THERE ARE ODD TV COMMERCIALS, then there are the truly, utterly strange, quasi-surreal spots that make you wonder what the ad agency people were drinking; or, in this next case, eating.
The spot I describe aired on various network daytime shows in early January. It opens with a business-suited yes man addressing “Governor Kempthorne.” The scene opens up to reveal a replica of the Idaho governor’s office, with the real governor seated at the desk. The aide continues, “Good news. There’s only one person more popular than you–Spuddy Buddy.”
A poorly drawn cartoon potato suddenly pops up on screen. He dances and sings the praises of baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, fries, and assorted other ways you can devour his tuber brethern. The half-minute closes with the governor telling the potato toon, “I hope you’re not running for office anytime soon.”
The Spuddy Buddy character was created by the state’s potato commission two or three years back, at least partly as an icon for children’s merchandising. A major PR agency spent untold bucks and person-hours researching ways to get consumers to demand Idaho spuds instead of whatever’s cheapest, and apparently decided a lovable spokescritter would be a great teach-’em-while-they’re-young concept.
The cartoon spud, however awkward looking, does have enough fans to generate at least one fan-fiction story of a sort, to be mentioned as a prop in other net-fiction, and the subject of speculators’ attempts to create a new Beanie Baby-style collecting fad.
But the figure has a different meaning for me. He reminds me of my lonely-college-boy days in the UW School of Communications. The advertising majors loved to scoff at us editorial-journalism majors, boasting that they were sure to get high-paying careers and we weren’t.
Then, one day in a Communications Building classroom, I saw the image that made me decide once and for all to follow my dream and avoid the suckup world of bigtime corporate advertising. As you might be guessing, it was a storyboard for a mock TV commercial featuring a singing, dancing cartoon potato.
I’m thinking I ought to send out for the Spuddy Buddy plush doll, as a reminder of the ol’ road-not-taken thang.
