The video on this one is a little washed-out but it's watchable. This is a commercial for Funny Face instant drink mixes, which were introduced into the market in 1964, knocking Kool-Aid out of first place in the category of Unhealthy Things A Busy Mom Could Give Her Kids To Drink. I remember swigging the stuff down occasionally at friends' homes but not caring too much for it. Seemed like an awful thing to do to perfectly good water. I also remember one friend practically living off the stuff and being put into utter despair in '69 when the F.D.A. banned cyclamates (a form of artificial sweetener) and therefore, the Funny Face drinks made with it. Funny Face returned to shelves soon after with a different formula but it was never, my friend said, quite the same. Still, somehow, the product lived on into the early eighties.
I don't know when this commercial was done but it was after 1965. The first two years that Funny Face was out, the orange flavor was called Injun Orange and the cherry was Chinese Cherry, both depicted with racially insensitive caricatures. In '66, the orange became Jolly Olly Orange and the cherry became Choo Choo Cherry, and racial harmony was achieved, at least in the fruit community.
At least half of the voices of the characters in this commercial were done by Paul Frees. I think the grocer you see at the end is played by Grady Sutton, a doughfaced character actor who appeared in so many movies of the thirties, forties and fifties. Matter of fact, he was in The Bank Dick with W.C. Fields, which I'm going to mention in the next posting. Here he is in this spot, probably ignoring advice he received from Mr. Fields about never working with children…
