinionated, judgmental, and somewhat of a misfit, but there was something in her that was distinctly relatable nonetheless. The beauty of Daria was that even the most teenyboppery among us had some vague experience with teenage angst, though likely not on a Daria-level. As if by magic, the Daria creators were able to draw out (excuse the cartooning pun) that collective part of our adolescent selves who felt ill-at-ease in our orderly surroundings and make light of it.

The Trusty Sidekick

Jane Lane, Daria's rhyming-monikered partner in crime. Jane was a burgeoning artiste, favoring the odd and unusual in sync with her favorite TV show, "Sick Sad World." Her parents are frighteningly free-spirited, frequently leaving her and her older brother home alone for indeterminate periods of time to raise themselves as they saw fit. Jane had a comparable worldview to Daria, but was somewhat more relenting with her judgment of others and occasionally exhibited a weakness for the mainstream.

The Unrequited Crush

Trent Lane, Jane's brother and equally monotone misguided punk rocker in the band Mystik Spiral. Convinces Daria to pierce her belly button. Obviously bad news.

...Later Replaced by Requited Crush

Tom Sloane, Jane's former boyfriend and all-around likable wealthy snob. Unlike most other teen programs, Daria admirably did not eclipse this boyfriend switcharoo plot line in a single or two-part Blossom-style "Very Special Episode." Rather, the story arc of the tension between Jane and Daria over this clear case of boyfriend stealage was built over an entire season. In the end, Daria was likely just too awkward to maintain a steady relationship, though there was a hilarious after-school-special-esque "should-I-or-shouldn't-I" episode about Daria contemplating the loss of her virginity.

The Well-Meaning Parents

Helen and Jake Morgendorffer, hilariously overdrawn caricatures but well-intentioned parents nonetheless. Helen was a former-hippie-cum-high-powered attorney and was generally clueless about the lives of her daughters. Jake was a repressed stressball marketing consultant known for his ridiculous rants about the light childhood trauma of imposed military school. Helen and Jake would often spit out one another's names as if they were insults in a relatable if somewhat tragic way. These two were also known for occasionally getting freaky. It was relatively disturbing, if admittedly a tad sweet.

The Bubble-Headed Sister

Quinn Morgandorffer, Daria's ray of sunshine and spectacularly vain and materialistic lil' sis. You were never supposed to admit that Quinn was your favorite character in the face of Daria's more subtle humor and charm, but I must admit I was quite taken by Quinn. You wanted to despise her brazen superficiality, but there was something deep within her self-delusion and self-importance that was oddly appealing. If you could bizzaro-ize Daria exactly, Quinn would be the result. But in her own way, she was sort of cute, and not just because she constantly proclaimed herself to be so.

The Fashion Club

Quinn's ultra-superficial clique; Sandi, Stacey, and Tiffany, who possessed as a group probably my favorite voicework on any animated characters, ever. Sandi, the slowed-down-Romy-from-Romy-and-Michelle voice whose tyrannical leadership of the Fashion Club and constant rivalry with Quinn was a never-ceasing divisive issue. Born-follower Stacey, who probably should have been the one sent to self-esteem class for her unceasing agreement with everything ever said by anyone. Tiffany, who spoke so slowly you could knit a scarf in the time it took her to construct a sentence. Priceless. If you could have put a price on it, though, it's fairly certain these girls would have bought it.

The Interchangeable Quinn-Worshippers

Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie. All willing to drop anything to attend to Quinn's every whim. Their devotion and attention to detail was certainly admirable, though possibly a bit creepy.

The Requisite Dumb "Jocks"

Brittany and Kevin, dumb as rocks and constantly making out in the hallway. Need I say more?

Our Taste of Suburban Diversity

Jodi Landon and Michael "Don't Call Me Mack-Daddy" Mackenzie; the sole two black students at Lawndale High. Overachieving and sometimes a tad bitter about their ignorant classmates, but generally amiable.

The Generally Insane School Faculty

Lawndale High had a distinct knack for attracting faculty of the sanitarium-escapee variety. This ragtag gang of educators included an overly flirtatious bitter divorcee science teacher, the prone-to-shouting perpetually eye-poppingly angry history teacher, Stuart-Smalley-esque English teacher, and budget-hungry principal. Sure, there were a few normal ones in the bunch, but overall these teachers had a certain quality that made us wonder who let them work with children in the first place. We can only image it was part of some sort of work-release program.

As a burgeoning adolescent sarcastic, I too fancied myself some variety of Daria. The fact that I bought a ring bearing her sacred image at the Viacom store in New York City is a clear testament to my Quinn-rivaling lack of irony. This, however, reflected the beauty of Daria. It could be both a biting social commentary and successful commercial enterprise. They even shamelessly exercised some cute if somewhat tired gimmicks like musical episodes and full-length TV movies. The show differentiated itself from others, however, with its own unique brand of humor and distinctly un-MTV-esque quality. If you've ever sat through an episode of Parental Control, you know that's a good thing.

It also helped that the show didn't take itself too seriously, as many teen shows of the time were wont to do. Daria maintained a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek tone that created a cartoon world in which nothing was sacred, or at least nothing was safe from the show's critical lens. The wit was dry and sharp and utterly unapologetic. Better yet, the show's credits ended with "alter-ego" drawings of the main characters dressed as famous figures. What's not to like?


If you never got into it or simply can't seem to conjure up the memories, I've included a handy full episode (Season 3, episode 6, "It Happened One Nut") to revive what I can only hope will be your undying and forever devoted love to a once-great MTV show. If this doesn't convince you to join the fight for DVD release, I'm not sure what will:

Daria-peanut
Uploaded by micophive

Check it out:
Secret Stash of multi-part full eps on YouTube
Outpost Daria